Are you smart enough to work at Facebook? How about just smart enough to get into its party?

The company's new Seattle office is holding its first big open house Aug. 25, as we noted this morning, but space is limited. And it's hoping to use the event to help attract some of the region's brightest engineers. So rather than selecting the attendees itself, the social networking giant is offering a puzzle, the solution to which will get you in the door. Here's the first part, as outlined last night in a post by the Facebook Seattle office.

You are given a list of relationships between the letters in a single word, all of which are in the form: "The first occurrence of A comes before N occurrences of B.” You can safely assume that you have all such relationships except for any in which N would be 0. Determine the original word, then go to http://www.facebook.com/seattle/[insert-word-here] to find the second part of the puzzle.

The first occurrence of 'e' comes before 1 occurrence of 's'.
The first occurrence of 'i' comes before 1 occurrence of 'n'.
The first occurrence of 'i' comes before 1 occurrence of 'i'.
The first occurrence of 'n' comes before 2 occurrences of 'e'.
The first occurrence of 'e' comes before 1 occurrence of 'e'.
The first occurrence of 'i' comes before 1 occurrence of 'v'.
The first occurrence of 'n' comes before 1 occurrence of 'i'.
The first occurrence of 'n' comes before 1 occurrence of 'v'.
The first occurrence of 'i' comes before 1 occurrence of 's'.
The first occurrence of 't' comes before 1 occurrence of 's'.
The first occurrence of 'v' comes before 1 occurrence of 's'.
The first occurrence of 'v' comes before 2 occurrences of 'e'.
The first occurrence of 't' comes before 2 occurrences of 'e'.
The first occurrence of 'i' comes before 2 occurrences of 'e'.
The first occurrence of 'v' comes before 1 occurrence of 't'.
The first occurrence of 'n' comes before 1 occurrence of 't'.
The first occurrence of 'v' comes before 1 occurrence of 'i'.
The first occurrence of 'i' comes before 1 occurrence of 't'.
The first occurrence of 'n' comes before 1 occurrence of 's'.

It's reminiscent in some ways of those billboards that Google would use for recruiting back in the heyday of its employment growth, which makes sense given that former Google Kirkland site director Peter Wilson has signed on as an adviser to Facebook to help the company grow its presence in Seattle.

But is Facebook's challenge hard enough? "The Facebook Seattle party invite challenge was pretty trivial, guess they want some non-super-nerds there," wrote Daryn Nakhuda, the chief technology officer at Seattle startup TeachStreet, on Twitter this morning.

In other words, if you're interested, it might be wise to take a crack at the puzzle before the party fills up.