Wrapping Interval Notation for Take

Question

I'm trying to implement the solution to a math problem in Mathematica, but my code can't handle a particular boundary case. I think that I could implement a function that would do what I want it to, but it would be kind of ugly.

Here is the problem:

letters = {"a", "b", "c", "d", "e", "f", "g", "h", "i", "j", "k", "l",
"m", "n", "o", "p", "q", "r", "s", "t", "u", "v", "w", "x", "y", "z"};

GetIndexInAlphabet[letter_String] := Position[letters, letter][[1, 1]];

GetIndexInAlphabet["a"] (* 1 *)

AofAlpha[letter_String] := Module[{startIndex, endIndex},
  startIndex = GetIndexInAlphabet[letter];
  endIndex = startIndex + 2;
  Take[letters, {startIndex, endIndex}]
];

AofAlpha["a"] (* {a, b, c} *)

AofAlpha["z"] (* {z, a, b} *)

Does anyone have a clean way to implement the wrapping behavior that the function should have?

Answer 1

x = Partition[letters, 3, 1, {1, 1}];

x[[1]]

{"a", "b", "c"}

x[[26]]

{"z", "a", "b"}

Generalization:

fun[letter_String, n_Integer] :=
 With[{cr = CharacterRange["a", "z"]},
  Partition[cr, n, 1, {1, 1}] [[ToCharacterCode[letter] - 96]] // Flatten] 

fun["y", 4]

{"y", "z", "a", "b"}

Answer 2

S = First /@ Partition[CharacterRange["a", "z"], 3, 3, 1]
(* {"a", "d", "g", "j", "m", "p", "s", "v", "y"} *)

It's minimal because:

3*Length@S
(* 27 *)

and any $S$ with less cardinality will have at most $3*8= 24$ characters in it's union, so it won't cover the full letter set.