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Friday Quiz #9 — Parallax Forums

Friday Quiz #9

Here's a quiz derived from one that appears every Sunday in the New York Times Magazine:

quiz_9.png

The object is to find as many common English words of seven letters or more (not proper nouns) that can be formed using the center letter and the letters surrounding it, in any order. Letters can be used more than once. Score one point for each word you find, plus an additional two points for a word that uses all seven letters.

The objective is to do this from your head -- i.e. not by writing a program that scans an English word list. When you think you have enough words, post your score here. Please do not post the words you've found, so as to give everyone an equal chance.

-Phil

P.S. Once enough people have responded, I'll open it up to a programming "golf" contest and provide a word list to see who can come up with the shortest program that accomplishes the task.
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Comments

  • Can you repeat letters? And must the letters be next to each other? Or is the layout not significant?
  • I like this one. :)

    340 x 346 - 41K
  • Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi) Posts: 23,514
    edited 2017-05-12 19:17
    Seairth wrote:
    Can you repeat letters? And must the letters be next to each other? Or is the layout not significant?
    ... that can be formed using the center letter and the letters surrounding it, in any order. Letters can be used more than once.

    The only significance to the layout is that each word must contain the center letter at least once. Otherwise, anything goes.

    -Phil
  • Seairth wrote:
    Can you repeat letters? And must the letters be next to each other? Or is the layout not significant?
    ... that can be formed using the center letter and the letters surrounding it, in any order. Letters can be used more than once.

    The only significance to the layout is that each word must contain the center letter at least once. Otherwise, anything goes.

    -Phil

    Dangit! Now I'm back down to four.... :(
  • In about 15 minutes while eating I got to 23, but totally blank the rest of lunch. 10 of them start with a P, the rest have it elsewhere. One word using all but the R. Longest is 9 letters.

    Will take another look later and see if I can drum up more, if not, I head to the scrabble solver to see what obvious words I missed....

    I am interested in other people's mental process in solving this. Here is what I was doing:
    Started with P and worked around each other letter as second to come up with words.
    Started with each other letter and worked around all letters as second
    Used some common letter combos to find words.
    Looked for double p, e, o, r and L words
    Repeated steps above a few times...
  • In about 15 minutes while eating I got to 23, but totally blank the rest of lunch. 10 of them start with a P, the rest have it elsewhere. One word using all but the R. Longest is 9 letters.

    Seven letter or more?

    I was able to find three defensible words and an additional four that are contrived.

  • Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi) Posts: 23,514
    edited 2017-05-12 21:06
    I was able to find three defensible words and an additional four that are contrived.
    Do the contrived ones end in "-er" or begin with "re-" by any chance -- or both? :)

    -Phil
  • I was able to find three defensible words and an additional four that are contrived.
    Do the contrived ones end in "-er" or begin with "re-" by any chance -- or both? :)

    -Phil

    Pretty much.

  • SeairthSeairth Posts: 2,474
    edited 2017-05-12 21:57
    I'm up to 9 10. None contrived. But 23? Wow! I need to read more books!
  • To give the first one away off the top of my head: (PROPELLER)
  • MikeDYur wrote:
    To give the first one away off the top of my head: (PROPELLER)
    There's a reason for my choice of letters!

    -Phil
  • MikeDYur wrote:
    To give the first one away off the top of my head: (PROPELLER)
    There's a reason for my choice of letters!

    -Phil

    Yeah, the style of the "P" was a bit of a gimme. :D
  • MikeDYur wrote:
    To give the first one away off the top of my head: (PROPELLER)
    There's a reason for my choice of letters!

    -Phil

    Pretty cool that the mother ship is really front and center.
  • MikeDYur wrote:
    Pretty cool that the mother ship is really front and center.
    Well it is Parallax's forum. Whenever possible, I try to keep things relevant and on-topic -- however tenuously.

    -Phil
  • 9 words so far!
  • ercoerco Posts: 20,244
    Parallax and Propeller are both in the mix!
  • ercoerco Posts: 20,244
    Loop before you Leap!
  • At this point, I would invite the entrants to display their word lists. 'Curious to see what you came up with!

    Here's a text file with 479K English words:

    https://github.com/dwyl/english-words/blob/master/words.txt

    If you use it with a program, it will produce 67 words, many contrived (re- and -er words), with one that uses all seven letters, also somewhat contrived.

    BTW, my Perl program that found the 67 words is five lines long, including a line with a single right brace. Viva la regexes! :)

    I wonder what the shortest Spin program reading the word list from an SD card would look like -- and how long it would take to execute ...

    -Phil

  • poleaxe
    explore
    explorer
    repealer
    exraper
    reraper
    poleaxer
    

    Some are contrived.
  • Congrats: poleaxer is the only word in the word list that uses all seven of the letters. I would never have found it otherwise.

    -Phil
  • ercoerco Posts: 20,244
    Congrats: poleaxer is the only word in the word list that uses all seven of the letters. I would never have found it otherwise.

    -Phil
    Mayhaps you forgot about loxpear, my favorite fish/fruit bagel topping. And oxpearl, the lesser-known cousin of rocky mountain oysters?

  • LOL! -P.
  • Here's my post-it from the other day. After looking at a word solver I found several more obvious ones that I should have gotten. And, yes, I did start the second row bottom up.

    [img][/img]
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  • Andrew, the original rules state 7 letters or more...
    Here's a quiz derived from one that appears every Sunday in the New York Times Magazine:

    The object is to find as many common English words of seven letters or more (not proper nouns) that can be formed using the center letter and the letters surrounding it, in any order. Letters can be used more than once. Score one point for each word you find, plus an additional two points for a word that uses all seven letters.

  • Well, heck, that explains how I appeared to be smarter than others here, which we all know is far from the truth. I totally missed that piece of the rules.

    So, my 23 is now 2.
  • Here is the list of words my program found:
    alepole
    apoplex
    apparel
    appealer
    appearer
    appellee
    appellor
    appropre
    expellee
    expeller
    explore
    explorer
    lapeler
    palapala
    paleola
    pallall
    papelera
    paperer
    parallax
    parallel
    paralleler
    parella
    parelle
    parolee
    paroler
    parrall
    pearler
    pelopea
    peopler
    pepperer
    peroral
    perpera
    perplex
    perplexer
    poleaxe
    poleaxer
    pollera
    popeler
    poroporo
    preloral
    preloreal
    preoral
    prepare
    preparer
    prepeople
    prepollex
    proller
    propale
    propeller
    propellor
    properer
    proplex
    propper
    rapparee
    reapparel
    reappeal
    reappear
    reexpel
    reexplore
    relapper
    repaper
    reparel
    repealer
    repeller
    repeople
    reperplex
    reprepare
    

    Some are pretty questionable, IMO.

    -Phil
  • MikeDYurMikeDYur Posts: 2,176
    edited 2017-05-18 01:09
    Phil, at first glance, some of words look foreign.

    EDIT: Could be Hawaiian and American Indian. Throw a little Mexican Spanish and French Canadian. The list goes on and on.. .
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