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Unix Dict/grep Solves Left-Side-of-Keyboard Puzzle
destinyland writes "For decades, people have been asking this brain teaser: 'What's the longest word you can type with only the left-hand letters on a keyboard?' The answer is supposed to be 'stewardesses,' but grepping the standard dictionary that ships with Unix reveals
a much better answer. There's nearly 2,000 shorter words that can typed with only the left hand — including one word that's even longer. (The article also quotes a failed novel attempt using nothing but words typed on the keyboard's left side.)"
Devertebrated
Link to the original article next time!
Stewardesses is still unsurpassed on my box. (But maybe it's because "GNU's not Unix", so I have a different dictionary file.)
This has been known to logologists for years as the "best" answer to this puzzle. I believe it's from Webster's 2nd or 3rd Unabridged.
It's in the other article linked from the stupid blog post / aggregator summary.
Lately reading the news has seemed a whole lot more like surfing for free porn -- lots of promises but you end up following a long trail of often obscured links and as often as not don't end up with what you're looking for.
Hint to the "blogosphere," that game wasn't worth it for porn, and it's sure as hell not worth it for trivia.
"P", "O", and "N" are not on the left side of the keyboard.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
This is such an obvious blog spam by this guy that it is painful.
Both blog entries (one completely redundant to mask the referrals), are authored by "Moe Zilla" (painfully lame pseudonym, btw) whose "ultimate goal is to earn money online while writing about whatever I want," and whose writing style has the exact same defects as those in the summary.
Give up dude, your high school English teach was right: you suck.
~$ uname -rs /usr/share/dict/words
Darwin 9.5.1
~$ grep "^[asdfgqwertzxcvb]\{13,\}$"
aftercataract
devertebrated
tesseradecade
Someone with an OED can feel free to check them.
Grin did you try that? The first link is a wikipedia entry, the second about "The Stewardesses 3-D", really not porn. Only the third link is porn ;)
This is the SOWPODS international scrabble tournament dictionary /usr/local/share/scrabble
% egrep '^[qwertasdfgzxcvb]{12,}$'
abracadabras
aftereffects
decerebrated
decerebrates
desegregated
desegregates
extravagated
extravagates
extravasated
extravasates
reaggregated
reaggregates
resegregated
resegregates
reverberated
reverberates
stewardesses
sweaterdress
sweaterdresses
watercresses
Buy Text Processing in Python
Removing reverberation from a soundtrack, also called echo removal.
You can have it fast, accurate, or pretty. Pick any 2.
In the "Stupid QWERTY Tricks" section of his site, he lists all of the words that you can type on the left/right hand side of the keyboard...
http://interglacial.com/~sburke/pub/stupid_qwerty_tricks.html
He published all of that online in 1998...
(1998-09-21)
In comparison, the longest Dvorak word, typed with only the left hand is: "upkeep" ...not that that has anything to do with the efficiency of Dvorak...
The other Dvorak word lists are far more interesting:
http://interglacial.com/~sburke/pub/stupid_dvorak_tricks.html
-- Dave
up 12 days, 22:30, 2 users, load averages: 993.20, 994.21, 994.56
*makes note to limit user processes...
TGB are the end of the left side, for me anyway. YHN start the right hand side.
--Thomas J. Owens
Google images stewardess ass or sex stewardess if you want it to be the first link. And how bored I must be to sit here thinking up ways to get stewardess as the first porn link using only left keys in Google.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
What I don't understand is how the article is about using the left side of the keyboard yet the photo they have shows someone typing on the ride side.. (=_=)
You two must have been in the same class.
Although it's somewhat outdated, "teach" was once a common shorthand for "teacher". It was usually used when addressing a teacher (ex. "Hey teach, I don't understand this question"), but it would also be perfectly acceptable in the phrase "your high school English teach was right".
Then a tesseradecader must be something which divide things into groups of fourteen and those who make the tesseradecaders are called tesseradecaderers.
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
The first one is legit, the other two are weird.