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Unix Dict/grep Solves Left-Side-of-Keyboard Puzzle

Posted by timothy on from the mysteries-of-the-ages dept.

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.)"

14 of 423 comments (clear)

  1. what? by X0563511 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This should be in idle... I don't see why it should be on the front page.

    --
    For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
  2. Nice summary by gardyloo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There's nearly 2,000 shorter words that can typed with only the left hand -- including one word that's even longer.

    Ganz falsch!

    1. Re:Nice summary by beav007 · · Score: 4, Insightful
      That's not the only issue here.

      There's nearly 2,000 shorter words that can typed with only the left hand -- including one word that's even longer.

      Why does the set "More than 2,000 shorter words" include the one longer word as well?

  3. Misleading summary by JonathanBoyd · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The longest word isn't found in the 'a much better answer' link, but rather the other one, somewhat misleadingly. The word, in case you're interested, is supposed to be 'devertebrated', though the Oxford English Dictionary doesn't recognise it.

    There's nearly 2,000 shorter words that can typed with only the left hand -- including one word that's even longer.

    How exactly can shorter words include a longer one?

    1. Re:Misleading summary by Rary · · Score: 4, Insightful

      A "tesseradecade" is a group of fourteen. Not only that, it can be pluralized by adding an "s", which happens to also be on the left side of the keyboard, and which brings the letter count to... fourteen. Therefore, "tesseradecades" is a tesseradecade of letters on the left side of the standard Qwerty keyboard.

      --

      "You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein

  4. Past tense disqualified? by sxltrex · · Score: 5, Insightful

    From the article:

    Technically, the word "reverberated" is just as long, and so is "desegregated" - but they're sometimes disqualified because they require using the past tense.

    So past tense is disqualified but plural is ok? What official body is making up these rules?

    1. Re:Past tense disqualified? by pthisis · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And desegregates and reverberates must be okay, right?

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      rage, rage against the dying of the light
  5. Honestly... by Orlando · · Score: 5, Insightful

    who cares?

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    -= This is a self-referential sig =-
  6. Re:"Sweaterdresses" better than "devertebrated" by PARENA · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Except that you shouldn't type "h" with your left hand, my friend. :P

    --
    Here's the secret to immortality: ...oh dang, I forgot.
  7. Re:I use Dvorak, you insensitive clod... by CaptainPatent · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Actually the fact that so few words can be typed on the same hand is evidence towards the efficiency of Dvorak.

    alternating hand keystrokes are the fastest and least stress-inducing type of keystroke. The fact that so many words in Qwerty can be typed on the same (left) hand and so few can be in Dvorak shows that a larger subset of the Dvorak words alternate, whereas a smaller subset of the Qwerty words do.

    need more proof, just do a

    $grep -i '^[aoeuidhtns]\{12,\}$' /usr/share/dict/words

    then follow that up with a

    $grep -i '^[asdfghjkl]\{12,\}$' /usr/share/dict/words

    --
    Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
  8. Re:Didn't work here by QuantumG · · Score: 4, Insightful

    uh huh. Ya know why the unix dictionary file doesn't contain every word in the english language? Because it can't. It's a productive system. There's an infinite number of words.

    For example, 'desegregated' means something like: something was segregated and now it isn't. And segregated means that, some time in the past, someone decided to segregate. If they decide to do that again, well then it's resegregated. And what happens to it when you undo that segregation? You get deresegregated. What happens if they decide to segregate again? reresegregated? then dereresegregated? Is there a limit? No. Language is awesome.

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.
  9. Re:Mod parent redundant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    And apparently you missed that he used grep -x in his example...

  10. Re:"Sweaterdresses" better than "devertebrated" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    No... you lose. "h" is the right hand.

  11. Re:Didn't work here by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Thanks for the code. This is what you can type on the home row:

    Dvorak:
    2-11 letters: 3358 words
    12: 54 words
    13: 24 words
    14: 14 words
    15: 5 words
    16: 2 words
    17: 2 words
    18: 1 word

    Qwerty:
    2-11 letters: 202 words
    12: 0 words.
    -
    uname -a
    Darwin maclappy 9.5.1 Darwin Kernel Version 9.5.1: Fri Sep 19 16:19:24 PDT 2008; root:xnu-1228.8.30~1/RELEASE_I386 i386 i386 MacBookPro5,1 Darwin