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.)"

Comments

Nice summary

[gardyloo]

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

Ganz falsch!

Re:Nice summary

[beav007]

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?

Misleading summary

[JonathanBoyd]

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?

Re:Misleading summary

[Rary]

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.

Past tense disqualified?

[sxltrex]

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?

Re:Past tense disqualified?

[pthisis]

And desegregates and reverberates must be okay, right?

Honestly...

[Orlando]

who cares?

Re:I use Dvorak, you insensitive clod...

[CaptainPatent]

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

Re:Didn't work here

[QuantumG]

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.