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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.)"
Whatever dictionary that comes with Mac OS X 10.4 returns 3 words with 13 letters:
aftercataract
devertebrated
tesseradecade
>The longest word I got was 'redrawerredrawers',
>which probably indicates that my wordfile is corrupted
I think you've found a bug ...
% grep '^redrawer' /usr/share/dict/words
redrawer
redrawerredrawers
redrawers
More interesting statistics:
The longest word I can type without leaving the home keys (not even the whole home row) is sensuousness.
231 words longer than six chars are possible with the dvorak home keys without moving
6 words longer than six chars on the qwerty home keys
1,091 words longer than 6 charsare possible with the dvorak home row
9 words longer with the qwerty home row.
1,139 words longer than six letters can be typed with left hand in qwerty (bad sign)
9 words longer than six letters can be typed with left hand in dvorak.
46 words longer than six letters can be typed in qwerty right hand.
0 words longer than six letters can by typed by dvorak right hand.
Never played around with this, but now that I have, it does kinda prove that dvorak does a good job of keeping the activity balanced between hands and on the home row.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Technically...where on the keyboard does it stop being the left side, and start being considered the right side of the keyboard?
Frankly, I don't see a set dividing line....? Nothing is really centered.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
It's not just in simple suffix and prefix usage, either. There are modifier forms that are legal, if perhaps slightly archaic, that while correct will not have explicit entries in a dictionary. I once had a big argument about the word "schedular", in the sense of "make sure you tend to your schedular duties." It's complicated, because it's an etymological principle that allows it, and even though I am right, I lost the argument because "schedular" had no entry in the dictionary the other person was using. I didn't remain at that job much longer. (I don't work well with people who cannot ever admit any possibility that they could be wrong.)
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
% grep "^[aoeui',.p;qjkx]*$" /usr/share/dict/british-english-huge | awk '{print length($1) " " $1}' | sort | tail -n1 /usr/share/dict/british-english-huge | awk '{print length($1) " " $1}' | sort | tail -n3
9 okupukupu
% grep "^[dhtnsfgcrlbmwvz]*$"
6 crwths
6 ftncmd
6 mtscmd
I think somebody compromised Debian's servers and added nonsense words to the dictionaries.
I RTFA and didn't find any mention of this supposed word, anywhere. So I ran my own grep on the dictionary.
Left hand results:
Right hand results:
Top row results
/^([Ss]ame [Bb]at (time, |channel.)){2}$/