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

Re:Didn't work here

[_xeno_]

I got the same result (using Ubuntu) so I decided to try it on Mac OS X, and got the following:

$ grep -Eix '[qwertasdfgzxcvb]{13,}' /usr/share/dict/words
aftercataract
devertebrated
tesseradecade

Amazingly enough, Firefox lists them all as misspelled.