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.)"

Nice summary

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

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?

Re:Nice summary

Is it cheating to use a Dvorak layout designed for people that can use only one hand?

The answer is

Devertebrated

Link to the original article next time!

dereverberated

Removing reverberation from a soundtrack, also called echo removal.

Misleading summary

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

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," [helium.com] 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.

Re:Misleading summary

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.

~$ uname -rs
Darwin 9.5.1
~$ grep "^[asdfgqwertzxcvb]\{13,\}$" /usr/share/dict/words
aftercataract
devertebrated
tesseradecade

Someone with an OED can feel free to check them.

Re:Misleading summary

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?

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?

And desegregates and reverberates must be okay, right?

Re:Past tense disqualified?

Mornington Crescent!

Re:Past tense disqualified?

I think it's only acceptable in the Official American Ruleset, and then only when out of croop. The cromulent thing to do in this case is invoke Toksvig's Protocol (if Reynold's Standard Opening is allowed).

Re:Past tense disqualified?

What official body is making up these rules?

I'm not sure, but I'd start the search by eliminating all those bodies with a working right hand.

Honestly...

who cares?

Because the...

databases were devertebrated after stewardesses were watered

Re:what?

Technology is the new idle. The hope is we will make ourselves seem like a bunch of confused Luddites when we start tagging things technologyispants.

With the added benefit of confusing Haggar's advertising exec's about to roll out their new campaign, "Pants is technology!" with an adorable Russian Blue cat for a spokesperson.

Re:what?

later, on the same flight, when i caught him in there a second time, i redestewardessed him.

Re:Didn't work here

The longest word I got was 'redrawerredrawers', which probably indicates that my wordfile is corrupted.

Re:Didn't work here

>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

... on Fedora 9 and RHEL 4 and 5 boxes at least.

Okupukupu!

The longest word I can type with my left hand [wikipedia.org] is "okupukupu", you QWERTY-using insensitive clods!

[15:44:56] ~$ grep -i '^[pyaoeuiqjkx]\{14,\}$' /usr/share/dict/words
[15:44:58] ~$ grep -i '^[pyaoeuiqjkx]\{13,\}$' /usr/share/dict/words
[15:45:04] ~$ grep -i '^[pyaoeuiqjkx]\{12,\}$' /usr/share/dict/words
[15:45:07] ~$ grep -i '^[pyaoeuiqjkx]\{11,\}$' /usr/share/dict/words
[15:45:12] ~$ grep -i '^[pyaoeuiqjkx]\{10,\}$' /usr/share/dict/words
[15:45:16] ~$ grep -i '^[pyaoeuiqjkx]\{9,\}$' /usr/share/dict/words
okupukupu

Re:Didn't work here

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.

Re:"Sweaterdresses" better than "devertebrated"

"sweaterdresses are great" can be typed entirely with the left hand.

"stewardesses have the greatest assets"

I win! :D

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

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:But...

bare stewardesses