November 2008
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RaptorMagic

Orcinus

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Callimachus
(Done with Mirrors)

Gelmo
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Athletics Nation

Andrew Sullivan
(Daily Dish)

Kevin Drum
(Political Animal)

Hilzoy
(Obsidian Wings)

 Saturday, November 22, 2008
What do Anne Heche and Franz Kafka have in common?

Does it help if I add Tonto and Thoth?

My mind often goes running down odd paths thinking about words and word shapes. Usually I don't remember what triggers the thought process. This time I do. I was writing a blog post, and when I typed the word "sense", my finger overshot the "n" and hit the space bar instead. Looking up at the result I saw "se se", and I thought, "Hmmm, I wonder how many other words match that pattern."

Not many, as it turns out. Among reasonably common words, I come up with edged, onion, salsa, verve, magma, mamma and shush. If you allow proper names and hyphens, there's Miami and uh-huh.

Now I'm thinking about the same pattern with six-letter words, which is a little easier to do. I wonder if I could come up with one for each letter of the alphabet: arrear, bonobo, church, decide, emblem, f.... Um, that's as far as I get.

Maybe the word can be of any length, so long as the first two letters match the last two. But I guess I'm still not going to get one for Q in any case.

(Is it really possible to have just one arrear? My dictionary says yes, but it sure sounds weird.)

10:11:23 PM  [permalink]  comment []