Word games & puzzles thread

[Uncwilly]

Originally Posted by c10ck3r

Would Moore count?

Well the problem that I see with that is letter 2 and 3 are the same thus you don't form a new/different word in the last step.

[petrw1]

Originally Posted by masser

Warm-up: Find a common word that when you remove the first and last letter you obtain a new common word.

Challenge: Find a common word such that each subsequent removal of the first and last letter produces a common word.

What's the longest such word you can find? I've got a seven letter solution, but I'm sure we could find better examples.

7:
I
RIM
CRMP
SCRIMPS

[masser]

Here's my seven letter solution:


eclipse
clips
lip
I

[petrw1]

Originally Posted by masser

Here's my seven letter solution:


eclipse
clips
lip
I

Declipsed???

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

I'm glad I left off the condition that the initial plural word ends in an s. I hoped someone might at least try to find a non-s plural which becomes singular by appending an s.

Alas, "peni" isn't in my old Unabridged. I reject purely slang usages out of hand. I infer from your :) that you weren't being entirely serious anyway, but -- good hustle! Makes me glad I deliberately omitted a condition from the challenge.

The closest I could find on line to "peni" being an actual English word was in Middle English, where peni is a predecessor of "penny." Alas, appending an s gives the plural. The plural was also rendered as "pens," which may be a predecessor of "pence," as in "sixpence," meaning "cents."

[snark]Alas, in modern times, we find that capitalizing "pence" names someone worth far less than a penny, who exhibits no sense whatever.[/snark]

So, now, see if you can find a plural ending in s which becomes singular by appending another s.

princes

ogres

[retina]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

princes

ogres

There is at least one more also.

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Puzzle #1: Multiple sequential occurrences of the same vowel in a word

English words containing multiple occurrences of the same vowel, separated only by consonants - e.g. 'militia' has 3 i's in a row. No hyphenations, no proper nouns allowed.

Here the longest such strings I found via quick mental run-through, for a,e,i,o,u, and also for y when used as a vowel (e.g. 'crybaby' has 2 vowel-y's, albeit not in sequence). Whether a 'y' is considered as interrupting another vowel sequence similarly depends on whether the 'y' is acting as a vowel or as a consonant, e.g. in 'monocotyledon' the y interrupts the o-sequence because the y acts as a vowel, whereas in 'boyo' the y acts as a consonant and thus we consider the 2 o's to occur in sequence. I list the count but spoilerize the corresponding word(s), so people can try to come with same-or-better on their own. Can you do better? Please wrap any new-record candidates in spoiler tags:

a[5]: abracadabra
e[5]: enfeeblement
i[6]: indivisibility
o[4]: monotonous,moonroof (if I prepend 'non' to the first of those I get 5 o's-in-sequence)
u[4]: usufructuary
y[3]: syzygy

e[7]: effervescencelessness
(e.g. "The effervescencelessness of the champagne indicated to me that the bottle had been opened some time ago.")

[Viliam Furik]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

e[7]: effervescencelessness
(e.g. "The effervescencelessness of the champagne indicated to me that the bottle had been opened some time ago.")

Are plurals allowed? If so, then:

e[8]: effervescencelessnesses
i[7]: indivisibilities

However, these might be grammatical non-sense.

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by Viliam Furik

Are plurals allowed? If so, then:

e[8]: effervescencelessnesses
i[7]: indivisibilities

However, these might be grammatical non-sense.

Good question - I think a good guide is "does the proposed construction make sense when applied to a similar common-usage word?" E.g. for the 'e'xample, substitute 'weight' for 'effervescence'. We commonly speak of weightlessness, but I've never that pluralized. Our goal is not to torture language, but to play with it. Though thinking of the classic "cat and mouse", the one's torture is the other's play. :)

I can extend my original u[4] to u[5] by prefixing 'un' and modifying the ending, in this case I think plausibly:

u[5]: unusufructuarial: "I must say, for someone with the rights of a usufructuary, you're behaving in a most unusufructuarial manner."