[Guest]

So, here's a little open-ended puzzle. If you were trying to win at hangman, the best way would be to create a word that has a lot of uncommon letters. Let's ignore phrases, proper nouns, and things like that, and only concentrate on single words.

The puzzle is: What are the American English words that have the lowest average frequency per letter?

For sake of a reference guide of low frequency letters, we'll use Wikipedia as the reference guide.

Letter Frequencies in English (from Wikipedia)

For example, the word "W-O-R-D" has letter frequencies of 2.360%, 7.507%, 5.987%, 4.253% for its four letters. The average of those 4 numbers is 5.20675%, which is a fairly high percentage.

Below is a list of words 3 through 7 letters long I've thought of that have to be a little tough to beat. I wasn't trying to hard, so hopefully this starts people thinking hard, posting, and one-upping each other. If you have a good one that's 2 letters or 8+ letters, feel free to post.

WORDS TO BEAT:

3 letters: jug (avg. percent = 1.642%)

4 letters: jazz (avg. percent = 2.117%)

5 letters: puppy (avg. percent = 2.1038%)

6 letters: plucky (avg. percent = 2.3733%)

7 letters: quizzes (avg. percent = 4.1423%)

[bonanova]

Exclude all vowels except U and Y.

Exclude letters more frequent than C - up to 5 letters

Exclude letters more frequent than L - above 5 letters.

2 letters - by [1.73]

3 letters - pyx [1.35]

4 letters - buzz [1.10]

5 letters - buzzy [1.27]

6 letters - jugful [1.98]

7 letters - bluffly [2.67] Dybbuks [2.72] gruffly [3.03]

Onelook.com gives these difinitions:

Bluffly: in a blunt direct manner

Dybbuk: (Jewish folklore) a demon that enters the body of a living person and controls that body's behavior

Gruffly: in a gruff manner

[Guest]

2 letters: by (avg. percent = 1.733%)

3 letters: pyx (avg. percent = 1.351%)

4 letters: buzz (avg. percent = 1.0995%)

5 letters: buzzy (avg. percent = 1.2744%)

6 letters: quizzy (avg. percent = 1.9902%)

7 letters: buzzwig (avg. percent = 2.2484%)

and the all time best:

8 letters: buckjump (avg. percent = 1.88125%)

Beat that!

[Guest]

I hadn't calculated any words, but just wanted to voice my thoughts...

A simple single letter frequency comparison is flawed.

People don't see individual letter frequencies.

A combination of low frequency letters and, more importantly I think, odd letter combinations would be best for hangman-type games.

[Guest]

Awesome job Bonanova and imtcb!

Lords, your point is well taken. Start a new topic, and I'd love to post in that one. We'll keep this one a little focused for the moment.

Let's change this to two sections, with some winners being common, or "words that if you used in hangman, a normal person wouldn't say 'I've never heard of that' and try to beat you up". My topic, so I'll be the judge of what's too uncommon or not. Sorry.

So, right now, we have winners of:

COMMON UNCOMMON

2 letters: by (1.73%)

3 letters: jug (1.64%) pyx (1.35%)

4 letters: buzz (1.10%)

5 letters: puppy (2.10%) buzzy (1.27%)

6 letters: plucky (2.37%) jugful (1.98%)

7 letters: gruffly (3.03%) buzzwig (2.25%)

8 letters: buckjump (1.88%)

9 letters:

I'll add to this a common 8-letter one and 9-letter one, to get things going:

8 letters: chipmunk (3.807%)

9 letters: woodchuck (4.09%)

[Guest]

Attached is a picture of an Excel file to use to help you calculate. (sorry, can't figure out why it didn't attach; will try later.)

Edited April 25, 2008 by rhapsodize

[Guest]

New winner for 5-word common: Yucky (2.05%)

I have a 6-word common that would work, but its inappropriate for under-18 readers (think 4-letter word plus 2 more for someone that messes up).

Edited April 25, 2008 by rhapsodize

[Guest]

Check out this spreadsheet: www.fckorona.com/wordcheat.xls

Only fill out the word list column... Check B31 and lower for the best results for each amount of letters

Max amount of words: 100

Edited April 25, 2008 by PolishNorbi

[Guest]

Check out this spreadsheet: www.fckorona.com/wordcheat.xls

Only fill out the word list column... Check B31 and lower for the best results for each amount of letters

Max amount of words: 100

Uncommon 2 letter word: xu, vietnameese coin

Common 5 letter word, beats yucky, - fuzzy @ 1.42%

[Guest]

This was a problem just begging for a computer program.

2: by (1.73 %)

3: pyx (1.35 %)

4: buzz (1.1 %)

5: buzzy (1.27 %)

6: dybbuk (2.12 %)

7: mugwump (2.38 %)

8: dybbukim (2.76 %)

9: piggyback (3.12 %)

10: bumblingly (3.39 %)

11: quizzically (3.45 %)

12: piggybacking (3.65 %)

13: unambiguously (4.3 %)

14: unscrupulously (4.19 %)

15: psychologically (4.54 %)

16: psychophysically (4.43 %)

17: bibliographically (4.74 %)

18: microhydrodynamics (5.06 %)

19: individualistically (5.39 %)

20: magnetohydrodynamics (5.7 %)

21: electromyographically (5.66 %)

22: electroencephalography (6.53 %)

23: electroencephalographic (6.58 %)

24: electroencephalographies (6.98 %)

28: antidisestablishmentarianism (6.87 %)

Obviously a different dictionary with new/more/different words would have different results.

Edited April 25, 2008 by Drek E.O.

[bonanova]

6 letters - jugful [1.98]

Not a strange word in any sense:

armful, bagful, boxful, canful, capful, carful, cupful, earful, hatful, jarful, jugful, kegful, lapful, mugful, panful, potful, tubful, urnful, vatful, and those are just the 6-letter -ful words...

Feeling playful [!], there's also barnful, boatful, brimful, caseful, caskful, dishful, fistful, forkful, handful, nestful, pailful, pipeful, roomful, sackful, shipful, shoeful, skinful, tankful, tentful, trayful, treeful, yardful. All words referring to a container of some sort and the amount that it can hold when it's full. Not strange.

Still the 6-letter word to beat, in ten online dictionaries.

What dictionary was Drek E. O. using - it had Dybbuk, which I also found, but not jugful?

[Guest]

I used this java app which was actually pretty cool. I put in 3 of each letter under 4 points plus tried different combinations of the other letters.