[bonanova]

A vicious worm invaded the [fictitious] online dictionary Sordid Words last night.

The effect was all the word entries were scrambled so that the letters in each word were alphabetized.

brainden became abdeinnr, puzzle was changed into elpuzz, and so on.

And then the scrambled words were listed in their new alphabetical order.

Interesting, you thought. Me too.

Without thinking about it too hard, what would be the first few and the last few entries in the newly alphabetized word list?

And, what's likely the first new word starting with B?

Have fun.

[Guest]

Well that was fun.

aaaaabbcdrr [abracadabra].

By the way, if the original words maintain their association with their sorted versions, what might this worm-infected dictionary be useful for?

I agree, that was fun.

Edited June 19, 2009 by slight

[Pickett]

By the way, if the original words maintain their association with their sorted versions, what might this worm-infected dictionary be useful for?

Don't know if it's what you were thinking, but anagrams...you simply take a word and alphabetize the letters, then look it up in this dictionary and find all the other words with the same alphabetized list. and voila you have all of the anagrams for a given word.

[bonanova]

Don't know if it's what you were thinking, but anagrams...you simply take a word and alphabetize the letters, then look it up in this dictionary and find all the other words with the same alphabetized list. and voila you have all of the anagrams for a given word.

Yup.