Jump to content
BrainDen.com - Brain Teasers
  • 0


bonanova
 Share

Question

The English language is weird. Just weird. In this post you are

asked to find sixteen of the words and phrases that make it so.

This should be fun ... enjoy.

First, two comments

This post is long.

Using QUOTE or REPLY will really chew up screen space.

My suggestion is -- don't do it.

I've numbered the questions, so that when you give an answer

you can put just the answer inside a spoiler and expose

just the question number in the spoiler heading. That way

you can look for answers to particular questions without

seeing all the other answers too.

These puzzles are not all mine.

Since exposing proper attribution might suggest a search

path to find the answers, I've put it in the following spoiler.

You can look if you like, of course, but if you want to

work these on your own, I've shielded you.

Richard Lederer.

Vowels

1. Most consecutive

Aqueous and sequoia are words that contain 4 consecutive vowels.

Another contains 5 consecutive vowels.

What is it?

All 5, ordered

2. At least five words contain all five vowels in alphabetical order.

Abstemious, abstentious, adventitious and parecious are four of them.

The fifth is in common usage.

What is it?

3. At least six words contain all five vowels in reverse alphabetical order.

Duoliteral, quodliteral and unoriental are three of them.

Three others are in more common usage.

What are they?

Longest words with one vowel [unrepeated and repeated]

4. The longest word with a single [unrepeated] vowel has eight consonants.

What is it?

5. The longest words with a single [repeated] vowel have 10 and 13 consonants.

What are they?

Consonants

6. Most consecutive

One word has six consecutive consonants.

What is it?

7. Longest word with one consonant [unrepeated]

Several five-letter words contain only one [unrepeated] vowel consonant. [edit]

Name one of them.

General

8. Connect the dots

Beijing and Fiji are two proper nouns that contain three consecutive dotted letters.

Name another, not capitalized, word that contains three consecutive dotted letters.

9. Alphabetically consecutive letters

Two words contain four consecutive letters that are also alphabetically consecutive.

What are they?

They begin with [different] spatially related prepositions.

The letters [in both words] are rstu.

10. Sound the letters

Essay [sA], enemy [NME] and excellency [XLNC] are words whose pronunciation comprise only letter sounds.

What word's pronunciation can be accomplished using five letters?

11. Pros and Joes Nouns.

Amazingly, five personal pronouns [without scrambling them, and using no other letters] can be

juxtaposed and overlapped to form a single common noun.

What is the noun?

12. Palindromic words

The longest palindromic cluster of letters embedded in an English word is sensuousnes. A final s makes the word itself.

The longest palindromic word of all is the arcane eleven-letter chemistry-related detartrated.

The longest palindromic word likely to be found in a common dictionary has nine letters.

What is it?

Bonus: a word whose meaning might be inferred by reversing its letters:

Embargo => O grab me! ;)

13. Even and odd

Extracting the alternating, even and odd, letters from some words yield two new words.

Two of these yield the four words cold, lug, one and shoe.

What are the two words that produce them?

14. Triangular words

Triangular words have letter counts of 1, 2, 3, 4 ... and thus have a total length that is a triangular number: 1, 3, 6, 10, 15 ...

One proper triangular word is Tennessee's - t-1, n-2, s-3 and e-4.

Name a 10-letter triangular word that is not capitalized.

15. Typewriter words

These are words comprising [with repeats allowed] letters from a single row on a standard keyboard.

The longest of these words have ten letters.

Two of them are proprietor and perpetuity.

What is the third?

16. Pangrams

A familiar short sentence [33 letters] that contains all 26 letters is The A quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. [edit]*

Find one that uses fewer than 33 letters.

*Thanks to Browne85 in post #4 for this edit.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 answers to this question

Recommended Posts

  • 0

1. Queuing

2. Facetious

5. Effervescence, defenseless

6. Rhythms? Don't know if you count y as a consonant or a vowel

7. Queue

8. hijinks

15. Typewriter

16. A quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0
1. Queuing

2. Facetious

5. Effervescence, defenseless

6. Rhythms? Don't know if you count y as a consonant or a vowel

7. Queue

8. hijinks

15. Typewriter

16. A quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Re: 6. - In rhythms, y is counted as a vowel.

Re: 16. - I made a mistake in the OP. You found the 33-letter example. Can you find a shorter one?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

1. Queueing

2. Facetious. Facetiously is, to my knowledge, the only word that has all 5 vowels plus Y in order.

4. Strengths.

7. Not sure on this one, but I have some guesses. Queue, Areae. Probably both of these can be bettered tho.

8. Hijinks

15. Typewriter :)

And not on this list, but should be...Longest word in English that has all of its letters in reverse alphabetical order, no letters are repeated or doubled. (wronged)

Edited by Stevebcincy
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0
1. Queueing

2. Facetious. Facetiously is, to my knowledge, the only word that has all 5 vowels plus Y in order.

3. -

4. Strengths.

5. -

6. -

7. Not sure on this one, but I have some guesses. Queue, Areae. Probably both of these can be bettered tho.

8. Hijinks

9. -

And not on this list, but should be...Longest word in English that has all of its letters in reverse alphabetical order, no letters are repeated or doubled. (wronged)

Stevebcincy,

Thanks for your contribution [reverse alpha word].

You're right - it should be in the mix. ;)

Why not post it - either as a question: what is ...

or what is special about this word ___?

- bn

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

1. Queueing

2. Facetious

3. Subcontinental, uncomplimentary

4. Strengths

5. Strengthlessness, Defenselessness

6. Nymphly

7. Queue

8. Hijinks

9. understudy, superstud

10. Expediency XPDNC

11. ushers

12. Redivider

13. lounge, schooled

14. no guess

15. Typewriter

16. The five boxing wizards jump quickly.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Answer this question...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
 Share

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...