Last week Stephanie and I were discussing the game of hangman. I commented that “rhythm” and “myth” are good words because the only vowel is y, and most people try to find the vowel first. I wondered what might be the best possible words. When I remembered that I’m a programmer, I said “hey, I can write a program to figure this out!” And since I haven’t posted on this blog in quite a while, I thought I’d share.
I found a list of 58,112 words and got to work. I decided to first count the frequency of each letter in the word list.1 I figured that the probability that a letter would be guessed is approximately equal to the frequency of that letter in the language. This could be a bad assumption, but it’s all I had to work with. Then I computed a score for each word by averaging the frequency of each letter in the word. I don’t know that this is the best way of measuring the difficulty of the word, but it’s the best one I could come up with.
Here are the words with the lowest scores (and therefore the most difficult hangman words, according to my algorithm):
fuzz 1.28% fuzzy 1.37% buzz 1.39% why 1.57% by 1.79% jazzy 1.95% jazz 2.01% huffy 2.02% buff 2.03% huff 2.10% jug 2.17% jumpy 2.18% puffy 2.18% my 2.20% hubby 2.20% muff 2.23% jump 2.29% puff 2.29% buy 2.33% foxy 2.36%
And here are the easiest:
see 10.55% eerie 10.15% ere 10.13% nee 10.08% sees 10.05% tee 10.04% ease 9.81% eire 9.79% seer 9.73% seen 9.69% eerier 9.67% tees 9.67% serene 9.60% eases 9.56% settee 9.54% lessee 9.54% eel 9.52% seine 9.52% seers 9.50% eeriest 9.47%
While I was at it, I did some other searches on the word list. Here are the 49 words that have no vowels besides Y:
by
cry
crypt
crypts
cyst
cysts
dry
dryly
fly
fry
glyph
glyphs
gym
gyms
gypsy
hymn
hymns
lymph
lynch
lynx
my
myrrh
myth
myths
nymph
nymphs
ply
pry
pygmy
rhythm
rhythms
shy
shyly
sky
sly
slyly
spry
spy
sty
styx
sylph
sylphs
sync
thy
try
why
whys
wry
wryly
Seventeen words contain all the vowels, including Y:
consequentially
counterrevolutionary
disadvantageously
facetiously
gregariously
heterosexuality
homosexuality
neurologically
neurotically
pertinaciously
precariously
precautionary
questionably
revolutionary
simultaneously
supersonically
tenaciously
And only two words contain all the vowels, including Y, in order:
abstemiously
facetiously




April 18, 10:00 pm
I care very much about this subject. It will help me do a better job after Grayson is born too if we work together. I’m hoping to add working out on Wii Fit, too, once I’m feeling up to it. Who knows how long it will take me to get fully recuperated from a second C-section though.