Difficult Hangman words

[Aaron J. Dinkin]

In article <4vfmjr$r...@lex.zippo.com>, bhk...@gj.net (Brian Kraft) wrote:

> Somewhere I saw a ranking of letter usage frequency in the English
> language. E,A,O and S were used most often, X,Z,Q and J the least
> used.
>
> Among common words, a difficult word for Hangman is "public"; an
> almost unguessable combination of less often used vowels and
> consonants.

The full order is:

ETAOINSHRDLUCMPFYWGBVKJXZQ.

Yes, I memorized it.

-Aaron J. Dinkin
Dr. Whom

[Brian Kraft]

Somewhere I saw a ranking of letter usage frequency in the English
language. E,A,O and S were used most often, X,Z,Q and J the least
used.

Among common words, a difficult word for Hangman is "public"; an
almost unguessable combination of less often used vowels and
consonants.

--
Brian Kraft <bhk...@gj.net>

[Bob Cunningham]

bhk...@gj.net (Brian Kraft) wrote:

>Somewhere I saw a ranking of letter usage frequency in the English
>language. E,A,O and S were used most often, X,Z,Q and J the least
>used.
>
>Among common words, a difficult word for Hangman is "public"; an
>almost unguessable combination of less often used vowels and
>consonants.

When I play Hangman with my computer, I tend to follow the "Wheel
of Fortune" pattern, guessing first "R, S, T, L, N, E", then if I'm at a
loss I guess "C, D, M". With "public" that pattern yields "___L_C",
leaving three guesses. The string "L_C" strongly suggests that the next
guess be "i". I'm still left with three guesses and at that point I
would be likely to guess that the word is "public".

For what it's worth, I just broke off and played a series of games.
I won the first eighteen; he beat me on the nineteenth with "GYPSUM".
He came within one guess of beating me with "CALIPH". I think that in
general the shorter words are the hardest.

[Christopher Monsour]

In article <321c5739...@nntp.ix.netcom.com>,

A great hangman word for someone unlikely to know the word is "syzygy".
Of course, it's unlikely to work on someone who knows the word.

Welsh loan-words are great. I don't think too many people could figure
out "crwth".

--Christopher J. Monsour

[Gary Williams, Business Services Accounting]

In article <rdd-210896...@dmn1-32.usa1.com>, r...@usa1.com
(Aaron J. Dinkin) writes:

> The full order is:
>
> ETAOINSHRDLUCMPFYWGBVKJXZQ.
>
> Yes, I memorized it.

Quite a feat.

I know the first twelve in the series, because I can remember typset
newspapers, in which the word "etaoinshrdlu" often appeared.

Gary Williams
WILL...@AHECAS.AHEC.EDU