Jotto Fact OTD

[mattlistener]

My perl programming in Jotto-space is yielding all sorts of interesting fringe information. Today's obsession is anagrams. Are you curious to know how many 5-letter words have an anagram? I'm curious to know what you'd expect! So let's trade info. (Note: I've made the scale extend the entire length -- no multiple-choice help here!)

Note: only words with an anagram that also appears *in the 3252-word dictionary* count for the purposes of this poll.

[Poll #18253]

Comments

[queue.livejournal.com]

I answered (2750) with the assumption that you're using the whole dictionary for finding anagrams, not just the pared down dictionary.

Speaking of anagrams, I know there's at least one set of 5 letters that has 8 anagrams. Are there any with more? Are there any others with 8?

[mattlistener.livejournal.com]

Woops. No, I was not searching the whole dictionary for 5-letter words, just the pared-down one. (Entry above edited to clarify.) What would you guess in light of that?

This is the dict I'm using for the jotto-playing program -- anagrams outside this dictionary wouldn't matter.

Re: anagrams, I only know of pares/parse/pears/rapes/reaps/spare/spear for large sets. (If there's an 8th word in that set I bet it's jargon or unreasonably rare.)

[queue.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I would probably guess somewhat less, maybe 2150?

"prase" is the other anagram. I hadn't heard of it before. It's a particular color variety of chalcedony, which is a form of quartz. Probably unreasonably rare.

[treacle-well.livejournal.com]

You can redo the poll by going to the poll page and clicking on the "Fill Out Poll" link. As long as you are logged in as the same user as you originally submitted the poll as, I believe this actually replaces your previous submission with the new one.

[queue.livejournal.com]

Yup, that worked. Thanks.