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old hand
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OP
old hand
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Are there any 4 letter words (or greater) in English that are complete anagrams? That is, that spell a valid word no matter what order the letters are rearranged into.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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welcome, Pook!
interesting question. I have no answer.
formerly known as etaoin...
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old hand
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OP
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I suspect the answer is no (at least for four letters) but no one has ever been able to tell me for sure.
And thanks for the welcome! Just finding my way around. It's a bit confusing with this rather archaic interface that it makes it hard to find whether topics like this have been covered before, so apologies if it has somewhere.
Last edited by The Pook; 02/21/08 12:41 AM.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Hi Pook,
I don't know of any off hand. This is one of those interesting questions that'll get all of us scouring the corners of our brains, though.
Welcome.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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no matter what order the letters are rearranged into. You mean if the word is 1234, then 1324, 1423, 4321, 3214, 2314, etc. would all be words? Yow.
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old hand
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OP
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Yes, sixteen anagrams from four letters. Or twenty five words from five letters.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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read
dear
rade*
Edar
dare
ader *
* ader wax n. A waxy mineral that is a mixture of hydrocarbons and occurs in association with petroleum; some varieties are used in making ceresin and candles;
* Rade \Rade\ (r[=a]d), n.
A raid. [Scot.]
[1913 Webster]
16? That would mean 4 words starting with D, 4 with E, 4 with A and 4 with R , if you would consider the word 'read'?
I've got six. Impossible task it seems.
Although I'm not good at what seems like mathematics to me, I'm interested.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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There would have to 24 words to satisfy the condition. In general the number of combinations possible for n letters is n!, such as in this case, 4 x 3 x 2 x 1.
1234 , 2134 , 3124 , 4123
1243 , 2143 , 3142 , 4132
1324 , 2314 , 3214 , 4213
1342 , 2341 , 3241 , 4231
1423 , 2413 , 3412 , 4312
1432 , 2431 , 3421 , 4321
The best I can come up with is east, teas, eats, seat, and sate, and I suppose we could also add tase, as in Don't tase me, bro! although that would be stretching it.
Last edited by Alex Williams; 02/21/08 01:16 PM.
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old hand
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OP
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I'm obviously better at words than maths too - yeah 24, not 16. You're right, it's a factorial progression.
I agree, even 16 is not likely, let alone 24.
How about a three letter word?
You would only need six for that:
123
132
213
231
312
321
For five letters you would need:
6x1-2s 6x2-1s 6x3-1s 6x4-1s 6x5-1s
6x1-3s 6x2-3s 6x3-2s 6x4-2s 6x5-2s
6x1-4s 6x2-4s 6x3-4s 6x4-3s 6x5-3s
6x1-5s 6x2-5s 6x3-5s 6x4-5s 6x5-4s
which equals 120 words!
Interesting mathematical progression then:
letters=words
2=2
3=6
4=24
5=120
and then I guess
6=120x6=720
7=720x7=5040
...and so on
Last edited by The Pook; 02/21/08 01:42 PM.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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well, you could try words with repeated letters -- that would make the task somewhat easier.
-joe (reductio ad absurdum) friday
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