LOGOLOG
a weblog of wordplay by Eric Harshbarger
Non-Crashing Word List
Take a look at this list of four letter words:
ACTA
BRRR
DJIN
EXPO
FLUX
GYVE
HMMM
IGLU
JUNK
KNOB
LWEI
MEAD
NOGG
ODYL
PFFT
SHHH
TSKS
UPBY
WASP
ZIZZ
All of the words are valid in the official word list for North American tournament Scrabble play (here's a list of all such four letter words, if want to see them). Furthermore, none of the above words "crash" -- meaning that no letter in a particular position of the word duplicates a letter in the same position of the other words. For example, the first letter of ACTA is A, and no other word in the list has an A in its first position. The same holds true for the other positions: second, third, and fourth -- for all of the words.
The list is twenty words long, and it is the longest such list I have been able to find so far, but I have not exhaustively proven that there is not one longer.
Anyone want to try to best it?
(I have found this article in a 1981 issue of Wordways that shows a non-crashing list of four-letter words that were taken from the OED, but I'd prefer to stick with the OWL Scrabble list right now.)
-- Eric
[21 July 2017]
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