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  LOGOLOG
a weblog of wordplay by Eric Harshbarger

My Initial Surprise

Back in November 2016 I noticed that the Top-10 movies from the U.S. Domestic Box Office for the past weekend all started with a different letter (if you omit any instances of a starting "THE " in the title).

I finally got around to seeing if that was the longest such Top-# list historically.

It is not.

The current record (as of this past weekend) was set over the weekend of 20-22 August, 2004. The Top-15 movies all began with distinct letters (again, discounting occurrences of initial "THE"s):

  1. EXORCIST: THE BEGINNING
  2. WITHOUT A PADDLE
  3. PRINCESS DIARIES 2: ROYAL ENGAGEMENT, THE
  4. ALIEN VS. PREDATOR
  5. OPEN WATER
  6. COLLATERAL
  7. BOURNE SUPREMACY, THE
  8. MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, THE
  9. VILLAGE, THE
  10. YU-GI-OH!: THE MOVIE - PYRAMID OF LIGHT
  11. GARDEN STATE
  12. SPIDER-MAN 2
  13. I, ROBOT
  14. NAPOLEON DYNAMITE
  15. LITTLE BLACK BOOK

While I was writing scripts to determine the above list, I thought I'd go ahead and answer a related question: "For which weekend did the Top-10 movies contain the fewest total letters and digits in their titles?" This turns out to be 15-17 April 2011 when the Top-10 movies were:

  1. RIO
  2. SCREAM 4
  3. HOP
  4. HANNA
  5. SOUL SURFER
  6. ARTHUR
  7. INSIDIOUS
  8. SOURCE CODE
  9. YOUR HIGHNESS
  10. LIMITLESS
There are only seventy-four letters and digits total among those titles. Interestingly, none of these ten title has a leading "The" in the title, and seven of them are single word titles.

This second question leads, of course, to a third question: "Which Top-10 list contains the most letters and digits?" Counting all such characters (but excluding punctuation marks or any sort), we find that 25-27 July 2003 had the most when these extraordinarily long titles topped the U.S. Box Office:

  1. SPY KIDS 3-D: GAME OVER
  2. PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL
  3. BAD BOYS II
  4. LARA CROFT TOMB RAIDER: THE CRADLE OF LIFE
  5. SEABISCUIT
  6. THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN
  7. TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES
  8. FINDING NEMO
  9. JOHNNY ENGLISH
  10. LEGALLY BLONDE 2: RED, WHITE & BLONDE

(With five, that last list also ties the record for the more colons (:) appearing in the Top-10.)

Ok, that's enough for now.

-- Eric

[10 December 2019]
   
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