Anagram challenge 5

[ESquared]

I tend to do wordplay almost constantly. Everywhere I go, I am reversing or anagramming or spoonerizing.

Anyway, some years ago I noticed that GUNS has as many full anagrams as letters in it: GUNS SNUG GNUS SUNG. It was interesting. I began to look for more words that had as many anagrams as letters, or more!

The next one I found was STOP OPTS POST POTS TOPS SPOT. Six anagrams from four letters! There are plenty of others that I have forgotten. But one that I definitely remember is a six-letter word with seven full anagrams... such an innocuous word, drapes is. Can you list all the complete anagrams of it without help? I originally thought there were six total and it took me a few weeks to realize there was a seventh. Note: you will have to use a word from another language, but it is fairly common.

I've been putting together a word engine to assist me in developing and solving word puzzles, and of course one of the first things I checked was if there is a set of letters with more than seven complete anagrams. There are! The greatest number from the word list I'm using is 12. And it's only 5 letters long.

My most recent anagram word is the supermarket Raley's. Allowing myself to use or discard the apostrophe, it makes SLAYER RELAYS LAYERS EARLY'S RALEY'S.

Statistics on the anagrams from my engine:
#of Anagrams, Count
12, 1
10, 3
9, 1
8, 7
7, 35
6, 92
5, 211
4, 562
3, 1978
2, 9662

But this list of dictionary words I found has proper names in it, so the results may be skewed. When I say # of anagrams, I am counting the original word.


--------------------------


So... the puzzles:

Short-term
Find the six anagrams (for a total of seven words) of drapes. Tell how long it took you in minutes/hours. Guess if you don't know exactly. Don't use any help or anagram engines.

Long-term
Find another word with 7 or more complete anagrams (including itself). No help allowed.

Super Challenge
Find the word with 12 anagrams. You may use the web, and if you find it through the web, provide a link. In the meantime I'll check that all 12 are in some online dictionary.

 

[sleipnir214]

Here's my stab for the short-term challenge. It took me about 12 minutes. They're listed in the order I found them.

[white]drapes
padres [Could this be the commonly-used import word?]
spared
parsed
rasped
spread
spader [This one is a stretch.  But it does appear in yourdictionary.com]
[/white]

Want the best answers? Ask the best questions!

TANSTAAFL!!

 

[johnwm]

[COLOR=white]drapes
padres
parsed
spread
spared
rasped
spader
[/color]

About 2 minutes for the first 6, then about 10 minutes for the last one! I did have to look that up, as it's not a construction I would normally use. It's in several of the onlines, including Merriam-Webster, Dictionary.com and Websters Revised Unabridged

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[ESquared]

sleipnir214: 12 minutes is respectable. You got them all as well as the particulars.

johnwm: 16 minutes beats my 3 weeks by a long shot.

Other people are welcome to post their answers, too! Don't not play just because someone else has posted.

There is another anagram of drapes that is not listed in online dictionaries but could be argued for. Of course, that makes it illegal by the forum rules.

[white]repads[/white]

When it comes to words being in the dictionary or not, playing Boggle has taught me to just write the dang thing down and see whether it's a word later. That has helped me in finding nonstandard words like spader... one of the secrets of Boggle is work the prefixes and suffixes.

 

[ESquared]

All the words for the 12-group anagram are found in at least one online dictionary. One is French but is used sometimes in English. A couple are plain rare. One only shows up at merriam-webster but with the message:

_________ is one of more than 1,000,000 entries available at Merriam-WebsterUnabridged.com. Click here to start your free trial!

But I don't have a membership and haven't started a free trial, yet. I think the word is Spanish.

 

[lbass]

How about the following for the 12 anagrams of a five-letter word?

[white]
apers
apres
asper
pares
parse
pears
prase
presa
rapes
reaps
spare
spear
[/white]

I was able to find these in at least one on-line dictionary.

-LB

 

[ESquared]

Hi lbass,

That is the set I was referring to. How did you find them?

 

[lbass]

I created a spreadsheet in Excel with all possible permutations of numbers 1 - 5. Then I came up with different 5-letter words that I thought were good candidates because of letter frequency and because I could think of multiple anagrams. Next I did find/replace to replace each number with a specific letter. Then I checked the resulting list for meaningful words and verified in the dictionary. So I did create a system, instead of doing it all in my head, although I am usually pretty good with anagrams. Maybe that's not kosher? Anyway, it was fun...

-LB

 

[ESquared]

You solved it yourself with tools... sounds fine and fun to me.

 

[ChrisHunt]

About 10 minutes, and the same order as Sleipnir, except with 2nd & 3rd words swapped round. Looking for further alternatives I came up with this line from Walt Whitman:

Passing the yellow-spear'd wheat, every grain
from its shroud in the dark-brown fields uprisen

-- Chris Hunt

http://www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk

http://www.napitalia.org.uk

http://www.leicesteryha.org.uk

 

[CajunCenturion]

I would agree that repads could be argue for. After all, one of my handlers repads my cell about once a month.

Good Luck
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[ESquared]

I think I need to add to the general puzzle rules that contractions and abbreviations are generally not allowed for "official" answers, but may be included after the official list for the sake of fun or completeness.

Perhaps if the original word has an apostrophe, it could be used or not used as desired, but I would lean toward saying that adding an apostrophe would be illegal.

 

[ChrisHunt]

Hmmm... so SLAYER is and anagram of RALEY'S, but RALEY'S is not an (official) anagram of SLAYER?

Apostrophes certainly add to the complexity of things. I suppose one might add yet another word to the list, as in

Has anybody seen the padre's hat?

Arguably that's a seperate word. Mind you, if it is, you'd have to add in another word for the case where there are more than one of them sharing ownership of the hat.

I'd suggest that apostrophes used for contraction should be in[/in], provided you can demonstrate that the contraction is geniunely used somewhere. So ORE and O'ER are anagrams of eachother. Possessive apostrophes don't count. Just a thought.

Incidentally, I can't think of a similar sentence to incorporate the word "EARLY'S", unless it's the name of another US shopping chain. If proper nouns are in the frame, you really are opening the flood gates.

PS. If you order your original GUNS anagrams like this: "SNUG GNUS SUNG GUNS" you get a palindrome too!

-- Chris Hunt

http://www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk

http://www.napitalia.org.uk

http://www.leicesteryha.org.uk

 

[sleipnir214]

What about multiword anagrams?

For example, drapes has the two-word anagram red spa.


Want the best answers? Ask the best questions!

TANSTAAFL!!

 

[ESquared]

Fun stuff!!!

despar: to remove the spars from (as in, a ship)

ChrisHunt,

When I'm just playing around, I use anything I can, including apostrophes and the like. But when it comes to "officially acceptable answers" I think it's best to stay away from proper names, apostrophes, and abbreviations.

One exception is when anagramming foreign languages that have accent marks, they can be added or removed as necessary.

 

[ChrisHunt]

How about

presad: before becoming unhappy



-- Chris Hunt

http://www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk

http://www.napitalia.org.uk

http://www.leicesteryha.org.uk

 

[LesleyW]

One exception is when anagramming foreign languages that have accent marks, they can be added or removed as necessary.

Noooooooo!! is my immediate response. But, on reflexion..
Spanish word for year - año. "ñ" is a different letter than "n" so any anagram can use ñ but not n. However "trabajó"... the acute on the o is just for emphasis so you could use or not use the acute as desired. Similarly if you add accents in your anagrams if there were for stress.

But I think perhaps we had better stick to English? As I don't know enough Spanish words to start playing with them....

 

[LFI]

ChrisHunt,

Does the use of poetic license count (for finding a sentence with "early's" in it).

I'm making this up:

If early's light
wins the race,
Late's then must
earn last place.

Pushing it, I know.

--Dave

 

[ChrisHunt]

Not sure the author of a William McGonagall website should comment on poetic licenses. Mine was endorsed long ago.

For what it's worth, your example would not qualify under my suggested rule - it's still a possessive apostrophe

If early's light... = If the light belonging to early...

I'd only accept apostrophes used to mark contractions, and in published works by other people. So if you found a poem starting:

If early'st light...

you might be in with a shout.

-- Chris Hunt
Webmaster & Tragedian
Extra Connections Ltd

 

[LFI]

Oops. 'missed the part about the contraction as I scanned the above.

So I'm looking for something like:

Early's the bird who catches the worm,
Awaiting first light,
Alone on the berm.

I'll keep my eye out!

--Dave