For 1,2,3,4,5,6 etc letter what words can you find that have the greatest number of "proper" anagrams ? Abbreviations and foreign words listed in the dictionary are allowed.

For 1, it's trivial. There are no anagrams. Any one letter word automatically has 100% of the possible sequences valid.

For two, for example on and no, it's also fairly trivial.

For three it's a bit harder. I'd suggest the three letters a,e and t.

Using Collins Dictionary this gives

aet. - abbreviation for aetalis (Latin - at the age of)
ate
eat
eta - the Greek letter
tae - Scots dialect variant of to and
tea.

I haven't thought of any more three letter words where all six possible sequences are valid.

Can anyone find more three letter ones ?
How well can you do on four, five, six etc. ?
Four four distinct letters there are 24 possible combinations. For five 120 and so on.



Vescere bracis meis.

Read all about my travels around the world here.
Read even more of my travel writing and poems on my weblog.

This is a son-of-a-gun of a problem.

With four distinct letters, the best I could come up with was four words from e i m t:
EMIT
ITEM
MITE
TIME

Back to the two-letter words .....

so and os

Let's see now - there used to be a quiz show on TV which had as its final stage that you had a bunch of letters to arrange, and behind one of the letters was a numeral 1, and behind the others was a zero. Contestant got to pick a word and that determined the fnal payout.

4-letter sample OPTS POST POTS STOP TOPS SPOT

5-letter sample LEAST STALE STEAL TAELS TALES TEALS TESLA and maybe STAEL (as in "Madame de" - fine for this purpose but not for the TV show)

and there's the eight-letter combination EAST RING (or AEGINRST if you insist) that was presented in a Scientific American column a million years ago as having 64 real words it anagrammed into. I was never able to find more than six or eight:
ANGRIEST
GANTRIES
GRANITES
INGRATES
RANGIEST
TANGIERS
I made up GASTRINE but I don't know if the word exists
ditto with ASTRINGE

Anybody out there with a good grasp of letters and a sound imagination?

[This message was edited by haberdasher on Sat Apr 19th, 2003 at 18:43.]

[This message was edited by haberdasher on Sat Apr 19th, 2003 at 18:45.]

[This message was edited by haberdasher on Sat Apr 19th, 2003 at 18:46.]

[This message was edited by haberdasher on Sat Apr 19th, 2003 at 18:48.]

[This message was edited by haberdasher on Sat Apr 19th, 2003 at 18:49.]

Welcome aboard, haberdasher!

I'm terrible with anagrams, so I'll pass on this particular one but will enjoy watching the show.

This sounds like my kind of game! Welcome aBoard haberdasher!

Let me dust off some brain cells here and I'll be back with some answers after the holiday!

Welcome to our board, haberdasher!

Welcome haberdasher, and an excellent start !

Can anyone do better than this ?

Vescere bracis meis.

Read all about my travels around the world here.
Read even more of my travel writing and poems on my weblog.

quote:

---

Originally posted by haberdasher:
5-letter sample LEAST STALE STEAL TAELS TALES TEALS TESLA and maybe STAEL

---

(and SLATE, too; and perhaps LATES.)

Excellent; I am seriously impressed.
Welcome, good sir-or-madam!

LEAST STALE STEAL TAELS TALES TEALS TESLA and maybe STAEL

quote:

---

(and SLATE, too; and perhaps LATES.)

---

Absolutely. Shame on me !

Not shame; collaboration. Glad to have you with us.

quote:

---

Originally posted by haberdasher:
and there's the eight-letter combination EAST RING (or AEGINRST if you insist) that was presented in a Scientific American column a million years ago as having 64 real words it anagrammed into. I was never able to find more than six or eight:
ANGRIEST
GANTRIES
GRANITES
INGRATES
RANGIEST
TANGIERS
I made up GASTRINE but I don't know if the word exists
ditto with ASTRINGE

---

Wow! That's great! I never knew "gantries" was a word. A quick web search turned up "Sherley's Gastrine Tablets" and several sites for "gastrine" in, I think, French. I found "astringe" in OneLook and in the OED.

quote:

---

Anybody out there with a good grasp of letters and a sound imagination?

---

Not as good as yours! Welcome to our family.

Tinman