What do the following words have in common?

last
bell
pick
pot
bug

And, can you figure out more that fit the pattern?

I know, I know! I read it in the paper this morning; therefore I must recuse myself. Besides, I can't think of any more that fit the pattern.

Tinman

Well... the last bell pepper I picked from the pot on the patio had a bug in it... But how did you know that?

Was that an Alexander Graham Bell Pepper in the pot on the patio? I've heard that he was a bit buggy.

I notice that all the words start with a letter that has a vertical line at its beginning.

tinman says, "I read it in the paper this morning; therefore I must recuse myself."

Drat! I spent a goodly time googling, expecting to find some such article, but had no success at all.

The answer is that if you add an "E" to each word, a new word is formed: Least, belle, pieck, poet, and buge.

(That fact that "pieck" and "buge" don't actually appear in any dictionaries commonly in use shouldn't detract from this otherwise excellent answer.)


For what it's worth, the list contains the five vowels in order (lAst, bEll, etc) though I doubt that's what you're looking for.

Or how about they're each part of another larger word ending with the letter "Y" as in Lastly, Belly, Picky, Potty, and Buggy? No, that's not much better...

My ridiculous answer was that the words all begin and end with an consonant, but then that is true of most words.

I like TrossL's idea! Do I see another game developing???

Ah! Tinman, but I posted it before anyone would get the paper! (For some reason, it came a day early though!)

Ready for the answer as posted in Marilyn vos Savant's column?

"You can shuffle any of their vowels, and they will still form words. Example: last, lest, list, lost, and lust."

I tried this at some length about a year ago, and the only one I could come up with was pat.

Working now: tan. And bat will also do it, if you accept bot as either an obscure dictionary word or as slang for "robot".

[This message was edited by shufitz on Mon Jun 16th, 2003 at 20:44.]

bad bed bid bod bud

bat bet bit bot but

gat get git got gut

hat het hit hot hut

lag leg lig log lug

tag teg tig tog tug

tan ten tin ton tun

hack heck hick hock huck

mass mess miss moss muss

pack peck pick pock puck

rack reck rick rock ruck

sack seck sick sock suck

tall tell till toll tull


These words can all be found at dictionary.com, though some are obsolete or dialectic.

Tinman

[This message was edited by tinman on Thu Jun 19th, 2003 at 0:10.]

Great, Tinman! Some of your words I questioned, but they did appear in dictionary.com. Now, oftentimes the questionable words were slang, such as "bod" for "body". While it appeared in dictionary.com, "het" might have been pushing it a bit. I must say, I learned a lot of words that I hadn't known previously from looking these up! I assume for the "l" words, you meant the first 2 to be "lag" and "leg".

Yes, Kalleh, you were right about the "l" words. I went back and changed them. Some of the others were slang or dialect, some commonly used, some not, but don't get your bod all het up over it!

Tinman