this message brought to you by the letter P

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Apr 8, 2004, at 8:03 PM, i wrote:

> On Apr 8, 2004, at 3:50 PM, Peter A. McGraw asks:
>
>> --On Thursday, April 8, 2004 2:36 PM -0700 "Arnold M. Zwicky"
>> <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU> wrote:
>>
>>> quick!  name those seven rhyming words!  the best i can do is six,
>>> and
>>> that takes something of a stretch in the vocabulary: AD, BAD, GAD,
>>> MAD,
>>> TAD, CAD.
>>
>> How about DAD?
>
> you only get the seven letters, no dupes.

to put this in careful technical terms: the Sassy folks supply seven
letter-tokens (made of plastic), from which you (and, eventually,
should the letters survive this long, your child) are to construct
english words.  so the task is *not* the same as the word-puzzle
question: how many words can be made from the letters B, D, G, M, T, C,
A?  *that* question implicitly refers to letter-types, and permits
answers like BABA, MADAM, DATA, MAGMA, and many others.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)