Wordplay Wednesday: Strokes

[polarea]

First one:

MEW

As in what a cat does?

Second one: a question, does J have one stroke or two strokes? I assume if the curved part is continuous with the straight part it is one?

Hmm, apparently the scrabble dictionary has a word comprising all the letters I would consider one stroke, but I won't post it because I cheated.

[jbenz]

I'm stumped on the harder question, but I did find a word that is 11 letters long, with 2 "N"s and 9 single stroke letters.

[SMWinnie]

Here's one primer, which matches the one my son used.
http://www.usu.edu/teachall/text/langar ... _norm2.pdf

If these are the canonical capitals, then:
The one-stroke capital letters are C, J, O and S and the
two-stroke capital letters are D, G, L, P, Q, T, U, V and X.

But Ken tells us that capital I is made in a single stroke with no serifs, so I'm guessing that we need to include I and U as one-stroke letters.

I think the game needs a canonical primer to be fun.

[mlstrm]

Ken's hard question: judicious
jbenz's 11-letter word: unconscious

There's only one common word that follows the pattern 1234321 (that is, first letter has one stroke, second has 2 strokes, etc.). What is it?

I guess a more interesting question would be kinda like golf solitaire: What's the longest word in which every letter is +1/-1 stroke away from its immediate neighbors? Example patterns would be 3234321, 2123234, etc.

[jbenz]

Ken's hard question: judicious
jbenz's 11-letter word: unconscious

Nice. I should have paid more attention to "J".

[econgator]

If these are the canonical capitals, then:
The one-stroke capital letters are C, J, O and S and the
two-stroke capital letters are D, G, L, P, Q, T, U, V and X.

I don't get that. If L is two strokes, then G must be 3 (or at least the way I write it, it would be -- I basically write it as a C with a tiny, upside down L attached to it -- like it shows up here: G. I guess if you lengthen the C and draw the stroke over, you could call it two. )

[rjmason]

An eight-letter word in eight strokes is:
couscous

[Ken Jennings]

Ken's hard question: judicious
jbenz's 11-letter word: unconscious

Nice. I should have paid more attention to "J".

That was the first one I found, but it's actually only nine letters. There's a 10-letter solution left to be found.

To all those complaining that G, U, etc. have all kinds of crazy additional lines, that's why I specified "simplest possible form." Didn't any of you watch Sesame Street?

[rjmason]

That [ judicious ] was the first one I found, but it's actually only nine letters. There's a 10-letter solution left to be found.

suspicious?

[Stryker!]

Ken, you specify "all four" one-stroke letters, but I only count three, as in polarea's answer above. What is the mystery fourth four-stroke letter?

[marpocky]

Ken, you specify "all four" one-stroke letters, but I only count three, as in polarea's answer above. What is the mystery fourth four-stroke letter?

I misread it the same way at first, but look again and he just says "all the four-stroke letters"

[Stryker!]

Huh. Well, that'll teach me to shoot my mouth off, I guess.

[skullturfq]

Incidentally, I also misread it in exactly the same way at first glance. I wonder if this says anything in particular about the psychology of reading errors.

[j]

Nice. I should have paid more attention to "J".

Why, what did I do?

[fertanish]

Okay, here is my go at the open ended question:

What is the highest prime number you can generate calculated by the sum of the strokes of the letters in a word?

I wrote a little (albeit ugly) program to help the calculation:

http://fertanish.net/primestroke/index.asp

[Jangler NPL]

The answer to mlstrm's challenge is spreads. If you count brand names, Clamato also works.

[ArtVark]

That [ judicious ] was the first one I found, but it's actually only nine letters. There's a 10-letter solution left to be found.

suspicious?

I found coccidiosis as an 11-letter solution

[ArtVark]

I guess a more interesting question would be kinda like golf solitaire: What's the longest word in which every letter is +1/-1 stroke away from its immediate neighbors? Example patterns would be 3234321, 2123234, etc.

The best that I found in normal words is adherents (323434321), but the archaic otherwhere (1234343434) is longer.

[mlstrm]

The answer to mlstrm's challenge is spreads. If you count brand names, Clamato also works.

Rarer finds I had were oxheads and upbeats.

I guess a more interesting question would be kinda like golf solitaire: What's the longest word in which every letter is +1/-1 stroke away from its immediate neighbors? Example patterns would be 3234321, 2123234, etc.

The best that I found in normal words is adherents (323434321), but the archaic otherwhere (1234343434) is longer.

Very nice!

[jessy27]

Ken,
I dont know the answer to your numbers puzzle however "to what a cat does"
Dogs have masters Cats have servants.

[RockingRock]

your cat question was the best one in the thread