I was curious if the words could be used to form any sentences -- here's the corpus organized by part-of-speech. (Many words are missing due to gaps in the corpus I used):
How did they end up out of alphabetical order? It might be worth alphabetizing and collecting singular+plural into single entries; s and es are available, so you can pluralize most nouns (or singularize most verbs). The list has some pairs but not all, for no particular reason.
I’d suggest dropping the capitalization too, it adds duplicates, and can often be used in both senses, e.g., bill, bell, hill, hiss…
Also note there are plenty of nouns here that can be used as verbs and verbs than can be used as nouns.
Now a bonus round: Can anybody possibly do a long work of fiction only using calculator words? Just this post was difficult after losing just a unitary sound!
"Great, thanks for providing the words. Here’s a paragraph and a long sentence using only the words from your list."
Paragraph:
Ellie and Gil see high hills and lush soils as they sell eggs. Bessie, Lizzie, and Billie giggle at the blissful scene, while Bob, with his big bellies, sees sole lilies by the lake. Hobbes and Zoe bless the giggles and sighs from the hill. Ellie, high on glee, sees Leslie and Ellie loose on the hill.
Long Sentence:
Ellie, Gil, and Bobbie, with their big, glib egos, hobble to the hill, see high geese and geese solos, sell blissful lilies and lilies, see his giggles and giggles, sees solos, sees shell solos, sell loose, high eggshells, sell soles, sell high heels, lose high heels, lose loose lilies, and see highs, high on high hills.
Numeric Equivalent:
Ellie (371173), Gil (617), and Bobbie (860778), with their big (618), glib (6178), egos (3760), hobble (4607713) to the hill (411), see (335) high (4614) geese (63335) and geese (63335) solos (50505), sell (7735) blissful (817557981) lilies (511173) and lilies (511173), see (335) his (517) giggles (61977619) and giggles (61977619), sees (3355) solos (50505), sees (3355) shell (53477) solos (50505), sell (7735) loose (53350), high (4614) eggshells (355435517), sell (7735) soles (50535), sell (7735) high (4614) heels (43735), lose (3505) high (4614) heels (43735), lose (3505) loose (53350) lilies (511173), and see (335) highs (46145), high (4614) on high (4614) hills (4115).
Also, fun note: ChatGPT will go into Mr. Burns mode if you emote Simpsons...
I couldn't find an actual calculator lying around, so I used an LLM to quickly hack up a calculator upside-down view simulator. I'm usually a backend engineer, so it was a fun quick hack (done in less than an hour).
Actually I would have simply included a woff2 file with a font that does the job and displayed that text in that font, but I wanted this to fit in a reasonably sized data-url, and didn’t want the extra assets.
A couple of weeks ago a kid comes up to me on the street carrying a calculator, like a kind of rough kid who for some reason was hanging out with a couple of his friends and enamoured with it, but not the kind of nerdling one would expect to be playing with a calculator on the street. He goes (giggling to self) “hey mate what’s the square root of 64,128,064“ clearly hoping to catch me out with some piece of mathematical hilarity… but naturally I’ve been that kid in my youth and snapped back to him, before cycling off:
“8008”
He actually thought I was a maths genius and shouted “Albert Einstein come back” not realising that I just did sqrt(64) in 50 microseconds and then 450 microseconds of schoolboy humour derivation. Probably more like a Feynman approximation than an Einsteinian, but maybe he’ll learn that in decades to come. Good job his pocket calculator couldn’t square 58008 or 5318008 else I probably wouldn’t have grokked it.
Since apparently this list allows decimals (bozo: 0.208), why does the regex need to exclude words ending in two o's? Words like "boo", "goo", and "igloo" can be made with the same rules, and it's a simpler grep -i '^[izehsglbo]\+$' /usr/share/dict/words
Here's a one-liner to generate the list of single 8-letter hexable words from the dictionary. It doesn't include 0xcafebabe or 0xdeadbeef due to those being 2-word phrases. Of course, you can change the 8 to a 4 to make the list of 4-letter words, or change the 8 to an asterisk, so you can pick your own word combos.
0) any businesses are successfully using calculator numbers in their marketing? Like a clown service that hands out business cards with their phone number 5376616?
1) there are any non-English languages with a substantial amount of calculator words? It's not like there's some inherent bias the Hindu-Arabic numberals themselves should be expected to have in favor of upside-down English, although the seven segment display was developed in the US, so perhaps there's some argument to be made from that angle.
I was curious if the words could be used to form any sentences -- here's the corpus organized by part-of-speech. (Many words are missing due to gaps in the corpus I used):
NOUN 147 slob, Ellie, silo, bile, sell, Gil, belles, highs, Bessie, losses, giggles, Liz, hobo, Leslie, Bob, lies, bellies, soil, Hess, hells, Isis, Gog, Hiss, boogie, holes, bliss, oils, gel, leg, lobes, globes, Gill, Leigh, geese, bogies, bilge, Lizzie, Leo, boil, legs, shoe, shells, Ozzie, giggle, ooze, size, eel, high, bill, gob, hole, hog, soles, libel, Hill, bee, shills, ills, Lois, glee, Bess, lobe, gig, Beebe, sizes, Gogol, sloe, hiss, Ellis, Sol, boos, Ohio, bees, HBO, bobbles, ill, lie, sobs, booze, bibles, Gibbs, hobbies, sighs, shell, isle, bib, Hegel, hills, Zoe, Eloise, Giles, sill, Elsie, Bill, bells, loss, egg, eggshell, bills, hoses, Shiloh, siege, Bible, solos, sigh, Hillel, logs, hose, lobbies, hill, log, hob, bell, shoes, Lee, gloss, heels, Hobbes, bosses, soils, solo, Oslo, hoes, goose, oil, Bell, blob, goggles, Eli, sole, ego, silos, hogs, lilies, Billie, gibes, ell, hell, shill, globe, oblige, loose, eggs, gibe, boss, heel, Bobbie
VERB 34 sells, loses, Lie, boil, sell, ebb, lob, seize, solo, begs, see, ebbs, sizzle, beg, lie, besiege, ooze, size, goes, hole, lies, hobble, bog, obsesses, soil, boils, loose, bless, solos, sigh, gobbles, shies, lose, sees
ADJ 9 sole, loose, ill, high, less, glib, big, beige, eligible
ADV 5 loose, ill, less, high, else
PRT 4 gosh, hello, see, hell
X 3 his, Les, les
DET 1 his
PRON 2 his, she
First, I think "is" should be added to that list.
Assuming punctuation is allowed, here's my masterpiece:
Big slob Ohio Bob sees Zoe boil his sole beige goose egg, sighs. She giggles. He sees his egg sizzle, sobs.
He looses his hell bees.
This is the most perfect thing I've read in awhile well done. I salute you.
Poor Ohio Bob. Well done.
This is such a wonderful bit of creative writing.
You win! I got a kick out of your writing.
Eggless Bob obsesses, boozes. Lizzie, she sells/soles shoeses, obliges geese egg bills. "Bless!" Bob boogies; oils, gobbles? loses! Gosh, Zoe seizes - hells bells, Zoe hogs eggs! "Lies! libel!" Zoe hisses, "go, hobo!". Bob boggles.
I was wondering if there are any sentences which are also palindomes;
bob sees bob
Lee, sell Les' Eel!
Loss boss sobs. S.O.L.
...
[dead]
Bill shills his goose oil else loses his Ellie
Truly a terse emotional rollercoaster on par with "baby shoes, never worn"
https://explosm.net/comics/baby-shoes-4#comic
How did they end up out of alphabetical order? It might be worth alphabetizing and collecting singular+plural into single entries; s and es are available, so you can pluralize most nouns (or singularize most verbs). The list has some pairs but not all, for no particular reason.
I’d suggest dropping the capitalization too, it adds duplicates, and can often be used in both senses, e.g., bill, bell, hill, hiss…
Also note there are plenty of nouns here that can be used as verbs and verbs than can be used as nouns.
Hegel sells his glib goose
The sentence game would be more interesting, if you'd add in 2-letter words. be - go - he - hi - ho - is - oh - Oz - so
He loses his high ego, he sizzles, he begs. He seizes his bible.
Ellis sells his loose eggs
Claude 3.5 is not bad…
Ellie sells shells. Bob, slob hobo, sees Ellie. Bob begs Ellie, "Sell shells." Ellie giggles, "Gosh, hello!" Bob loses. Bob sobs.
Ellie sees Bill. Bill sells bibles. Ellie lies, "Bill, sell bibles else." Bill sells bibles. Ellie gobbles bibles. Bill obsesses. Ellie sighs.
Liz sees Bob. Bob boils. Liz giggles. Bob hobbles. Liz besiege Bob. Bob begs Liz, "Loose." Liz goes. Bob sees highs.
Ellie sees Liz. Ellie giggles. Liz boils. Ellie bless Liz. Liz loses. Ellie sees bliss.
Ellie, Liz, Bob solos. Ellie, Liz, Bob lies. Ellie, Liz, Bob sees bellies. Ellie, Liz, Bob sees highs. Ellie, Liz, Bob giggles.
Now a bonus round: Can anybody possibly do a long work of fiction only using calculator words? Just this post was difficult after losing just a unitary sound!
LLM can you use words only in the following list, to create the longest sentences you can that make sense and read like plausible English sentences?
I did try this, but it constantly uses words not in the provided list.
[dead]
Tested. LLM response. ChatGPT at https://openai.com/chatgpt/ (whatever the default currently is)
"Great, thanks for providing the words. Here’s a paragraph and a long sentence using only the words from your list."
Paragraph:
Ellie and Gil see high hills and lush soils as they sell eggs. Bessie, Lizzie, and Billie giggle at the blissful scene, while Bob, with his big bellies, sees sole lilies by the lake. Hobbes and Zoe bless the giggles and sighs from the hill. Ellie, high on glee, sees Leslie and Ellie loose on the hill.
Long Sentence:
Ellie, Gil, and Bobbie, with their big, glib egos, hobble to the hill, see high geese and geese solos, sell blissful lilies and lilies, see his giggles and giggles, sees solos, sees shell solos, sell loose, high eggshells, sell soles, sell high heels, lose high heels, lose loose lilies, and see highs, high on high hills.
Numeric Equivalent:
Ellie (371173), Gil (617), and Bobbie (860778), with their big (618), glib (6178), egos (3760), hobble (4607713) to the hill (411), see (335) high (4614) geese (63335) and geese (63335) solos (50505), sell (7735) blissful (817557981) lilies (511173) and lilies (511173), see (335) his (517) giggles (61977619) and giggles (61977619), sees (3355) solos (50505), sees (3355) shell (53477) solos (50505), sell (7735) loose (53350), high (4614) eggshells (355435517), sell (7735) soles (50535), sell (7735) high (4614) heels (43735), lose (3505) high (4614) heels (43735), lose (3505) loose (53350) lilies (511173), and see (335) highs (46145), high (4614) on high (4614) hills (4115).
Also, fun note: ChatGPT will go into Mr. Burns mode if you emote Simpsons...
Can you make it stick to the list? This is full of words not available, and so none of it actually works.
Eventually was able to get a reply that was a fairly close to an above suggestion.
"Ellie sells loose shoes; Bill shills big goose oil."
Took quite a bit of "you're not actually sticking to the list". Also, weird... recursion issues with chat output.
I couldn't find an actual calculator lying around, so I used an LLM to quickly hack up a calculator upside-down view simulator. I'm usually a backend engineer, so it was a fun quick hack (done in less than an hour).
Here it is: https://calculator-word-simulator.vercel.app/
This is how I—a frontend developer—would write this quickly:
https://runarberg.github.io/calculator-display/
repo: https://github.com/runarberg/calculator-display
MDN Playground: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/play?id=0pEoA2OCnfwNLV3E...
Actually I would have simply included a woff2 file with a font that does the job and displayed that text in that font, but I wanted this to fit in a reasonably sized data-url, and didn’t want the extra assets.
A really interesting alternative take
Love it!
Nice! Just what I was looking for. Would be nice to be able to input valid letters too.
Yap. Nice idea - try it now!
Ah cool!
A couple of weeks ago a kid comes up to me on the street carrying a calculator, like a kind of rough kid who for some reason was hanging out with a couple of his friends and enamoured with it, but not the kind of nerdling one would expect to be playing with a calculator on the street. He goes (giggling to self) “hey mate what’s the square root of 64,128,064“ clearly hoping to catch me out with some piece of mathematical hilarity… but naturally I’ve been that kid in my youth and snapped back to him, before cycling off: “8008”
That kid sure learned the meaning of "nothing new under the sun".
He actually thought I was a maths genius and shouted “Albert Einstein come back” not realising that I just did sqrt(64) in 50 microseconds and then 450 microseconds of schoolboy humour derivation. Probably more like a Feynman approximation than an Einsteinian, but maybe he’ll learn that in decades to come. Good job his pocket calculator couldn’t square 58008 or 5318008 else I probably wouldn’t have grokked it.
450us humour derivation/confirmation is good:
Gen Z added a new one :)
https://i.redd.it/j5txdt2np1v71.jpg
Needs a 7-segment calculator font or at least any font with an open 4. Looks like there are lots of web fonts available that have an open 4.
Others here have pointed out boobless is missing… that’s one of the only words I saw on calculators as a fifth grader. ‘Hello’ was a distant second.
Boobless? Not boobs or boobies?
There was a short story to go with it. Guess eight year old me had a better memory. I had to Google for the bits I couldn't remember
There once was a girl with 69 boobs. That's 2 2 2 many boobs. On 51st street, she went to Dr. X and he 8 them all. She came out boobless.
I spotted the omission immediately and I knew that the moment had finally arrived: I used something that I learned in math class.
Yep, boobless, aka 55378008. Sibling story is correct, but another reason for boobless is it used all 8 digits of the calculator.
In my junior-high classes, it was something of a tease for the unfortunate late bloomers. Kids at that age are total assholes.
Since apparently this list allows decimals (bozo: 0.208), why does the regex need to exclude words ending in two o's? Words like "boo", "goo", and "igloo" can be made with the same rules, and it's a simpler grep -i '^[izehsglbo]\+$' /usr/share/dict/words
I was wondering the same thing too. And even if you wanted to keep this odd behaviour, it could be better written as
Note that the grep command used to compile that list is shown at the very top of the page.
In "UNIX - A History and a Memoir", Brian Kernighan is telling the story of doing that in 1972 (chapter 4.5, about "Grep")
one of the first things you learn with a calculator in high school is how to write boobs.
It is a sacred tradition
When I was a kid, SHELL.OIL was the classic.
And how about words you can spell in hex, like 0xcafebabe?
https://www.nsftools.com/tips/HexWords.htm
https://nedbatchelder.com/text/hexwords.html
Here's a one-liner to generate the list of single 8-letter hexable words from the dictionary. It doesn't include 0xcafebabe or 0xdeadbeef due to those being 2-word phrases. Of course, you can change the 8 to a 4 to make the list of 4-letter words, or change the 8 to an asterisk, so you can pick your own word combos.
< /usr/share/dict/words perl -lne 'print "$_ 0x",tr/ilzstgo/1125790/r if m/^[abcdefilzsbtgo]{8}$/ && !(m/i/ && m/l/)' | column
My all time favourite thing to spell in hex was 0xDEADBEEFCAFE
$DEADFACEBEEF
AT&T fan here, due to both Moto 6809 and MOS 6502 roots
It literally took years for me to see "0x" like I do the dollar sign "$" for hex and percent for binary. "%"
Funny that the one I actually did growing up all the time was not on the list. Partly because it’s a compound word I suppose, but nonetheless.
SHELL OIL
I still remember the number sequence by heart. There’s something about learning something at that age, it’s seared into my longterm memory.
Hmm, I wonder about words that end in -oo? Don't have a calculator with me atm to see if it will work/look good to lead with 0.0 ...
If so we could add boo, goo, loo, and zoo, and maybe some longer words. Maybe.
I wonder if:
0) any businesses are successfully using calculator numbers in their marketing? Like a clown service that hands out business cards with their phone number 5376616?
1) there are any non-English languages with a substantial amount of calculator words? It's not like there's some inherent bias the Hindu-Arabic numberals themselves should be expected to have in favor of upside-down English, although the seven segment display was developed in the US, so perhaps there's some argument to be made from that angle.
There's a pretty cool word you can spell with your calculator:
They are typically and roughly hemispherical in shape, and come in different sizes.
Although they can gradually droop over time due to gravity and other factors.
They can help keep babies alive, but that is certainly not their only use.
They have small round protrusions sticking out the front.
The number that spells the word has a couple of zeroes in it.
Multiply 7257 by 69. Then add 28. Then flip your calculator upside down.
Is this still a thing?
I remember doing this c.1974 when the affordable Sinclair Scientific calculator came out, since it was such a novelty to have a calculator.
No “boobless” as a shout out to us gen X kids??
Even more fun than spelling words is to actually calculate with them. lol + lol = hihi And it makes sense...
I remember some old puzzle book, where equation was given to type into calculator and it would provide answer to a given question.
That gives me idea of "encrypting" a poem where each operation gives you next word.
Its missing 5038 aka BeOS, there is even a song about it …
Missing "Boobless"
To make your calculator word search more attractive here is a video about segmented display fonts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTB5XhjbgZA
Took me a minute to figure out why some had decimal points.
Not all calculators are restricted to a 7-segment display.
[flagged]
Goofy 10-year old mode activated:
We are missing boobless 55378008
With some creative squinting and the risk of some ambiguity, you can get additional letters by using digraphs and trigraphs:
9 = G
6 = q
10 = a
21 = R
14 = N
17 = U/V
111 = M
177 = W
No “blog”? (6018)
I wish they had used a calculator font then
Missing the obvious 710 - OIL
"Lossless" too
no boobless but definitely got Goebbels, eh? :-/
You’ve made me wonder if {word}less and it’s vast number of understandable variants, are actually official words? I assume not.
Is Goebbels in the dictionary?
It's not in /usr/share/dict/words, at some point in OPs list the words start alphabetically again so I think there is another list being used.
this is like the rosetta stone for 11-year-old me
Bezos
lol+lol=hihi
Without reading the article, I'm guessing this needs the NSFW tag.
[dead]
And what about all the words/phrases you can spell with the calculator upside down? for example : 7.1077345
Many of the words on the list (if not all) require the calculator to be upside down.
Aarg - you are right. should pay more attention next time.