Likely, Likelier, Likeliest Word List

from the desk of Robert, the scrabbliest Waugh

Last night while playing Scrabble I drew these letters for the game opener: EHILORT. Seeing that I was only one E away from HOTELIER, I played HOTEL with the L on a Double Letter Score, instead of the H as one would expect. My usual opponent and I don’t play at the level where we think much about the other player’s moves, so I figured he wouldn’t notice the unusual placement. And I was betting he would either not know HOTELIER or not draw the needed letters before I drew another E. On my third turn I hooked HOTELIER to the Triple Word Score for a modest 33 points.

When asked about the word, I explained I had seen it while working on a list of comparatives and superlatives that end with -IER and -IEST. I’ve noticed when playing by myself (with an open dictionary) that a good number of my bingos come from this set of unlikely adjectives. In one game, after playing TWINIEST and LINTIER, I had to ask myself, do people ever say, “That yarn is twiniest, but this one is the lintier?” Many are not what you would expect.

So I began working on a list of the 1149 adjectives which can take the IER and IEST endings, a subset of all the comparatives and superlatives in the TWL. This combines the IER and IEST lists into one, listing only the root. In other words, for the price of learning one word — the root — you get the comparative and the superlative for free.

Some Warnings

This list was generated by running the combined lists through several find and replace matches, so not every word is guaranteed to be a comparative or superlative. For example, I caught and removed the word PRY, because, even though there is a PRIER and a PRIEST, the match is coincidental… except of course when one’s PRIEST is a PRIER into one’s own personal business.

Also keep in mind that some of the listed adjectives have alternate forms. TYPY for example can also be written TYPEY, although they are both transformed into TYPIER and TYPIEST. (This is now noted in the word list.)

And of course, there may be a few outright screw-ups. Let me know if you catch any.

HOTELIER was one of the words I excised from my IER and IEST lists before combining them, and I’ve put together another list of 203 words I excised… words like ARCHPRIEST, ARGUFIER and NONSKIER (which should really be a nonword.)

As for the game, I won by exactly 33 points, the value of my HOTELIER play. The only bingo was played by my opponent: RAINIER. And I was very pleased to transform TENDS into EXTENDS. How fitting.

The Lists

• Likely, Likelier, Likeliest words
• Words excised from list

Jan. 27, Changes Made to List

• Removed SPINIEST from 8-letter words. Removed SPINIER from list of excised words. Added SPINY to 5-letter words.

• Made note of words which can take an optional E before the final Y, and noted which of those incur a change in meaning.

• Removed line ending within letter groups.

Jan. 29, Another List

Here’s a variation of the list, as requested by Mike Waugh, which notes which words form valid words without the final Y. Also, for those words which have two forms (ending in “Y” and “EY”) I’ve listed both forms… in the previous version I only list the “EY” version, using a small “e” to note that it is optional. Here I listed both so I could check both roots (with and without an “e”).

Posted by Robert Waugh at January 26, 2005 06:38 PM | TrackBack