Sunday, May 31, 2009

Stumbled upon

It turns out that our language has a word with this unusual property:

It has 9 letters, but you can take one away and still have an English word. Then you can take the 8-letter word, remove another letter, and still have an English word. And so on - you can do this all the way down to a single letter, producing a valid English word every time.

Now, I find that startling.

2 comments:

Cranberry Necklace said...

OK, I took that as a challenge. Starting with startling-starting-stating-statin-stain-sain-sin-in-I.
Statins are the heart drugs.
I didn't click on startling yet to see if a different answer was given. Nor do I think this answer is unique. The most difficult letter to drop is the final g.

Scott Hanley said...

I had that as startling-starting-staring-string-sting-sing-sin-in-I.

"The most difficult letter to drop is the final g?" Why, going from "sing" to "sin" is what rock 'n' roll is all about!