Stems (includes spoiler for Friday 14 Feb)

[David Williams]

As a non-apterite, can someone just enlighten me on a point.

Many years ago I wondered about trying to produce a list of all eight letter words including the letters RETAINS. With no on-line dictionary it wasn't a great success, but at some point I came across VESTIARY, which is the only eight letter word from RETAINS+VY. It came up yesterday in RACIEST+VY round. So are words like that in your lists?

[Mark Deeks]

ANGRIEST
ANTISERA
ARTESIAN
ARTINESS
BANISTER
CANISTER
DETRAINS
ENTRAILS
ENTRAINS
GANISTER
GANTRIES
HAIRNETS
INGRATES
LATRINES
MINARETS
NARKIEST
NITRATES
NOTARIES
NOTARISE
PAINTERS
PANTRIES
PERTAINS
PINASTER
RAIMENTS
RAINIEST
RANDIEST
RANGIEST
RATLINES
REINSTAL
REPAINTS
RESINATE
RESTRAIN
RETRAINS
RETSINAS
SANTERIA
SCANTIER
STAINERS
STRAINED
STRAINER
STRAITEN
TASERING
TERRAINS
THERIANS
TRAINEES
TRAINERS
TRANNIES
TRANSIRE
TRENAILS
URINATES


Those are all your 8's that have RETAINS in.

[Callum Todd]

http://greem.co.uk/cgi-bin/crapterous/stemmer.py

Have fun.

[Charlie Reams]

I don't think there are canonical lists that everyone works from. But I've never heard of someone learning words like that. It seems inefficient, the chance of getting those exact 9 letters is very small.

[David Williams]

I would have thought memorising all the eight and nine letter words containing RETAINS could well be efficient. It must happen quite a lot. It must be reassuring to know you'll never miss TRAPESING or SIGNATURE, NAARTJIES or RAINSWEPT. And then you find you're not infallible when you get beaten with VESTIARY.

And it may not be a big issue with RETAINS, because adding almost any letter gives you an eight, but it must be quite common if you start with a stem of less common letters.

No big deal. I just wondered.

[Paul Erdunast]

I suppose what you're asking is for a list of 9 letter words with all the letters of RETAINS in, and a list of 8 letter words with at least 6 of the 7 letters of RETAINS. For instance, VESTIARY has RETAI_S in it, but not the N. The question as I understand it is: consider a set of 9 letters with RETAINS in it: what's the max? So any selection of 9 letters with an 8 max will need at least 6 of the letters of RETAINS. Naturally, you won't need a list of 7s with at least 5 of the letters of RETAINS because in any round with the letters RETAINS in it will automatically have RETAINS in it.

[David Williams]

Not really of desperate importance to me, but I think I thought stemming was more systematic.

If you've got RETAINS there are very few combinations where you need both the other two letters to make an eight letter word. With RETAINS+B+C, say, you've already got BANISTER and CANISTER The point of VESTIARY is that RETAINS+V and RETAINS+Y give nothing.

If it were systematic it might cut down on other stems. If you've got RETAINS off pat, you don't need to bother with ORIENTS+A or RATIONS+E.

[Paul Erdunast]

I suppose the logic in a round for your stemming idea would be:

1. Look for the 9 with the RETAINS+x+y combo.
2. Look for the 8 with RETAINS+x
3. Look for the 8 with 6 of the letters of RETAINS with y and z where y and z aren't any which you can add to RETAINS to make an 8.

I must admit, I'd find it easier just to learn the words without the added stemming baggage but I know lots of people use stemming with success, which I can't do.