Hooks
2010 December 20
Here are some stats on the number of words that can be “hooked” from shorter words by adding a single letter. For example, as shown in the table below, there are 8938 five-letter words. 2230 of these words can be created by adding a letter to the front of a four-letter word (a front hook) and 4528 of these words can be formed by adding a letter to the back of a four-letter work (a back hook). The total number that can be “hooked” from four-letter words is 5498. This number drops to 2889 when terminal esses are excluded. The last column is the percentage of the total number of words of a given length that can be created by hooking shorter words (with terminal esses excluded).
| LEN | TOT | FH | BH | TH | NO S | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | 101 | – | – | – | – | – |
| 3 | 1015 | 528 | 539 | 778 | 697 | 0.687 |
| 4 | 4030 | 1441 | 2120 | 2849 | 2036 | 0.505 |
| 5 | 8938 | 2230 | 4528 | 5498 | 2889 | 0.323 |
| 6 | 15788 | 2240 | 5764 | 6846 | 2896 | 0.183 |
| 7 | 24029 | 2191 | 8718 | 10182 | 3487 | 0.145 |
| 8 | 29766 | 1770 | 10396 | 11531 | 3111 | 0.105 |
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