Three hundred words you can spell on a calculator [pdf]

(mathsquad.com)

43 points | by eightturn 5 days ago ago

13 comments

  • gitaarik 31 minutes ago

    In Dutch culture, among school children we had (have?) this funny thing where you can type in 707, which upside down reads "LOL", which in Dutch actually means "fun" (which funnily enough kind of corrolates with the internet slang abbreviation "lol"). Then if you calculate 707 + 707, so lol + lol, you get 1414, which reads as "hihi", which is an alternative, more giggly version "haha". Actually it kind of works in English too now that I think about it.

  • o11c 4 hours ago

    In case anyone's curious, the longest word with unique letters (as well as the most distinct letters) is "obliges".

    If we forbid 0, we get "bilges" and "sleigh". Both of which strike me as great opportunities for an extremely obscure Easter egg in an adventure game ...

    Also, for completeness: 0O, 1I, 2Z, 3E, 4H, 5S, 6G, 7L, 8B.

    So you can `grep -ix '[iozehsglb]*' /usr/share/dict/words` yourself.

    • m463 41 minutes ago

      I remember SHELLOIL (71077345) was the longest word that would fit in my calculator... except I guess it is TWO words.

      hillbillies never would have fit

    • DonHopkins 3 hours ago

      "L7" is hippie sign language for "square".

  • AriedK 40 minutes ago

    They could add an appendix with word math like 707 + 707 = 1414

  • blenderob 4 days ago

    A calculator with a "flip display vertically" button can be very interesting! I mean, you can press that button to show tricks like this to your friend. But it can also be used by service staff (think insurance people, car sales people) to do the calculation on their calculator and then just press the button to flip the result and show the result to you. You don't have to turn the calculator upside down because the button can flip the output!

  • LouisLazaris 6 hours ago

    Neat list but I’m confused: Why do many of the words on the left use what appears to be a zero character for the letter “O”. I understand why the zeroes are on the right, they just seem out of place on the left. Some of the words (e.g. GLOBS) use a regular letter O but some seem to use a zero (0) (e.g GL0SS)?

  • hoyd a day ago

    This was right up my alley, and inspired by this post, I had to check against the norwegian scrabble dictionary: https://earth.hoyd.net/posts/ord-du-kan-stave-med-en-kalkula...

  • cbfrench 5 hours ago

    Here am I, a grown-ass man, softly giggling to myself over seeing 5318008 on the list. It’s fifth grade all over again.

    • rhplus 5 hours ago

      Surprised the list is missing the silly school joke: 55378008

  • elchief 6 hours ago

    My phone won't open the link but I hope 80087322 is on there

  • eightturn 5 days ago

    I was gonna put 344, but HN appears to delete numbers at beginning of submission (til)

    • macintux 5 hours ago

      In discussions where HN has truncated/mangled a title, people have indicated that you can edit your submission after the fact to fix it. I don't know whether that's accurate, or whether there's a time limit.