On Fri, 29 Oct 2021 14:10:32 -0700 (PDT)
leflynn <leflynn@hotmail.com> wrote:

> On Friday, October 29, 2021 at 11:22:53 AM UTC-4, leflynn wrote:
> > On Thursday, October 28, 2021 at 10:45:16 PM UTC-4, Mark Brader wrote:
> > > Dunc M.:
> > > > Time to revive the search for common 5-letter words (OED) whose letters
> > > > - either all or some - cannot be rearranged into other words of at least
> > > > two letters.
> > > If this is meant to be a mental puzzle, please ignore this response.
> > >
> > > I don't have access to a list of words in the OED, and I doubt that
> > > one is available online, but I do have access to the "Webster's 2nd"
> > > word list, and I wrote a suitable Perl program and ran it on that list.
> > >
> > > It claimed three hits: CIRRI, CIVIC, and QUICK.
> > >
> > > (I know some dictionaries admit QI as a word these days, which would
> > > disallow QUICK, but I say bah humbug to that. If Q occurs in a word
> > > followed by a letter other than U, it's not English.)
> > >
> > > As to the suggestions posted by other people, some due to
> > > misunderstanding the question, my program disallowed them because
> > > the words at right, or perhaps I should say the forms at right,
> > > were words in the list:
> > >
> > > LYNCH LY
> > >
> > > Mark Brader, Toronto | "To err is human, but to error requires a computer."
> > > m...@vex.net | -- Harry Lethall
> > >
> > > My text in this article is in the public domain.
> > I believe "LY" only appears as "-ly suffix" in the OED. "QI" is there.
> > Is "VIZIR" in your Webster's 2nd, and if so how did it fail?
> >
> > L. Flynn
> Some of the web2 word lists grabbed everything and removed hyphens
> I have three unabridged Websters in hardcopy.
>
> My Webster's 1st and 2nd only have "-ly" as a suffix. The third gives it as an abbreviation for Langley without a capital or period.
>
> CIRRI is in Webster's 1st, 2nd and 3rd as a plural of CIRRUS.
>
> QI is not in any of them. QUA and QUA have mixed presences across the three.
>
> Webster's 2nd has VIZIR as an alternate spelling for VIZIER.
>
> I'll start off the six-letter quest with SYZYGY .
>
Have you got RHYTHM ?

--
Bah, and indeed Humbug.