• Study list for Spelling Bee: words of more than 4 letters, only 3 distinct

  Dec 31, 2025

  If you play Spelling Bee for a while, you’ll notice there are some words that keep coming up over and over. For example, there are lots of relatively long words that contain only three different letters, so they appear all the time. The other day I thought, “how many of these words can there be”, so I wrote a script: - download all the accepted words for the last two years (about 8300 words) - identify just the words that have more than 4 letters (so, higher scoring) and no more than 3 distinct letters

  It turns out there are only about 140 such words, so as a public service I include them here:

  abk: babka
  abm: mamba
  abn: banana
  abo: baobab
  abu: bubba
  aci: acacia
  acl: calla
  acn: cancan, canna
  aco: cacao, cocoa
  ade: added
  adm: madam
  ado: doodad
  adr: radar
  ady: daddy
  ael: allele
  afl: alfalfa
  agl: algal
  agm: gamma, magma
  ahl: halal
  aht: hatha
  akp: kappa
  alm: llama, mammal
  aln: annal
  alp: appall, palapa, papal
  aly: allay
  am:  mamma
  amn: manna
  amo: momma
  amp: pampa
  ant: natant
  anw: wanna
  any: nanny
  aop: poppa
  aot: tattoo
  apw: papaw, pawpaw
  apy: papaya, pappy, yappy
  art: attar, ratatat, tartar
  ary: array
  aty: tatty
  bde: bedded, ebbed
  bel: belle
  bfo: boffo
  bho: boohoo
  bhu: hubbub
  bno: bonbon, bonobo
  bo:  booboo
  bos: booboos, boobs
  bow: bowwow
  boy: booby
  cde: ceded
  cem: emcee
  chi: chichi
  cho: hooch
  cim: mimic
  cio: cocci
  cir: cirri
  civ: civic
  cno: cocoon
  cor: rococo
  de:  deeded
  deg: edged, egged
  deh: heeded
  dei: eddied
  dek: deked
  dem: deemed, memed
  den: ended, needed
  dep: peeped, pepped
  deu: duded
  dew: wedded, weeded
  dgo: doggo
  dho: hoodoo
  div: vivid
  dmu: dumdum
  dov: voodoo
  efm: femme
  eft: effete
  egl: gelee
  eht: teeth, teethe
  ein: innie
  elm: melee
  elv: levee, level
  emz: mezze
  enp: penne
  ent: entente, tenet
  ept: teepee, tepee
  epv: peeve
  epw: peewee, pewee
  epy: peppy
  equ: queue
  etu: tutee
  etw: tweet
  flu: fluff
  gin: gigging, ginning, inning
  glo: googol
  hor: horror
  hot: tooth
  how: woohoo
  hoy: yoohoo
  ijn: jinni
  imn: minim
  ino: onion
  inp: pippin
  iny: ninny
  ipt: pipit
  itu: tutti
  koy: kooky
  lop: lollop
  lot: lotto
  mop: pompom
  mot: motto
  moy: mommy
  mru: murmur
  mu:  muumuu
  muy: mummy, yummy
  opw: powwow
  opy: poppy
  ort: rotor
  puy: puppy
  

  Happy Solving!

• Speculating about Apple Silicon

  Mar 7, 2025

  I know nothing beyond what’s been reported, but here’s my guess about where Apple’s high-end chips are going:

  There’s no M4 Ultra because the next Mac Pro will get an M4 or M5 that supports multiple dies/packages and discrete RAM. To really pile on the CPU/GPU cores, they’ll be able to add more chips. Maybe several Maxs, or a variant with some new interconnect.

  Presumably with some RAM packaged with each chip and a lot of magic to deal with the different memory latencies across the different processor and memory chips.

  That’s how you build a truly scalable high-performance workstation for AI training as well as video/audio production.

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