Monday, February 18, 2019

wordplay - longest sentence using only one word and variants



This is an open ended puzzle of wordplay. Here's an example of acceptable words: reed, read, read, red, etc. They are linked by either different spellings of the same pronunciation (reed and read), or different pronunciations of the same spelling (read, read). Only words in the OED are acceptable.


The puzzle is to create a long sentence using only words from such a pool. Not all words in the pool need to be used, and adjacent words do not need to be linked. Which sentence is the longest?


Answers must start with the proposed sentence in bold, followed by explanations or commentary as desired.


Degenerate approaches are not acceptable. For example, suppose some buffalo are named Buffalo, after the spicy chicken wings. Both of these words are in the OED, including the capitalization of the later, however the city name of Buffalo is not. Now suppose some of their offspring are named Buffalo Buffalo. And suppose some of their offspring are named Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo. This leads to English sentences such as "Buffalo buffalo buffalo.", where the first lowercase word is the verb, to quote the OED, "To overpower, overawe, or constrain by superior force or influence; to outwit, perplex.", and the second lowercase word is the common name of a species of quadrupeds. Similarly, another sentence is: "Buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo.", as is "Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo." And so on. Grammatically simple sentences of any arbitrary length can be formed. Without this exclusion, the puzzle certainly has no ultimate answer.


I'm including the tag 'open-ended' because I suspect the ultimate winning sentence is unknown, though potentially computable someday given an appropriate database to form the pool of words and NLP.




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