The Uberpyramid?
Let's start the week by breaking a record. (Update: Or tying one, anyway...see new revisions.)
Last time out, I talked word ladders and word pyramids, and wondered whether any might be especially, impressively large.
In the case of word ladders, the answer is “yes definitely.” In theory, word ladders could go on forever in an infinite loop, as in the NYT puzzle below with SHIP-CHIP-CHOP-CHOW-SHOW-SLOW-SLOP-SLIP-SHIP…
But the largest non-repeating word ladder I can find was created by an anonymous user known on Reddit as thehivemind5 in 2012. It’s an invigorating 3,607 words, or 3,606 steps…roughly two miles, or about the average number of steps an American takes in a day.
Three thousand, six hundred and seven words is a little much to fit into one of these posts, so I’ll point you to the link at GitHub. While some words in the ladder like “izar” and “leku” were unfamiliar to me, they check out as words with genuine definitions. Scrolling through it, you may be struck anew at how rich and varied our language is.
See also the Reddit thread that referred me to this list, thankfully not affected by Reddit’s recent troubles, for a few similar efforts and more of the code behind them.
There’s no way I can top 3,607 words with my current resources. My word lists tend to include proper names, and I’m not much of a programmer. But the tallest word pyramid I can find looks a lot more beatable.
Michael Moszczynski, a machine learning engineer and prolific Quora contributor, wrote a word-pyramid-building program in 2015 and got this 14-level work from the words available in the Unix dictionary:
I
in
sin
ions
coins
cosine
cronies
conspire
inspector
receptions
perfections
frontispiece
frontispieces
perfectionists
As Moszczynski confessed, the transition from “frontispiece” to “frontispieces” is a bit uninspiring, and one could say the same about “perfections” to “perfectionists”—though that’s kind of a perfectionist standard. Personally, I like that such small changes exist side-by-side with the wilder transformations. The words frontispieces and perfectionists are kind of theme-appropriate, too.
Moszczynski conceded that the Unix dictionary was somewhat limited as far as words went, but to my knowledge, no one had yet exceeded his efforts.
So I did.
The word pyramid tool found at https://www.dcode.fr/word-pyramid was my tool. Using multiple queries to filter out some dodgier words, I was indeed able to make a bigger pyramid than Moszczynski’s. (I picked the word conversationalists, known to word lovers as part of the largest single-word anagram pair along with conservationalists.) However, my creation, like his, has quirks for critics to pick on:
A
AN
NAN
NANO
ANION
NATION
NATIONS
ESTONIAN
ANOINTERS
RESINATION
ANTIEROSION
ORIENTATIONS
RENOVATIONIST
RENOVATIONISTS
CONSERVATIONIST
CONSERVATISATION
CONVERSATIONALIST
CONVERSATIONALISTS
Nan is as in “nanny” (and thanks to those who wrote in to correct my earlier draft there!). The system actually suggested Ann for that spot, also suggesting Aniston instead of nations at one point, but I figured I should leave people’s names out of this. But we do have several singular-to-plural jumps, one proper adjective with Estonian, one British spelling with conservatisation, and the gnawing knowledge that conservationist means conservationalist, just as the less common conversationist also means conversationalist.
Still, it’s not too bad! Unlike some of the options the system gave me, the words are all familiar or easy to get (nitrosation, a chemistry term, was one I rejected). With the possible exception of “nan,” their status as single words is inarguable (which is why I shot down voice-translation).
In the absence of other evidence, I declare this a tentative record. Anyone who can outdo it is welcome to speak up in the comments or reach me by other means.
Update: Serves me right. Alert reader Tyler M infoms me that I missed the word pyramid Darryl Francis made, twenty years prior. I’m adjusting it for comparison’s sake below:
E
RE
ROE
ROPE
PROSE
PERSON
OPENERS
PIONEERS
INTERPOSE
PRETENSION
SEPTENTRION
PENETRATIONS
SEPTENTRIONAL
PRESENTATIONAL
MALPRESENTATION
MALPRESENTATIONS
PRESENTATIONALISM
PRESENTATIONALISMS
“Septentrion” is an old word for “northernmost,” but certainly valid for this purpose. My concession to Darryl, and my apologies—this isn’t the first time I’ve tentatively claimed a record only to be informed that others have gone as high or higher. I might try again in the future, but as of now, the record stands.
Darryl Francis constructed a transdeletion pyramid of equal size to yours which was published in the February 2003 issue of "Word Ways" (page 21).
https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4736&context=wordways