ElBlo

Solving NYTimes Spelling Bee

The NYTimes Spelling Bee is a game that consists of creating words from a given set of letters. You get one center letter, and 6 “outside” letters.

Here are the rules:

• Words must contain at least 4 letters.
• Words must include the center letter.
• Our word list does not include words that are obscure, hyphenated, or proper nouns.
• No cussing either, sorry.
• Letters can be used more than once.
• 4-letter words are worth 1 point each.
• Longer words earn 1 point per letter.
• Pangrams use each letter at least once. These are worth 7 extra points.

For example, today’s letters are: N, O, L, A, E, H, and the center letter is G. Some valid words are GALLEON, ANGEL, or the pangram HALOGEN.

In an attempt to ruin the fun for everyone, this game can be solved with a simple regexp:

$ grep -E "^[enalohg]*g[enalohg]*$" /usr/share/dict/american-english | grep -E "^.{4,}$"
agog
alga
algae
allege
along
analog
angel
(...)

Note that looking for pangrams can be done with extra calls to grep, but doing it with a regexp is tedious, as you have to take into account all possible letter orderings.