Find common words with these endings, in the manner of the "gry" puzzle.
language/english/spelling/rare.endings New, unsolved
New entry, edited from material collected for the archive and not yet in a released version.
Problem
Find common words with these endings, in the manner of the "gry"
puzzle.
These have real, no-trick, commonly known answers... in other words,
if you find an answer that relies on an obscure word or proper noun,
try again and find the common one. Also, obvious derived phrases
aren't allowed, just like we wouldn't allow "dog-hungry."
(1)
Larceny, progeny, ... these are but two of the many words that
end in "eny". Can you find "eny" others?
(2)
It shouldn't be too hard to find "aul" words that end in "aul."
Two of these are "maul" and "haul." Not being able to find
a third means you're pretty "aul"-ful at word puzzles.
(3)
According to Tom Lehrer, "Silent E" turns a tub into a "tube"
and a cub into a "cube." Not counting slang such as lub to lube,
what's another word that ends in "ube"?
(4)
An emblem bears this problem: give another word ending in "lem."
(5)
Two well-known fantasy creatures are "brownie"s and "genie"s.
What's another common "nie" word?
(6)
Israel doesn't like "Kurd"s, and neither do we -- it's a proper
noun, after all. "Curd," on the other hand, is superb, even
though it's capitalized in this sentence (it has a good excuse).
Although the second "wurd" that ends in "urd" sounds pretty
"absurd" to us, the "thurd" word isn't. What is it?
(7)
Here's a puzzle with a good sell: "Allele" and "clientele"
are two rather sophisticated words that end in "ele". (As
opposed to the many sophisticated "elle" words like "belle"
and "mademoiselle.") A third word ending in "ele," however,
seems anything but sophisticated. Can you "telle" us what it is?
(8)
"Aphid", "Orchid", and ... ?
(9)
There are three words that end in "SMA".
Two of them are "plasma" and "miasma."
What's the third?
(10)
Here's a tough one. There's a three letter ending for which the
three words often crop up in word puzzles. Two of them have 10
letters each, are anagrams of each other, and should be well
known to anyone in rec.puzzles. The third word
is a contender for strength that shares a wordplay property
with "massacring." What's the ending, and what are the three
words?
(11)
Would you like green eggs and ham?
Could you find green eggs and ham?
Should you eat green eggs and ham?
And what fourth word ending in "ould" probably
describes green eggs and ham?
Here are some endings which I didn't think made good puzzles.
Find three common words for each.
(12) GID
(13) WSE
(14) YME
(15) IEU
(16) IKA (Maybe this one's a bit unfair)
(17) EGY (Ditto)
(18) TIL
(19) RIL
(20) CCO (Unfair, I don't know that third word!)
(21) KON (Ditto)
And, here are some for which I don't know the answers. ;-)
(22) "Hello," "armadillo," and ... ?
(23) "Ratio," "patio," and ... ?
In compiling this list, I came up with lots of endings like
GRY for which there are two commonly-known answers, but no
others. For what it's worth, here are the more interesting
ones:
IAH, VIC, NAC, FFE, SOL, IUL, OGE, PHE, EEF, OLF, TIM, BOL, EID,
REM, HOM, IOM, UIP, WIN, EMN, UMN, DEO, IGO, IET, RUP, ALO, TYR.
-- Wei-Hwa Huang <whuang@ugcs.caltech.edu>
Show solution
No solution was found in the collected postings. [ Editor: Wei-Hwa Huang reposted the list above, first posted the previous December, adding "(Note; I've have gotten some alternate answers that I didn't expect...)", in reply to this: ] In article <345388A0.CB6A119C@questrel.com>, Chris Cole <chris@questrel.com> writes: >I wonder if this is really all there is to the "gry" puzzle. There >are many ending letter sequences that only a few words share, but >there are no popular puzzles based upon these sequences. For example, >the ending "gby": "rugby" and "hangby" are the only two sharing this >ending. There are many, many other such sequences. Why aren't there >more puzzles of this type floating around? > >Perhaps it takes more than that to create a puzzle with the staying >power of "gry." Truly interesting ending letter sequences are those >shared by a handful of common words and one word that breaks the >pattern of the others. In fact, the other word-ending chestnut that >you allude to, the four words ending in "dous," is of this form. >This puzzle is commonly stated as follows: > >There are four common adjectives ending in "dous." Three of them are: >horrendous >stupendous >tremendous >What is the fourth? > >The answer is "hazardous." This puzzle has become a chestnut because >"hazardous" is hard to think of once you are given the other three. See also entry "gry".