The full series was 59, 340, 833, 859, 406, 86, 12, 1, ranging from 59 two-letter words through 1 nine-letter word. The longest English word one may generate under the rules is "prestated," just nine letters long. The 12 eight-letter words are as follows: The sequence peaks at 859 five-letter words, and then falls rapidly. There are 833 four-letter English words with an accepted English word either in the first or the last three letters. But Primordial Alphabet Soup didn’t come close to making that number. A random process that generates English words should come up with at least 150,000 words. The number of words in any dictionary should be multiplied by 2 or 3 or more to include unlisted regular plurals and regular verb endings. A typical “collegiate” English dictionary contains 60,000 words. I continued in this way and generated lists of four-letter English words, five-letter English words, and so forth. I ran the new list of three-letter strings through the spelling checker and found a list of 340 three-letter words (again, after striking out by hand abbreviations and Roman numerals). This made 52 new strings of three letters for each accepted two-letter word. It also suffixed each of the twenty-six letters to the accepted words. The program prefixed each of the twenty-six letters of the alphabet one at a time to each of the accepted words. The next step was to run the list of accepted two-letter English words through my BASIC program. Additions, however, will not change the general conclusions we will reach. My spelling checker does not include all the English words found in an unabridged dictionary. The result was a list of 59 two-letter English words, as follows: I also had to remove by hand a number of common abbreviations like "pd" for “paid,” and Roman numerals like "ii," "iv," "vi," "ix," "il," "vl," "xl," … through "mm, but I had to remember that the Roman numeral "xi" is also the name of a Greek letter and that 1001 in Roman numerals, "mi," is the name of a musical note. When I checked the list for spelling, the spelling checker rejected most of the strings of letters, and I struck them out. To identify English words, I used the spelling checker that comes with my word processor. I started with that number of two-letter strings separated by spaces. (Letter sequences are called “strings” in computer jargon, whether or not they are words in any known language.) These are "aa," "ab," "ac," … through "az," then "ba," "bb," "bc," … through "bz," and so forth, all the way to "za," "zb," "zc," … through "zz." There are 26 letters in the English alphabet, and 26 squared is equal to 676. I started with the set of all possible two-letter sequences. To save time, it simply produces all possible variations of accepted words. The BASIC program does not form words at random. How many English words can be built up this way, and what is the longest word one can form? I researched these questions with a short program I wrote in BASIC. If the soup is not transparent, for instance, if it is thick tomato soup, the drawing is random. When this is cooked until soft and put into soup, one may draw out letters one at a time and arrange them into words on the edge of the soup bowl. There is a kind of spaghetti preformed into letters of the alphabet. One can offer a special prize for the longest word. Two-letter words count for two points, three-letter words for three points, etc. Also, the score for each word is equal to its length. The object of the game is to form as many words as possible. Do not form proper names or hyphenated words. Add letters only before the beginning or after the end of an existing word. Don’t put any letters within existing words. Continue building up four-letter words from the three-letter words, five-letter words from the four-letter words, etc., always following the same procedure, and stop only when it is impossible to form any longer words. Then, add any letter to any of the existing two-letter words, either at the beginning or the end of the word, but only if the added letter forms a three-letter English word. Put any two letters together if they form a two-letter English word. Draw letters at random out of a large supply, much as a child may find a letter at a time in alphabet soup. I call it “Primordial Alphabet Soup.” Here are the rules of the game. We can illustrate both the possibilities and the limits of this argument with a word game I have adapted to this purpose. (3) The gradual accumulation of advantages will eventually lead far afield into some new species. (2) Random searching can locate beneficial changes close to the starting point because the search volume of hyperspace is small if one doesn’t try to go very far on each step. Darwinism requires acceptance of several key ideas.
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