Help for Newcomers

[bansaisequoia]

Thank you for the excellence of your experience, maradnu

[flutefish]

Other word patterns/relationships I look for:

- The, That, There, Their, Other - 'TH' often appears together in many words, so look for places where these 2 letter appear together.
- Every, Everything, Everybody, Everywhere, Everyone - this is given away by the 2 E's in the first 3 letters.
- Which - look for the 2nd and 5th letter being the same.
- Where
- You, Your
- Four letter words that start & end with the same letter: That, Dead, High, a word that starts and ends with 'S', such as 'SAYS'. Of these, THAT is the most common by far.
- PEOPLE has a pretty unique pattern, so it is pretty easy to spot. There a few other words with the same patter, such as INDIAN or PROPER, but people is by far the most common.
- Remember that a 2 letter word cannot ever begin with the letter 'E', so if you are trying to figure out what the letters with high frequencies might be, this is a way to eliminate an option. Also, 'O' is a very common ending to 2 letter words.
- Look for common word endings, such as -ING, -TION, -MENT, -ESS
- Every word in the english language has a vowel (A,E,I,O,U, Y if it is a 2 letter word). If you get stuck, see if there are any vowels you have not used yet, and see if you can figure out a place to put them.
- 'IT IS' often starts sentences or phrases. Also, THERE ARE.
- if there is a three letter word after a comma, it is usually AND. It is also commonly NOT or BUT. If the word BUT appears in a sentence, NOT will often appear in the same quote before the BUT.

Those are all the tips I can think of at the moment. Hope it helps.

[maradnu]

http://fiziwig.com/crypto/pword.txt

[Laura]

Wow, Maradnu, that's an excellent list. Thanks for sharing! There are quite a few words I've never heard of (kii, nuu, ogg) but it's a great resource.

[cyclisted]

Momma mia, "abba" is on Marandu's list!

[bansaisequoia]

Oh, cieli azzuri, Aida is on maradnu's list, too!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm9Pf3W7ODA

[Laura]

That was lovely!

[bansaisequoia]

Laura, I can't take credit for it. It was really Giuseppe Verdi.

[maradnu]

I stumbled on that list a while back - not sure I even remember how, but bookmarked it, for obvious reasons.

Some dubious words in there, and a few things omitted, but generally pretty good.

[maradnu]

I've seen CONSISTS showing up a bit lately.