Add initial letter to the same three letters to make the most new (English) words

Thread Games
1

This is a question I’ve wondered about for some time, but didn’t know how to find the answer, and it occurred to me to turn it into a game.

Take three leterrs, for instance AST, and add one letter to the beginning. The challenge is to find the three-letter combo that yields the most English words.

Additional restrictions:

  • You can only add one letter
  • You can’t rearrange the three.
  • Words must be English, but obscure or obsolete words are allowed.
  • Proper nouns are not allowed.
  • Anagrams (eg ASAP) are not allowed.
  • Two-letter openings (eg BLAST) may be interesting and you may note them, but are not part of the official count.

Obviously, the theoretical maximum is 26, but I’d be astounded if there is any such combo. For instance, words beginning with Q or X will be very rare. And assuming the first of the three letters is a vowel, you’d have to find words that start with every combination of two vowels.

My guess is that it will he hard to find many combos with word counts higher than 15-16. Is 20 attainable? I’d be pretty surprised.

Please provide your answers in something approaching the format below, and include a brief definition of less obvious words.

I suggest you try searching for every possible initial letter: I found three or four words I didn’t know that way.

AST: 13

  1. BAST (fibrous material from the phloem of a plant, used as fiber in matting, cord, etc.)
  2. CAST
  3. EAST
  4. FAST
  5. GAST (to terrify or frighten)
  6. HAST (obs)
  7. LAST
  8. MAST
  9. OAST (a kiln used for drying hops)
  10. PAST
  11. TAST (Obsolete spelling of TASTE)
  12. VAST
  13. WAST (archaic or dialect second person singular past of be)
2

I did a quick scrape of 4 letter words from the scrabble dictionary.

The winner, with 17 words is ill
bill
dill
fill
gill
hill
jill
kill
mill
nill
pill
rill
sill
till
vill
will
yill
zill

3

Are you asserting that your search of Scrabble words turned up no combo higher than 17, or just that you are the provisional winner so far?

4

I spell nil with one L, and so did Google translate as I dictated this.

EDIT: Nevermind, google tells me that nill is a valid archaic word.

5

Yeah, I had that thought, too, but I’m trying not to be too restrictive.

6

The meat of the question is finding the word list. Identifying the answer once you have the list is trivial.

Technically what he’s saying is that the winner using the Scrabble word list is _ill. In order to beat that, we would have to find a different word list.

7

My search of the entire 4-letter word scrabble list returned that as the highest.

8

Same as -INS?

9

This list only shows 16, but when I search against the Merriam’s Scrabble word search it does show 17. So it look like it’s a tie right now.

10

I’ve seen and used sites like that, but how do you get it to look for any combo of three last letters?

11

[Moderating]
Since this is structured as a game to be played in the thread, Thread Games is a better home for it. Moving.

12

Thanks. I don’t spend much time in either games forum, and wasn’t sure.

Anyone have an answer for my last question?

13

Programmatically, or possibly even just using Excel. Trim off the first character, sort, and you are essentially done.

14

Okay, so not a function of the pages’ own search/sort capabilities. That’s what was confusing me. Thanks.

15

Adding to this:

cill (OED, variant of “sill”)
xill (Dungeons & Dragons, a race of monsters)

Brings it up to 19.