FWIW, I have the original Wordle target wordlist (before the NYTimes got a hold of Wordle), and CODON is not in the list as a possible answer word (it is in the acceptable guess list). So that’s how popular the original creator thought it was, at least.
And to finish off that primer, even though there are 64 possible “words”, there are only 20 different amino acids, plus one codon that doesn’t code for an amino acid, just tells it to stop. Most amino acids have multiple different “spellings”.
Also notable, all life on Earth (or at least, all we’ve ever tested) uses the same codons for the same amino acids, which is extremely strong evidence that it’s all ultimately related.
There are three stop codons, but yes, there is start, stop, and lots of redundant words.
There is a hypothesis that there were originally only two letters in a codon, which has only 16 possible words. Adding a third letter bumped that up to 64, which gave room to add more amino acid options, but it appears that there was no need for 60 amino acids so some words remained redundant.
I was a pre med major for a couple years back in the late 1970s and remember the genetic classes but not this word in particular.
Ditto. But I’ve read a lot about genetics; I doubt I ever heard the word in school, and it’s unlikely I’d remember it if that was the only time I heard it.
I knew that the word had something to do with genetics but couldn’t say precisely what. I worked in medicines licensing, and so I assume that’s how I came across it.
j
I had some education on genetics and DNA in high school biology class, and in a college class (must have been chemistry, I never took a college biology class), I had to read a book about Crick and Watson and the discovery of DNA.
But, that was over 40 years ago, and if I learned the word back then, it was no longer in my brain when I opened this thread.
A codon could also be a handbell or a trumpet bell
Just remembered a relevant XKCD
Probably this one.
I know the word. Probably because i read a lot of science papers and stuff. But i would never have expected it to be a curated Wordle word, because it’s too obscure/technical. I would expect it to be a legal guess, though.
Almost correct. There are a number of alternate genetic codes that use slightly different codons for various reasons. About 37 here:
Significantly, mitochondrial codons are slightly different from the standard code, which suggests that Lynn Margulis was right to suggest they evolved separately.
I took a high school physiology class in 1967. What I remember from the genetics portion was the Mendelian boxes, and how it suggested my parents should have had three out of four kids brown-eyed. But none were. The teacher said they would have needed to have at least 100 kids for the percentages to be close to the predictions. That was never gonna happen.
Etymonline put the coining of codon as 1962. The first hit I found on Google Books was a scientific paper from 1963. Virtually every other hit before 1970 was also a specialist document.
I’m sure I didn’t know the word in high school and I took biology in 1963-4. I must it learned in later in popular science books or mags. Some words are suited only for puzzles.
Wiktionary says that, but if you dig into the sources, they seem to be citing a book from 1608.
Codon is also a genus of a South African plant. You should have hit us with that one.
Nope. And i did take upper division Life sciences, getting a degree in ecology. But that was a loooooong time ago, admittedly.
Yep, significantly older.
Sure, but they’re still citing it in 1899 and 1914, so it’s not like Wiktionary made it up.
I don’t consider scientific names suitable for that kind of word game. But you know why the genus has that name? Because the flowers of heuningbos are bell-shaped.
I was unfamiliar with CODON.
My standard test for whether a word is widely known uses onelook.com. When you enter a word in the Onelook search box, it provides the results from about 30 general online dictionaries, as well as from various specialty dictionaries.
An everyday word, such as BIRD or FRIGHT will get 26-30 “general” dictionary hits. CODON gets just 17, but including scientific and specialty dictionaries gets over 40 hits (which is very high).
I’ll use this test regularly when decidIng what word to guess in Wordle. I’ll also use it when I’m outraged that I can’t play LIGNIN in Spelling Bee.
What are words and what words should be in a dictionary, even an unabridged one, have been screamingly debated probably since 1608. Are linnaean descriptors words? No standard dictionary contains more than a tiny fraction. Some in common use do make it into crossword puzzles, though. Same with name of chemicals and other scientific terms.
Obsolete words do get culled regularly no matter the size of the dictionary. I clicked on a number of links from onelook. Wiktionary was the only one to include the older definitions. If a word hasn’t been cited for more than a century it’s fair to say that the usage is obsolete. Obsolete words usually are banned even from crossword puzzles, so they are unlikely to be used in Wordle.
I believe that every person has a unique set of what they consider “words”, dictionaries notwithstanding. That’s why standard references are the final arbitrator in Wordle, Scrabble, and many other places.
Informal Scrabble games played according to my house rules allow any word that everyone at the table agrees is a word.
I used to play with a friend (she died a few years ago, I miss her) who insisted on using the official Scrabble dictionary. I found it both limiting and confusing – why on earth is it allowing this word and not that one? And why is it allowing all these odd unusual abbreviations?