# Longest anagram
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-anagram/358666
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [May 29, 2006, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-anagram/358666 "2006-05-29T22:49:46Z")
**Posts on this page:** 12
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@dauerbach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dauerbach)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2006, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-anagram/358666/1 "2006-05-29T22:49:46Z")
I’ve been trying to think of a word of greater than four letters that make a single word anagram of identical length. Four is the most I can think of. Anyone have hany ideas?
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### Author:  [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2006, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-anagram/358666/2 "2006-05-29T22:51:18Z")
Try googling ‘longest anagram’. [http://www.asdf.org/~anna/grams/12to17.html](http://www.asdf.org/~anna/grams/12to17.html)
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### Author:  [@Majikthise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Majikthise)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2006, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-anagram/358666/3 "2006-05-29T23:32:58Z")
> [@GorillaMan](#):
>
> Try googling ‘longest anagram’. [http://www.asdf.org/~anna/grams/12to17.html](http://www.asdf.org/~anna/grams/12to17.html)
Here are a few that are not listed in the above website (it seems they don’t include anagrams that repeat strings of more than three letters):
petrographically = pterylographical (16)
nonconservational = nonconversational (17)
incontrovertibility = introconvertibility (19)
impressivenesses = permissivenesses (16)
There are also a few that follow the form whatever-ism = mis-whatever:
configurationism = misconfiguration (16)
constitutionalism = misconstitutional (17)
representationism = misrepresentation (17)
Here are some larger sets of anagrams:
gramophonically = monographically = nomographically (15)
peridiastolic = periodicalist = pictorialised = proidealistic (13)
espringal = graplines = pearlings = presignal = relapsing = spanglier (9)
arsenites = atrienses = irateness = resinates = stearines = teariness (9)
All of the above words are found in the Linux words file. I’d be interested to see if anyone can guess the simple algorithm I used to generate these.
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### Author:  [@twickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/twickster)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2006, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-anagram/358666/4 "2006-05-29T23:50:10Z")
I was gonna give you a couple of six-letter words (how lame of me!):
Nicest/incest
Smiled/misled
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### Author:  [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)
#### Post date: [May 30, 2006, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-anagram/358666/5 "2006-05-30T01:59:00Z")
> [@dauerbach](#):
>
> I’ve been trying to think of a word of greater than four letters that make a single word anagram of identical length.
How could an anagram be anything other than identical length? 😕
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### Author:  [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)
#### Post date: [May 30, 2006, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-anagram/358666/6 "2006-05-30T02:49:54Z")
> [@Askance](#):
>
> How could an anagram be anything other than identical length? 😕
In anagramming, 14, for example, doesn’t equal 5+3+6, because one long word is not three short words.
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### Author:  [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)
#### Post date: [May 30, 2006, 8:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-anagram/358666/7 "2006-05-30T08:55:54Z")
> [@Majikthise](#):
>
> All of the above words are found in the Linux words file. I’d be interested to see if anyone can guess the simple algorithm I used to generate these.
Well, a **simple** algorithm would be to store all the words in a hash and then go through each trying all the combinations and checking if those exist in the hash. …which sounds a bit time consuming.
A **real** , and still relatively simply method, would be to store a letter count as a string and use that as a key into a hash which contained in each slot a list of the words which hashed to it.
So for instance, dog might go to:
0-0-1-0-0-1-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-1-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0 (i.e. one ‘d’, one ‘g’, and one ‘o’)
Which will of course also be the key created by ‘god’
From there, it’s just a matter of sorting the contents of your hash.
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### Author:  [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)
#### Post date: [May 30, 2006, 8:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-anagram/358666/8 "2006-05-30T08:59:24Z")
> [@Sage Rat](#):
>
> 0-0-1-0-0-1-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-1-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
I missed the leading zero. Properly that should be 0-0-0-1-0-0-1-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-1-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
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### Author:  [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)
#### Post date: [May 30, 2006, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-anagram/358666/9 "2006-05-30T13:35:35Z")
“Interlaminations” and “Internationalism” are a pair of 16-letter instances.
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### Author:  [@ianzin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ianzin)
#### Post date: [May 30, 2006, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-anagram/358666/10 "2006-05-30T14:37:34Z")
> [@dauerbach](#):
>
> I’ve been trying to think of a word of greater than four letters that make a single word anagram of identical length. Four is the most I can think of.
I’m wondering if there’s something intended by the OP that we’re all missing. I say this only because it’s hard to believe someone would be unable to find five-letter words that form anagram pairs. I don’t mean any disrespect to **dauerbach** , but you don’t have to be a genius word puzzle geek to notice things like table / bleat, steam / mates, crate / trace and so on. There are lots of very common five-letter words that are anagrams of others. Even six- and seven-letter anagram pairs are not hard to find.
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### Author:  [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)
#### Post date: [May 30, 2006, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-anagram/358666/11 "2006-05-30T15:16:55Z")
> [@dauerbach](#):
>
> I’ve been trying to think of a word of greater than four letters that make a single word anagram of identical length. Four is the most I can think of. Anyone have any ideas?
letters -\> settler -\> trestle
ideas -\> aides -\> aside
Those appear to be the only two from your post that will anagram out (well besides “single” which goes to “engles” which isn’t a word I know.)
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### Author:  [@Majikthise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Majikthise)
#### Post date: [May 30, 2006, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-anagram/358666/12 "2006-05-30T15:25:48Z")
> [@Sage Rat](#):
>
> Well, a **simple** algorithm would be to store all the words in a hash and then go through each trying all the combinations and checking if those exist in the hash. …which sounds a bit time consuming.
>
> A **real** , and still relatively simply method, would be to store a letter count as a string and use that as a key into a hash which contained in each slot a list of the words which hashed to it.
>
> So for instance, dog might go to:
>
> 0-0-1-0-0-1-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-1-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0 (i.e. one ‘d’, one ‘g’, and one ‘o’)
>
> Which will of course also be the key created by ‘god’
>
> From there, it’s just a matter of sorting the contents of your hash.
That’s pretty close to what I did, except I used a somewhat simpler hash function: simply write the letters of the word in alphabetical order. I now have a wordlist file with 2 columns: first is the “hash,” and column 2 has the actual word. The rows are sorted alphabetically by column 1. Then all I have to do is search for duplicate hashes, filtering out words that are below a threshold length.
Coincidentally, the 2-column word list is also handy for solving the Jumble in the daily paper: Just look up the letters, and the unscrambled word is right there next to it. If you printed the list out, you could even unscramble words without a computer.