# Three letter words question
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/three-letter-words-question/534075
**Category:** The Game Room
**Created:** [March 28, 2010, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/three-letter-words-question/534075 "2010-03-28T02:17:15Z")
**Posts on this page:** 16
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)
#### Post date: [March 28, 2010, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/three-letter-words-question/534075/1 "2010-03-28T02:17:15Z")
I’ll say right off the bat I don’t have an answer for this. So this is a question not a puzzle.
Is there any group of three letters that can be rearranged to spell six different words?
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### Author:  [@OldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldGuy)
#### Post date: [March 28, 2010, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/three-letter-words-question/534075/2 "2010-03-28T02:55:48Z")
The best I can do is tea ate eat eta tae aet.
And the last aren’t very good
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### Author:  [@Rysto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rysto)
#### Post date: [March 28, 2010, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/three-letter-words-question/534075/3 "2010-03-28T03:07:16Z")
The most I can find in my dictionary file of 838 three-letter words is 4:
eat
tea
ate
eta
sap
asp
spa
pas
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### Author:  [@Zeldar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeldar)
#### Post date: [March 28, 2010, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/three-letter-words-question/534075/4 "2010-03-28T04:46:18Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#):
>
> I’ll say right off the bat I don’t have an answer for this. So this is a question not a puzzle.
>
> Is there any group of three letters that can be rearranged to spell six different words?
Think of the numbers 123. With those digits you could rearrange them to be:
123
132
213
231
312
321
All that you need are three letters that can be in each position of a 3-letter word and have those be real words.
I’d like to see them, too.
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### Author:  [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)
#### Post date: [March 28, 2010, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/three-letter-words-question/534075/5 "2010-03-28T04:56:05Z")
It doesn’t state that the words must be 3-letter words.
eat
tea
ate
eta
at
a
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### Author:  [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)
#### Post date: [March 28, 2010, 6:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/three-letter-words-question/534075/6 "2010-03-28T06:31:40Z")
> [@](#):
>
> It doesn’t state that the words must be 3-letter words.
If you can come up with an arrangment of three letters that doesn’t contain three letters I’d like to see it.
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### Author:  [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)
#### Post date: [March 28, 2010, 7:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/three-letter-words-question/534075/7 "2010-03-28T07:19:04Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#):
>
> If you can come up with an arrangment of three letters that doesn’t contain three letters I’d like to see it.
> [@](#):
>
> **Is there any group of three letters that can be rearranged to spell six different words?**
That’s not how your original question reads.
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### Author:  [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)
#### Post date: [March 28, 2010, 7:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/three-letter-words-question/534075/8 "2010-03-28T07:56:10Z")
“A group of three letters that can be rearranged”. How would one letter or two letters qualify as a group of three letters?
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### Author:  [@OldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldGuy)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2010, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/three-letter-words-question/534075/9 "2010-03-29T00:15:34Z")
> [@OldGuy](#):
>
> The best I can do is tea ate eat eta tae aet.
> And the last aren’t very good
Maybe I wasn’t clear. The six words above are words at least according to some dictionaries.
aet “aged (a specific number of years); at the age of” according to Webster’s New World College Dictionary.
tae is the first word of tae kwon do (It’s also a Scottish word for “to”.)
So if you’ll take those two rare words, you can arrange those three letters into the six possible words.
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### Author:  [@Sternvogel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sternvogel)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2010, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/three-letter-words-question/534075/10 "2010-03-29T22:12:29Z")
I’ve seen each of the following used in crossword puzzles (only one definition given for each, as some can be clued in many different ways):
AER – As in the Irish airline, Aer Lingus.
ARE – Unit of metric measure of land area (one-hundredth of a hectare)
EAR – Organ of hearing
ERA – Period of time
RAE – Actress Charlotte \_\_\_\_
REA – Singer Chris \_\_\_
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### Author:  [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2010, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/three-letter-words-question/534075/11 "2010-03-29T22:15:16Z")
> [@OldGuy](#):
>
> tae is the first word of tae kwon do (It’s also a Scottish word for “to”.)
> .
Who put whiskey in me tae?
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### Author:  [@Zeldar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeldar)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2010, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/three-letter-words-question/534075/12 "2010-03-29T22:20:39Z")
> [@Sternvogel](#):
>
> I’ve seen each of the following used in crossword puzzles (only one definition given for each, as some can be clued in many different ways):
>
> AER – As in the Irish airline, Aer Lingus.
>
> ARE – Unit of metric measure of land area (one-hundredth of a hectare)
>
> EAR – Organ of hearing
>
> ERA – Period of time
>
> RAE – Actress Charlotte \_\_\_\_
>
> REA – Singer Chris \_\_\_
I’ll vote for this list being valid. There’s also Stephen Rea of _The Crying Game_ notoriety.
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### Author:  [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2010, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/three-letter-words-question/534075/13 "2010-03-29T22:38:15Z")
> [@Sternvogel](#):
>
> ARE – Unit of metric measure of land area (one-hundredth of a hectare)
There is a far more common English word spelled ARE 🙂
(It’s actually been used in several posts in this thread).
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### Author:  [@Autolycus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Autolycus)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2010, 8:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/three-letter-words-question/534075/14 "2010-04-05T08:55:05Z")
> [@An\_Gadai](#):
>
> Who put whiskey in me tae?
Oh no! A tie-fighter shot down my tae.
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### Author:  [@palindromemordnilap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/palindromemordnilap)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2010, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/three-letter-words-question/534075/15 "2010-04-05T13:27:18Z")
> [@needscoffee](#):
>
> That’s not how your original question reads.
If we’re playing gotcha, then I will suggest the letters a-c-t, which can be rearranged to spell c-a-t, which qualifies as multiple words since it has many distinct definitions, such as:
1 a mammal (Felis catus)
2 a malicious woman
3 catamaran
4 cat-o’-nine-tails
5 catfish
6 a jazz musician
I don’t think this is what the OP has in mind, however.
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### Author:  [@Deeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Deeg)
#### Post date: [January 31, 2013, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/three-letter-words-question/534075/16 "2013-01-31T18:21:51Z")
Semi-zombie warning (your friend is only _mostly_ dead)…
I wrote a short script to look for a solution. Using only words recognized by Scrabble there is no solution that results in 6 words. AET comes closest with 5. For some reason Scrabble recognizes ZZZ as a word, which comes close but doesn’t fulfill all the requirements.
If anybody has a larger dictionary they can send me or point me to I can run it on those. I wonder if the complete list of Wikipedia entries is available?