What set of 3 distinct letters can be rearranged to form the most distinct commonly-recognized three letter acronyms? Bonus points if the things they refer to have nothing in common
D, L, S gives:
LDS (Mormon Church)
LSD (hallucinogenic drug)
DSL (type of high speed internet connection)
A, B, C gives:
ABC: (TV network)
CBA: (Continental Basketball Association)
BAC: (Blood Alcohol Content)
Can anyone think of a set that yields more than 3? (No cheating and looking at some TLA reference site.)
ABC is sometimes used as an alternate for NBC, in terms of military hazmat environments. (Atomic, Biological, and Chemical vs. Nuclear, Biological and Chemical)
C, E and N give:
NEC - National Electric Code
NEC - Navy Enlisted Code (MOS for squids)
NEC - New England Conservatory
NEC - New England College
I can’t think of others at the moment. But I’m sure there are a few.
E, L and T gives:
Engineering Laboratory Technician (Navy chem-radcon techs)
Easy Living Tech (See above, we were accused of being lazy squids)
Euglobulin Lysis Time (a blood test for how well a person’s blood clots)
English Language Teaching
Emergency Location Transmitter (an airgoing EPIRP)
I can’t recall some of the others I’ve seen for those, but I never thought to mix up the letters…
I’m not asking for a single TLA with multiple meanings (ATM, for instance, stands for Asynchronous Transfer Mechanism, Automated Teller Machine and Adobe Type Manager (now obsolete)), but rather a group of 3 letters whose reorderings have the most well-known acronyms among them.
And there was I wondering if you were the kind of person who conintually annoys me by referring to “ATM machines” and “PIN numbers” :).
The maximum number for this challenge is 6, and given how many TLAs there are, I’m sure it’s possible to achieve this (depending on how specialised the fields can be in which the relevant TLAs are used). But, like you, I’m struggling to score more than 3.
NBC : National Broadcasting Corporation
CBN : Christian Broadcasting Network
BNC : Bayonet Neill Conselman (not really known for its acronym but as a connector name)
NCB : National City Bank (perhaps not well known)
Additionally BCN is a typical abbreviation (not acronym) for Barcelona and CNB is the acronym for a few national banks (Czech, for example). Neither of those really qualify, but if they did that is six.
