The English letters A E and R can produce “are,” “era,” and “ear,” but “aer” and “rae” are not words. A E and T produce “eat,” “ate,” and “tea,” but no others.
Are they any English words whose letters – all of them, no more no less – can produce more words?
Just off the top of my head, there’s STOP, POST, POTS, TOPS, and OPTS for 5.
ETA: I’d argue that “eta” is a word.
But is it an English word or a Greek one?
Based on what makes different words “different”, my guess would be
Rates, Tares, Stare, Tears (pulls apart), Tears (crying), Aster, Taser, Resat
Is it time for another Python script?
You forgot SPOT for six.
If we’re going to go that route, is “mu” an English word or a Greek word? Because it’s not a Greek word, or at least, not a modern Greek word. Modern Greeks call \mu “mi”. Or, I suppose, \mu\iota.
But the Greek letters (at least, in their classical spellings) show up in most English dictionaries, so I think I’m OK with calling them English words.
I found ten:
least, setal, slate, stale, steal, stela, taels, tales, teals, tesla
Worth looking into, but what is the official wordlist?
“Pears” is pretty good, as is “stare”.
Listen, silent, tinsel, enlist for a longer word.
I do puzzles regularly, anagram magic square deals with this.
If using something as unseemly as the Scrabble Dictionary as your guide, “tae” is a word in addition to already mentioned letters used in math and physics, often for small values.
With 6 letters we can do crates / traces / reacts / caster / carets / recast / caters for at least 7.
This is exactly right. Any headword (which are virtually always in boldface) in an English dictionary is an English word. If it wasn’t then they wouldn’t be defining it in an English dictionary.
Note that I’m not saying that all English words are headwords in some dictionary. There are lots of English words that don’t make it into dictionaries.
Not as good as some of the above, but there’s
SHEAR
SHARE
HARES
RHEAS
HEARS
No as good as many others
EARS
ERAS
SEAR
ARSE
You found seven in post #3.
If tears as in ripping something and tears as in crying are considered separate words. The judges haven’t made a decision.
What someone came up with:
Apparently one of us can’t count.
