from Hacker News

Three hundred words you can spell on a calculator [pdf]

by eightturn on 11/19/24, 11:27 AM with 38 comments

  • by gitaarik on 11/24/24, 8:47 AM

    In Dutch culture, among school children we had (have?) this funny thing where you can type in 707, which upside down reads "LOL", which in Dutch actually means "fun" (which funnily enough kind of corrolates with the internet slang abbreviation "lol"). Then if you calculate 707 + 707, so lol + lol, you get 1414, which reads as "hihi", which is an alternative, more giggly version "haha". Actually it kind of works in English too now that I think about it.
  • by LouisLazaris on 11/24/24, 3:24 AM

    Neat list but I’m confused: Why do many of the words on the left use what appears to be a zero character for the letter “O”. I understand why the zeroes are on the right, they just seem out of place on the left. Some of the words (e.g. GLOBS) use a regular letter O but some seem to use a zero (0) (e.g GL0SS)?
  • by blenderob on 11/20/24, 1:00 PM

    A calculator with a "flip display vertically" button can be very interesting! I mean, you can press that button to show tricks like this to your friend. But it can also be used by service staff (think insurance people, car sales people) to do the calculation on their calculator and then just press the button to flip the result and show the result to you. You don't have to turn the calculator upside down because the button can flip the output!
  • by o11c on 11/24/24, 5:12 AM

    In case anyone's curious, the longest word with unique letters (as well as the most distinct letters) is "obliges".

    If we forbid 0, we get "bilges" and "sleigh". Both of which strike me as great opportunities for an extremely obscure Easter egg in an adventure game ...

    Also, for completeness: 0O, 1I, 2Z, 3E, 4H, 5S, 6G, 7L, 8B.

    So you can `grep -ix '[iozehsglb]*' /usr/share/dict/words` yourself.

  • by cbfrench on 11/24/24, 4:06 AM

    Here am I, a grown-ass man, softly giggling to myself over seeing 5318008 on the list. It’s fifth grade all over again.
  • by KineticLensman on 11/24/24, 3:17 PM

    At least three philosophers on the list: Hegel [0] Hobbs[1] Hesse [2]. Curiously all in the 'H's

    [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Wilhelm_Friedrich_Hegel

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angie_Hobbs

    [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Hesse

  • by Epa095 on 11/24/24, 9:49 AM

    Idk what I feel about they choosing 6 (which upside down becomes 9) for 'g', instead of 9 (becoming 6) for G.

    If we look at the translation table we see that most of them can be interpreted as both major and minor caps, while only 4h is locked to lower caps, and 3E, 7L, and 8B is locked to upper.

    I guess 6g kind of brings a balance, but I would prefer 'it's all caps, except 4 which we try to ignore'.

    0O: both caps

    1I: both caps

    2Z: both caps

    3E: upper

    4h: lower

    5S: both caps

    6g: lower

    7L: upper

    8B: upper

  • by hoyd on 11/22/24, 9:50 PM

    This was right up my alley, and inspired by this post, I had to check against the norwegian scrabble dictionary: https://earth.hoyd.net/posts/ord-du-kan-stave-med-en-kalkula...
  • by eightturn on 11/19/24, 11:28 AM

    I was gonna put 344, but HN appears to delete numbers at beginning of submission (til)
  • by probably_wrong on 11/24/24, 2:37 PM

    For more calculator fun, a similar article was discussed here some months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40763931
  • by elchief on 11/24/24, 3:09 AM

    My phone won't open the link but I hope 80087322 is on there
  • by AriedK on 11/24/24, 8:38 AM

    They could add an appendix with word math like 707 + 707 = 1414
  • by kryptiskt on 11/24/24, 7:41 PM

    Last month I was curious about how many words it was possible to express using hex digits with some obvious letter substitutions. Here is the result: https://github.com/melted/hexwords
  • by lurn_mor on 11/24/24, 3:33 PM

    55378008 is missing.
  • by croisillon on 11/24/24, 10:02 AM

    related: How to Entertain with Your Pocket Calculator (33 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35941315