{"id":24628,"date":"2022-07-31T20:55:14","date_gmt":"2022-08-01T01:55:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/?p=24628"},"modified":"2022-07-31T22:22:22","modified_gmt":"2022-08-01T03:22:22","slug":"four-letter-fish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/?p=24628","title":{"rendered":"Four letter fish"},"content":{"rendered":"

I noticed that a recent solution word in the NY Times Spelling Bee was “goby”. I had never heard of a goby, but I ended up getting it right anyway, because there are only so many possible four letter words that start with “go”.<\/p>\n

After I finished the puzzle, I looked up the word, and it turns out that it’s a species of fish. Which wouldn’t be all that notable except that today it happened again.<\/p>\n

In today’s Spelling Bee, one of the solution words was “dace”. Again, I got it only because there are just so many possible four letter words that start with the letters “da”.<\/p>\n

Turns out, a dace is also a species of fish. Which got me wondering: How many four letter words are used in the description of a species of fish?<\/p>\n

Just to satisfy my curiosity, I used a combination of Web search and letter-based pattern matching, and here is what I found:<\/p>\n

\nBass
\nCarp
\nChub
\nDace
\nDrum
\nGoby
\nPike
\nShad
\nTuna<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I know that solving this little puzzle is not going to change the world. But it makes me happy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I noticed that a recent solution word in the NY Times Spelling Bee was “goby”. I had never heard of a goby, but I ended up getting it right anyway, because there are only so many possible four letter words that start with “go”. After I finished the puzzle, I looked up the word, and … Continue reading “Four letter fish”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24628"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24628"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24635,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24628\/revisions\/24635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}