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Three hundred words you can spell on a calculator [pdf]
- eightturn 2y agoI was gonna put 344, but HN appears to delete numbers at beginning of submission (til)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- macintux 2y agoIn discussions where HN has truncated/mangled a title, people have indicated that you can edit your submission after the fact to fix it. I don't know whether that's accurate, or whether there's a time limit.
- fuzztester 2y agoiirc you can edit submissions after the fact. and there probably is a time limit, since there is one for editing comments too.
- blenderob 2y agoA 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!
- amelius 2y agoOr a calculator with two displays. One for you, and one for the customer. I think many cash registers already have something like this. Segment displays are cheap, so it makes sense.
- hoyd 2y agoThis 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-kalkulator/ https://earth.hoyd.net/posts/ord-du-kan-stave-med-en-kalkula...
- elchief 2y agoMy phone won't open the link but I hope 80087322 is on there
- croisillon 2y agoyou need to put your phone upside down for the link to open
- JoBrad 2y agoIf a website could detect whether the device is upside down, that would make for a truly excellent Easter egg.
- LouisLazaris 2y agoNeat 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)?
- lurn_mor 2y agoTheres also a lot of 8's on the left instead of B...
- analog31 2y agoIt may have been typed in the 1970s. When I was growing up, my family used my mom's college typewriter, which did not have numeral 1 or 0 keys. Instead, you typed a lowercase L and an uppercase O. It was one of the typing habits, and you didn't even think about it. When she took a computer programming class, around 1979, the terminals had all of the numerals, and of course she was constantly mixing them up, causing errors. A year later she became the teacher of that class, and completed the requirements for a CS major by staying a semester ahead of her students for a few years. She always reminded her students: "Computers are stupid. They will do exactly what you tell them." The typewriter that I got for college had all of the numbers. Of course I used it for about a year before ditching it for a word processor. But everybody kept an old typewriter around for many years after that, because you might need one for filling out a form.
- tobr 2y agoHappy that someone else also spotted this.
- cbfrench 2y agoHere am I, a grown-ass man, softly giggling to myself over seeing 5318008 on the list. It’s fifth grade all over again.
- rhplus 2y agoSurprised the list is missing the silly school joke: 55378008
- o11c 2y agoIn 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.
- DonHopkins 2y ago"L7" is hippie sign language for "square".
- m463 2y agoI remember SHELLOIL (71077345) was the longest word that would fit in my calculator... except I guess it is TWO words. hillbillies never would have fit
- jlarcombe 2y ago55378008 was ubiquitous at English schools in the 80s and 90s...
- therealpygon 2y agoAh yes, the standard counterpart to 5318008.
- m463 2y agowhat they want, they get?
- AriedK 2y agoThey could add an appendix with word math like 707 + 707 = 1414
- gitaarik 2y agoIn 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.
- Toutouxc 2y agoCool, in Czech "haha" (the regular one) and "hihi" (the more giggly/playful/naughty one) have the same relationship. I wonder what other languages use it.
- weard_beard 2y agoIn English this is, “hehe” “Hi hi” would be interpreted as saying hello 2x in quick succession when you are excited to see someone. We also sometimes use “kk” to mean, “okay, got it.” But emphasized or excited.
- mkotowski 2y agoActually, in English it is pronounced the same as in Czech and Polish: /hɛhɛ/ or /hihi/ (as far as I know). Both are written respectively as "hehe" and "hihi" and are valid expressions for denoting laughter in Polish (and as I assume, it works similarly in Czech).
- weard_beard 2y agoPronounced the same, spelled different. Got it.
- gyomu 2y agoSame in French
- 2y ago
- Epa095 2y agoIdk 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
- croisillon 2y agorelated: How to Entertain with Your Pocket Calculator (33 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35941315 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35941315
- probably_wrong 2y agoFor more calculator fun, a similar article was discussed here some months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40763931 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40763931
- KineticLensman 2y agoAt 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Wilhelm_Friedrich_Hegel [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angie_Hobbs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angie_Hobbs [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Hesse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Hesse
- lurn_mor 2y ago55378008 is missing.
- benj111 2y agoIt is and its in the dictionary Adjective boobless 1. (slang) Without boobs (breasts). https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/boobless https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/boobless Which also includes an audio pronunciation, which should be invaluable to all teenage boys.
- kryptiskt 2y agoLast 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 https://github.com/melted/hexwords