Disclaimer: This post is pretty old. I keep it around because I’m a sucker for continuity but don’t expect it to be useful, correct or even link to things that still exist.. -DH

I’ve been challenged to a number of increasingly close games of Bananagrams, and I keep being flummoxed by Z’s X’s and Q’s. So I decided to generate a list of words 2 to 6 letters long that use the tricky characters.

For my next trick I’m going to use the same list of the 10,000 most common words and the list of words from an open source Scrabble clone.

Either one on its own gives me words that I don’t want:

cat 10000words.csv | grep -E "^[[:alpha:]]{2,6},"| grep [xzq] > xzq_counts.csv

includes the word “greg” in its 122 words and:

cat sowpods.txt | grep -E "^[[:alpha:]]{2,6}$"| grep [xzq] > xzq.txt

has over 2000 words, many of them like “adzuki” I can’t play with a straight face.

So I’ll make a little script to only give me words that are in both files (i.e. the most common scrabble words). inboth.sh :

echo "word,freq" > inboth.csv
cat xzq.txt | while read search
do
grep "^$search," xzq_counts.csv >> inboth.csv
done

Which gives me 113 words to memorize:

113 2-6 letter words using Z, X or Q, in descending order of frequency:

• quite
• next
• six
• except
• quiet
• ex
• fixed
• equal
• expect
• extent
• quick
• tax
• seized
• box
• size
• square
• text
• dozen
• queen
• excuse
• exact
• gaze
• exist
• gazed
• mixed
• sex
• fix
• oxford
• queer
• taxes
• sixty
• exists
• gazing
• breeze
• prize
• zeal
• quit
• quoted
• seize
• luxury
• exempt
• texas
• extend
• excess
• quoth
• boxes
• liquid
• extra
• frozen
• squire
• exile
• crazy
• liquor
• blaze
• excite
• max
• texts
• sixth
• vexed
• quaint
• wax
• bronze
• sexual
• axe
• lazy
• quest
• fox
• mix
• quote
• expert
• expose
• oxen
• unique
• exceed
• expend
• hazard
• sexes
• fixing
• ox
• sez
• quod
• frenzy
• exert
• quiver
• blazed
• zone
• dazed
• puzzle
• index
• haze
• hazel
• climax
• maxim
• brazil
• quart
• oxygen
• xi
• exit
• extant
• brazen
• axis
• equals
• quaker
• azure
• quarry
• dizzy
• muzzle
• saxony
• stanza
• axes
• cheque
• quay
• sequel