George and Thalia Elizabeth's 1000th Post Contest!

This is officially my/our one thousandth post (regardless of what the counter next to my name says!) and as such, it's time for a little celebration.

First, in honor of the milestone, I have made a small donation to support CoinTalk, and I encourage everyone to support this board in any way you can. Wish it was more, Peter... but the washing machine needed to be "body bagged" recently... ouch... so much for the numismatic budget.

Second, I'd like to acknowledge all of you who have been such friends with us since we joined, especially those of you (and you know who you are!) who have honored Thalia Elizabeth with help with her collection.

And third... and probably what you're here for... our modest contest.

Although I have not seen it more than a few times, I find the British game show "Countdown" to be quite fascinating. One of the games is making the longest possible word out of letters that are randomly picked from stacks of vowels and consonants. I'm usually quite outclassed by the contestants!

So, here is the challenge: what is the longest common word in English (either "the Queen's" or "American"... OK, Aussie and Canadian is OK too) that can be made from the letters contained in the phrase

one thousand posts

???

Rules:

1) Just post your answer right here on this thread, so others can see what it will take to have the winner.

2) I have to be able to find the word in a regularly used dictionary, either hard copy or online. If you want to help save me some time, please feel free to cite a definition for me (and probably teach me a new word...)

3) It doesn't matter what the word is, it's the number of letters that counts. In case of ties, the first post with the most number of letters wins.

4) However, I'm excluding proper names and scientific terms not in common usage. Otherwise, someone from Wales or a chemistry major would be a shoo-in to win, and that's not really fair... :headbang:

5) No words that wouldn't be allowed on a regular CT post by the moderators. Besides, I know you can do better than "four letter words" :whistle:

6) I'll close the contest on Monday night, 27 May 2009, at 9PM Eastern Time so that I can get a PM from the winner and get your winnings out the door on Tuesday.

7) You can use as many occurances of the letter as there are in the phrase "one thousand posts". For example, the letter s appears three times in the phrase, so it is OK to submit a word with three s's, for example "sashes" (which also means that plurals are OK) which counts for six letters. However, it's not OK to submit "possess" because that has four s's.

But speaking of possess... here is the item that you will possess if you win, and it's appropriate, I think, for this 2009 bicentennial of Lincoln's birth plus the 50th anniversary of a certain cent...




Good luck, let's have some fun!

As they say on "Countdown": time starts now...

 

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got the rules now!

spontaneous- 11 letters- proceeding from natural feeling or native tendency without external constraint

 

Wow, that is a great start... OK, I think that UMN25 has thrown down the gauntlet here...

BTW, did you come up with that "spontaneously"?

Those of you familiar with the history of Spinal Tap's drummers also know something about the word...

 

LOL!

Actually yes! I asked my mom, "Do you like waffles?!" and she said I was so random and spontaneous, I looked at the phrase, "THANKS MOM!!!"

 

also vomit great movie

 

snapshotted-11 damn

 

Too easy to cheat on this one. ONE THOUSAND POSTS has exactly 16 letters...which forms a 4 x 4 grid...which happens to match the grid you get in the game Boggle. Lots of websites and programs out there where you enter the letters from the Boggle board and it generates all the possible answers. Spontaneous seems to be the biggest I've seen one of them come up with. Some of them even miss that one and list Handouts as the longest word.

 

sousaphones

 

I checked im pretty sure no word is larger than 11...

 

yep...11 would be your winner...he was first but i did 2 so i win 2=22 lol PLEASE i wanna win!

 

NEVERMIND!!! I WAS WRONG!!!!!
12 LETTERS WOOTT!!!! phototonuses (by the way British English)

1. the normal condition of sensitiveness to light in organisms or their organs.
2. the irritability exhibited by cytoplasm when exposed to light of a certain intensity.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/phototonuses

 

Cool contest!

 

That may violate rule #4

 

Hmm, the judges may have to confer on "phototonuses". Having it in a commonly used dictionary website is a plus, though.

Was it really necessary to discuss the "cheat"?

 

whats thw cheat? I wnaa know!!!

 

My choice for a common word that is likley to be used in text would be environmentalists-17

Thanks for the contest

 

Unless I missed something, you cannot have a word over 16 letters according to rule #7. There are only 16 letters in "ONE THOUSAND POSTS" and you may only use each letter (occurrence) once.

 

Thanks, Then, environmentalist-16?

 

A few 16 letter words.

acknowledgements
administration's
autobiographical
catastrophically
depressurization
disproportionate
environmentalism
incomprehensible
melodramatically
misunderstanding
responsibilities
unpredictability

 

it has to be from the phrase "one thousand posts"