README.md

word chain challenge

Given a wordlist (say, the English dictionary), if you can remove a letter from a word and the new word is a known word (in the wordlist), this makes a chain of length 2. If you can repeat this for a second time, you continue to the third level, and so on.

For example, the word "trees" has a chain length of 3:

Using the system dictionary (code snippet provided), how long is the longest chain? And which words make the longest chain?

Get started

from words import WORDS

trees.png

words.py

alphabet = 'qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnm'

with open('/usr/share/dict/british-english') as f:
    WORDS = {
        word.strip()
        for word in f
        if all(c in alphabet for c in word.strip())
    }
    print(len(WORDS), 'words')