{"id":244,"date":"2012-11-05T03:49:06","date_gmt":"2012-11-05T03:49:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/?p=244"},"modified":"2012-11-05T03:49:06","modified_gmt":"2012-11-05T03:49:06","slug":"joons-puzzler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/2012\/11\/05\/joons-puzzler\/","title":{"rendered":"Joon’s puzzler"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joon recently posted the following on Twitter<\/a>:<\/p>\n

wordplay #puzzler: think of two unrelated phrases, both with enumeration 3, 4. the 3-letter words are synonyms; so are the 4-letter words. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, I had just recently downloaded the unbelievably awesome natural language toolkit for Python<\/a> so I thought I’d test it out on this problem. Here’s what I came up with:
\n[python]
\n#!\/usr\/bin\/python<\/p>\n

from nltk.corpus import wordnet as wn
\nimport re
\nimport sys<\/p>\n

myfile = sys.argv[1]
\nword1_length = int(sys.argv[2])
\nword2_length = int(sys.argv[3])<\/p>\n

def get_synonyms(word, length):
\n ”’
\n Gets all synonyms of `word` of length `length`
\n ”’
\n syns = list()
\n synsets = wn.synsets(word)
\n for synset in synsets:
\n for w in synset.lemma_names:
\n if len(w) == length and w != word and w not in syns:
\n syns.append(w)
\n return syns<\/p>\n

fid = open(myfile,’r’)
\ndict = [x.rstrip(‘\\r\\n’) for x in fid.readlines()]
\nfid.close()<\/p>\n

# Slim this down a bit
\nmy_pattern = r’^[a-z]{%i}_[a-z]{%i}$’ % (word1_length, word2_length)
\nmy_phrases = [x for x in dict if re.match(my_pattern,x)]<\/p>\n

# Go through and check
\nfor p in my_phrases:
\n w1 = p[:word1_length]
\n w2 = p[word1_length+1:]
\n # Get synonyms of the appropriate length
\n l1 = get_synonyms(w1,word1_length)
\n l2 = get_synonyms(w2,word2_length)
\n if len(l1) != 0 and len(l2) != 0:
\n for t1 in l1:
\n for t2 in l2:
\n test_phrase = t1 + ‘_’ + t2
\n if test_phrase in my_phrases:
\n print p + ‘ -> ‘ + test_phrase
\n[\/python]<\/p>\n

To use it you will need a fairly comprehensive list of phrases — the data dump from Wiktionary<\/a> is what I used here. Just run it as<\/p>\n

\r\npuzzler.py enwiki.txt 3 4\r\n<\/pre>\n
and it will spit out:<\/p>\n
\r\nbad_lots -> big_deal\r\nbad_lots -> big_band\r\nbad_mind -> big_head\r\nbig_head -> bad_mind\r\nbum_rush -> rat_race\r\nhad_best -> get_well\r\nhit_home -> off_base\r\noff_base -> hit_home\r\nrat_race -> bum_rush\r\n<\/pre>\n
(Yes, WordNet thinks that “big” and “bad” are synonyms<\/a>.)<\/p>\n
You may notice that Joon’s intended answer<\/a> isn’t among the results — one of those phrases wasn’t on Wiktionary … until I added it (it will probably be in the next data dump).<\/p>\n
Anyway!  You may notice that the code offers you room to work with other word lengths.  Is there anything interesting good there?  Well, I kind of like “light switch” and “short-change”.  “Well liquors” and “good spirits” is a good one too.  Anything else?  Feel free to experiment with the code and let me know in the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joon recently posted the following on Twitter: wordplay #puzzler: think of two unrelated phrases, both with enumeration 3, 4. the 3-letter words are synonyms; so are the 4-letter words. Well, I had just recently downloaded the unbelievably awesome natural language … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coding","category-puzzles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":246,"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244\/revisions\/246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}