Learning to Adapt

For whatever reason, I have always been fond of food. Sometimes I am a little too fond. By that I mean I tend to eat it rather quickly. The reasoning behind that is the stomach communicates with the brain slowly. It takes about 20 minutes for your stomach to tell your brain that you've had enough to eat (I actually did a bit more research and it's true!) So in order to make sure that my gets the full amount of food, I have to make sure I get as much as possible in before that 20 minute timer goes off. Ok ok, I don't actually shovel food in until 20 minutes are up, but I do have a habit of eating fast usually because the food is just so good.

Because food is always good, I have a strange tendency to block a certain sense of mine. That sense being the hot detector. Let me explain. I'll be eating an egg quesadilla, for instance, and it'll be hot off the grill... I know this because I can feel it's heat semi-burning my hand. I'll take a first bite and it will burn me (obviously, but I'll finish the bite). Then, after just being burned by this delicious egg quesadilla, I'll take another bite, which is still hot (since it's been about 5 secs) and will burn me again (but it's SOO good!). This usually goes on until it cools down enough and I no longer notice the heat or I've finished the food (notice- not until I wait for it to cool). As my Former JV roommate (Renata) said, "A mistake most animals don't repeat."

My rationale is that it probably has had enough time to cool between bites so that it'll be good enough to eat? I'm actually unsure... all I know is that I usually only remember how good it tasted and that it was tasted good hot. Chances are, if I go home tonight and make something hot, I'll burn my mouth... and that'll happen next week too or whenever I make hot things.

So if you find yourself in the same situation (which, contrary to Renata's words, most people find themselves in that situation (I hope)), know that you're not alone, and I too realize you're just trying to eat it before your brain notices that your stomach is full/mouth is on fire.

Thanks for reading!

You've lost at Hangman?

A childhood favorite.. hangman. I'm sure we've all had a bunch of downtime playing the silly game. First you just guessed at random, then learned the vowels, then learned that "E" is the most popular letter, then started reading and learning harder words to guess like "oxymoron" and "lexicon." Now if you ever play (especially with Hanging with Friends), you probably just guess as best you can, but mostly random guesses.

Well get ready for all that to change!

Imagine an engineer/scientist/analyst who got bored one day and did an in depth analysis to the science and statistics behind guessing words for hangman. Well that happened. Now, basically we can be hangman wizards.

So here's the gist of it...  You have some blank spots on a board in front of you that you need to fill in with some letters. The problem is, you need to guess correctly otherwise you die. You aren't too sure but you think the best order to guess in is the following:

ETAOIN SHRDLU CMFWYP VBGKQJ XZ

If you guessed this order, you're close, but still have some refining to do! Maybe you've seen this list before... It's the most common occurrences of letters in literature (from left to right). So basically, if you put some common sense into the way the statistics were formed, you can actually break the letter priority based on word length and what's used in a dictionary/random words, as opposed to priority based on what you'd find in a novel.

What I mean is, if you have a 2 letter word, there are fewer letters to choose from because there aren't a ton of 2 letter words, so your letter priority will be different than a 5 letter word (make sense?). So let's look at the different combinations then based on word length:

Length of Word
	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20
#1	A	A	A	A	S	E	E	E	E	E	E	E	I	I	I	I	I	I	I	I
#2	I	O	E	E	E	S	S	S	S	I	I	I	E	E	E	E	E	S	E	O
#3		E	O	S	A	A	I	I	I	S	S	S	N	T	T	T	T	E	T	E
#4		I	I	O	R	R	A	A	R	R	N	N	T	S	N	S	N	T	O	T
#5		M	T	I	O	I	R	R	A	A	A	T	S	N	S	N	S	O	N	R
#6		H	S	R	I	O	N	N	N	N	R	A	A	A	O	A	O	N	A	S
#7		N	U	L	L	L	T	T	T	T	T	R	O	O	A	O	A	R	S	A
#8		U	P	T	T	N	O	O	O	O	O	O	R	R	R	R	R	A	R	N
#9		S	R	N	N	T	L	L	L	L	L	L	L	L	L	L	L	L	L	C
#10		T	N	U	U	D	D	D	C	C	C	C	C	C	C	C	C	C	C	L
#11		Y	D	D	D	U	U	C	D	D	U	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P	P
#12		B	B	P	C	C	C	U	U	U	D	U	U	U	U	U	U	M	M	H
#13		L	G	M	Y	M	G	G	G	G	P	M	M	M	M	M	M	U	U	U
#14		P	M	H	P	P	P	M	M	M	M	D	G	D	D	H	H	H	H	M
#15		X	Y	C	M	G	M	P	P	P	G	G	D	H	H	D	D	D	D	Y
#16		D	L	B	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	G	G	Y	G	G	G	D
#17		F	H	K	G	B	B	B	B	B	B	Y	Y	Y	Y	G	Y	Y	Y	G
#18		R	W	G	B	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	B	B	B	B	B	B	B	B	B
#19		W	F	Y	K	K	F	F	F	F	F	V	V	V	V	V	V	V	V	Z
#20		G	C	W	F	F	K	K	V	V	V	F	F	F	F	F	F	Z	F	V
#21		J	K	F	W	W	W	W	K	K	K	Z	Z	Z	Z	Z	Z	F	Z	F
#22		K	X	V	V	V	V	V	W	W	W	K	X	X	X	X	X	X	X	K
#23			V	J	Z	Z	Z	Z	Z	Z	Z	W	K	K	W	W	Q	Q	K	X
#24			J	Z	X	X	X	X	X	X	X	X	W	W	K	Q	W	W	J	J
#25			Z	X	J	J	J	Q	Q	Q	Q	Q	Q	Q	Q	K	J	K	Q	Q
#26			Q	Q	Q	Q	Q	J	J	J	J	J	J	J	J	J	K		W

After your mind has recovered from being blown up, you may begin to understand this a bit more. It's saying that if you have a 5 letter word, the most common letter becomes "S" followed by "E" and so on down the list. But if you have a 4 letter word, your best first guess would be "A." Now you're probably saying to yourself, "But if I guess that a 6 letter word will have an E and it doesn't, then priority shifts because it probably contains a vowel so S wouldn't be the next logical guess anymore, but maybe it's the letter A instead?" And to that I would say... you are correct, and smart!

The also might be thinking to yourself, "Is there really no 18 letter word that contains a J? I was just thinking about that the other day." (You also may have too much time on your hands if that's what you're thinking about).

So basically you're just hoping for a cheat sheet you can print out to carry around with you. If you're playing Hanging with Friends or something similar, and get a 14 letter word you want to know what letters to guess. Let me help you out.

Number of letters	Optimal calling order
1	A I
2	A O E I U M B H
3	A E O I U Y H B C K
4	A E O I U Y S B F
5	S E A O I U Y H
6	E A I O U S Y
7	E I A O U S
8	E I A O U
9	E I A O U
10	E I O A U
11	E I O A D
12	E I O A F
13	I E O A
14	I E O
15	I E A
16	I E H
17	I E R
18	I E A
19	I E A
20	I E

BAM!

Let me break down what this means. You get something that looks the following:

5 letter word... Go!

So you should guess S first. If no S, then E. If no E, then A... until you get a letter. Then you should probably just go down that bigger chart up there or use common sense (whichever you're better at). If it's a 6 letter word, use that row. Hopefully you get the idea.

Cool right?

Now you'll be the master at Hangman!

__________________________________________

I can take no credit for this in-depth analysis. I actually used quite a bit of this person's work and must give them credit. Originally found the information here.