Fickleheaded, blackballed, and blackmailed share a peculiar property. Similarly soupspoons, topsy-turvy, and nonsupport share a related but not identical property. What are the two properties exhibited by these groups of words?

The first three words -- fickleheaded, blackballed and blackmailed -- share the property of being three of the longest common English words that are entirely comprised of letters of the first half of the alphabet (A-M).  Soupspoons, topsy-turvy and nonsupport share the similar property of being three of the longest common English words that, with the exception of a hyphen in topsy-turvy, are entirely comprised of letters of the second half of the alphabet (N-Z).

Posted by Dej Mar on 2007-11-26 21:14:43