Will Shortz (the renowned American puzzle creator) maintains that Cabbagehead is the word of lowest possible gematria(i.e. a=1, b=2,...…and z=26) in the set of 11 – letter words.

a. What about Cabbagehead 's neighbors i.e. words of 10 letter and 12 letters?
Please provide your candidates for the lowest gematria.

b.Maybe you can find a lower (than Cabbagehead ) gematria within the list of 11 –letter words?

The undersigned has no idea what the solutions are.

(In reply to computer findings by Charlie)

The word list I have did not have cabbagehead(s), either, though the word can be found in the Unabridged Random House and Unabridged Merriam-Webster's Dictionaries. Below, I listed the one-, two- and three-letter words with the lowest gematria found for their word lengths, and those words that had a lower gematria for the word lengths in Charlie's list (but for abaca, for which I only included Caaba).

 1  1: a
 2  2: aa    [a dry form of lava]
 3  4: aba    [fabric/garment of goat/camel hair]
    &  baa    [cry made by sheep]
 5  8: abaca    [Philippine banana tree; abaca hemp]
    &  Caaba    [cubic stone building of Mecca]
 6  11:Ababda    [Nilotic Beja nomad(s)]
 7  20:cachaca    [a white Brazilian rum]
 9  30:beccaccia    [Italian loan word - a woodcock]
12  58:cabbageheads    [stupid people]
15 110:bacchanalianism    [drunken revelry]

The gematria is, of course, listed for words found in English language dictionaries. There are words in other languages that have a lower gematria for some given word lengths, for example:
 3  3:aaa    [Romanian interjection; Lugandan "no"]
 6 10:babaca    [Romanian "old woman, mom"]
 7 10:abababa    [Tok Pisin "bubble gum"]

Posted by Dej Mar on 2015-05-08 13:03:42