# What kind of people can answer this riddle?

What kind of people can answer the following riddle?

Call a=1, b=2, and so on. What is the longest common English word that can be made from only prime letters?

• is 'a' a prime number? – JMP Feb 7 '17 at 17:49
• No, 1 is not a prime 'round these parts. – histocrat Feb 7 '17 at 18:00
• Nobody, because it is not possible for one person to know the entirety of common English vernacular. Or, alternatively, Queen Elizabeth II and nobody else. – Darren Ringer Feb 7 '17 at 20:26
• I don't think this is a riddle - should the title be changed? – boboquack Feb 8 '17 at 6:38

Heh, yeah.. my next guess:

SE Geeks

• Could "S.E." be (tongue in cheek) added to the front of that to refer to the Stack Exchange version? – Keeta - reinstate Monica Feb 7 '17 at 19:16
• (To borrow from some other answers) Beseems we seek SE web geek. – user3559247 Feb 7 '17 at 23:14
• Changed per request – mkinson Feb 7 '17 at 23:35
• webgeeks seems like a good fit too. – Strawberry Feb 8 '17 at 11:46

The question was "What kind of people can answer this riddle?" So, although @rand al'thor has responded to the longest word, the answer is Stack Exchange Puzzling users.

• Upvoting this answer because it's getting closer to what I had in mind... – histocrat Feb 7 '17 at 18:10
• @hist How many were going to St. Ives... – Bohemian Feb 8 '17 at 0:20

Prime letters:

BCEGKMQSW

Since repetition is not specifically disallowed:

BESEEMS (7)

If that's not "common" enough:

MESSES and EMCEES (6)

• "Emcees" is just "MC" or Master of Ceremonies, so I'm not sure that really counts. – dcfyj Feb 7 '17 at 18:18
• As much as I agree, it's listed in the dictionary as both noun and verb. merriam-webster.com/dictionary/emcee – Matt Feb 7 '17 at 18:21

Here's a longer word considered valid by Hasbro's Scrabble dictionary:

WEEWEES (7): TO URINATE. RELATED WORDS: WEEWEE/WEEWEED/WEEWEEING

I used Litscape which also suggested beseekes (8) but I couldn't find any other source to validate it as a word.

• It's an alternate spelling of beseeches. It appears from the etymology the ch once had the sound of k so the alternate spelling makes sense. – Joshua Feb 7 '17 at 23:12

The prime-numbered letters are:

BCEGKMQSW

The longest words that can be made with these letters appears to be

BECKS.

If you allow the letter A (even though 1 is usually taken to be neither prime nor composite), then the longest word made of only those letters would be

WEBCAMS.

wee, week, meek, web geeks

Though that's more then one word, but a good string of bad adjectives may help.