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The idea for this challenge stems from this posting on ComputerScience (beta).

It is established (see above link), that Morse-code requires the 'space' between individual character to be uniquely decipherable.

The answer of Aaron Dufour there defines the term morsagram as a pair of messages which, encoded in morse code become identical if the spaces are left out. His provided example is:

SPACES = | ... | .--. | .- | -.-. | . | ... | = ....--..--.-.....
and
SWITCH = | ... | .-- | .. | - | -.-. | .... | = ....--..--.-.....


I now challenge to find the longest morsagram pair of words in English.

To remove ambiguity, and in analogy to this puzzle, all English words which appear on dictionary.com are permitted.

You may only use the Morse-code equivalents for the 26 characters of the international Morse code table.

As consequence of the rule above: solutions are case-insensitive. Use capital letters for all.

Also: The two words of the morsagram may be of different length when written in English.

The winning condition is to find the longest words (sum of both lengths of the English words).

A bonus is to find the most interesting pair. This, of course, is highly subjective. Interesting may be one of the following: most different characters; opposite meaning; two very common but otherwise unrelated words; words with have another surprising connection...

A second bonus question is to find the most interesting sentences which are morsograms.
Again, an example is already provided in the linked posting above:

SOS HELP = |...|---|...|....|.|.-..|.--.| = ...---.........-...--.
and
I AM HIS DATE = |..|.-|--|....|..|...|-..|.-|-|.| = ...---.........-...--.

For this bonus-question, disregards punctuation in the Morse-code.

I will accept and un-accept answers for the winning condition as new records are brought in.

Up-votes should be given to answers which you believe fulfil the bonus condition.

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    $\begingroup$ Do you want us to refrain from writing code? Otherwise, it's fairly simple to brute force. $\endgroup$
    – xnor
    Commented Dec 11, 2014 at 11:21
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    $\begingroup$ already brute-forced it for like 2 min (code-writing included) $\endgroup$
    – dmg
    Commented Dec 11, 2014 at 11:28
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    $\begingroup$ Nice contest! I considered brute-forcing it but hadn't found the time yet. The linked answer has a link to a pastebin containing code that takes in morse code (without spaces) and returns all possible phrases (based on a given dictionary). Its fairly easy to modify this to take a phrase and return all morsagrams of that phrase, which makes searching for interesting phrases easier. $\endgroup$
    – Aaron Dufour
    Commented Dec 11, 2014 at 15:57
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    $\begingroup$ The follow-up question to this should be the longest possible morse palindrome. $\endgroup$
    – No. 7892142
    Commented Dec 12, 2014 at 8:01
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    $\begingroup$ I’m voting to close this question because open-ended puzzles are off-topic as of May 2019 $\endgroup$
    – bobble
    Commented Jul 21, 2021 at 18:42

2 Answers 2

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Longest word-pair so far:

.--..-..-.-.----.-.--.--.---.-..--..---..-...
18: PRECONTEMPORANEOUS
19: PENECONTEMPORANEOUS

Most interesting pair:

The pairs with greatest difference in length (omitting abr.):
-.-.-.---.-.: TENTAMEN, CYC, (len 8,3)
.---.-.-.--.: JAAP, ATTENTATE, (len 4,9)
-.-.---.--.: COP, TENTMATE, (len 3,4,4,8,4)

OR

......-.-.-.-.........-........: HURTLESSNESS, HEARTLESSNESS, (len 12, 13)
Are you hurtless when heartless?

OR

The UNs ..--......--..-.--.: UNSEEMING, UNSEWING, UNSEATING, UNSITTING, UNHATING, (len 9,8,9,9,8)

Brute forced top 20:

.--..-..-.-.----.-.--.--.---.-..--..---..-...: PRECONTEMPORANEOUS, PENECONTEMPORANEOUS, (len 18,19)
....--..-.....---.-..-----...-.-..-.-...-..-.--: SEMITHEOLOGICALLY, SEMIBIOLOGICALLY, (len 17,16)
.--.....-.--.....-.-.----.....---.-..-----...-.-..-.-..: PHYSICOBIOLOGICAL, PHYSICOTHEOLOGICAL, (len 17,18)
-.----....-..-...-.--....-...-........: NONIRRITABLENESS, NONVERITABLENESS, (len 16,16)
..--.-....--..-.............-.-........: UNDEPRESSIVENESS, UNDIGRESSIVENESS, (len 16,16)
-.----.-.....---.-..-----...-.-..-.-...-..-.--: NONTHEOLOGICALLY, NONBIOLOGICALLY, (len 16,15)
.--..-.-.-..-...-....-..--.-.-........--.: PECTINIBRANCHIAN, PECTINIBRANCHIATE, (len 16,17)
.--...-.....-.-..--.-.....-.---.--...-..: PITHECANTHROPINE, PITHECANTHROPID, (len 16,15)
-........-.-....-...-.-..--..----.: DESERTIFICATION, DESULFURATION, (len 15,13)
..-...-...------....-..--.-.-........--.: ELASMOBRANCHIAN, ELASMOBRANCHIATE, (len 15,16)
.--..--.....--.--..-.-..-.-...-..-.--: ANATHEMATICALLY, PATHEMATICALLY, (len 15,14)
..--....-..-...-.--....-...-........: UNIRRITABLENESS, UNVERITABLENESS, (len 15,15)
..--......-.-..--..-.......-..-........: UNSURPRISEDNESS, UNSURPASSEDNESS, (len 15,15)
-.----....----.-....--....-...-........: NONSOCIABLENESS, NONVOLUBLENESS, (len 15,14)
-.-..--....--..--.--......-....--.--: TRANSMUTABILITY, TRANSMITTABILITY, (len 15,16)
...-.-...--..-....-..--.-.-........--.: SCUTIBRANCHIATE, SCUTIBRANCHIAN, (len 15,14)
.-..--....-----.-.-...-.-..-.-...-..-.--: AUDIOMETRICALLY, RADIOMETRICALLY, (len 15,15)
-.-.-..--.-.-..-...-...-....-..: TETRACTINELLINE, TETRACTINELLID, (len 15,14)
-..--.....-.-....-....-..--.-.-........--.: TUBULIBRANCHIAN, TUBULIBRANCHIATE, (len 15,16)
.--......-.-.--.--.-.---.--.---......-: PHARMACOPOEIST, PHARMACOPOSIA, (len 14,13)

Don't really care for the up-votes. Just wanted to see if the two words would be of same length.

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  • $\begingroup$ Record is 18/19. Edited cause I forgot that some words are in the dictionary both capitalized and not. $\endgroup$
    – dmg
    Commented Dec 11, 2014 at 11:31
  • $\begingroup$ What's the longest word in the dictionary? This will obviously put a cap on the challenge... $\endgroup$
    – BmyGuest
    Commented Dec 11, 2014 at 11:34
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    $\begingroup$ What dictionary did you use for this? $\endgroup$
    – xnor
    Commented Dec 11, 2014 at 11:42
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    $\begingroup$ Lovely indeed. And the reason why I've restricted this search to English. In German you can have endless composite-words... $\endgroup$
    – BmyGuest
    Commented Dec 11, 2014 at 11:43
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    $\begingroup$ Your next challenge is to use all of those words in a sentence. $\endgroup$
    – A E
    Commented Dec 11, 2014 at 12:19
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Suppose, instead of maximum length or maximum length difference, you care about maximum edit distance (levenshtein). Here are the winners:

9 BETTERING DUNLAP -....--..-...-.--.
9 HICCUP HEARTENING ......-.-.-.-...-.--.
9 POLLUTE WAGNERIAN .--.---.-...-....--.
9 RAKING ETIQUETTE .-..--.-..-.--.
9 RANTING ETIQUETTE .-..--.-..-.--.
9 TESTIFIES BLUSH -....-....-.......
9 THINNING DEVASTATE -......-.-...-.--.

The longest pair that has no letters in common:

THRALL DEFENDED -.....-..-.-...-..
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  • $\begingroup$ Very nice ones - and very useful for building puzzles. +1 $\endgroup$
    – BmyGuest
    Commented Dec 11, 2014 at 20:36
  • $\begingroup$ Nice! This idea can be extended for other string metrics as well. The overlap coefficient is particularly interesting as it may be modified to analyse the connection to characters with similar Morse codes. $\endgroup$
    – dmg
    Commented Dec 12, 2014 at 11:55
  • $\begingroup$ I'm curious about the longest pair that has no letters in common. $\endgroup$
    – xnor
    Commented Dec 12, 2014 at 23:13
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    $\begingroup$ @xnor THRALL DEFENDED $\endgroup$
    – isaacg
    Commented Dec 13, 2014 at 6:16

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