112
Does this count?
109
If you are allowed to use decimals, then
80
Twelve words:
a nearsighted ant sergeant negates an agent, denigrates estranged straightened gnat agents
a
an
ant
gnat
agent
agents
negates
sergeant
estranged
denigrates
nearsighted
straightened
An officer in an army of earthbound insects, suffering from poor eyesight, orders an informer to be dispensed with, and is harshly critical of an ex-couple of ...
70
Answer:
How?
69
Since the puzzle oddly and specifically mentions the symbol for the square root, I used this:
but rotated and reflected it giving:
67
Another answer could be
58
4 ops = 1.9934200404 points:
Off by 0.00108199.
5 ops = 2.2864604146 points:
Off by 0.0000340537.
6 ops = 2.7136051067 points:
Off by only 0.000000266764(!)
Now we can keep taking square roots of 1 in this expression to get a lower score bound for $n$ operations where $n \geq 6$, namely: $$s_n = -\ln \left( \frac{ 355/113 } \pi - 1 \right) / n$$
Which ...
58
Here's one way to make something quite big:
47
Build two straight runways side to side, 1 mile long each.
Then, put a portal-conducting surface at the end of the first runway and another one at the beginning of the second one. Finally, use your portal gun to place a yellow portal on one of those surfaces and a blue portal in the other one.
46
One of my favourite words, that's 29 characters long is:
It's quite useful for describing what the contestants find on a fair few reality TV programmes! As most of the letters are covered off by only a few elements there's quite a lot of repetition...
45
16 Words (Internationalize)
Sentence
Explanation:
I can assert with reasonable certainty that no longer chain exists (according to the dictionary that I am using to generate this). There are a huge number of variations of the chain starting with
but this one was possible to squeeze a grammatical sentence out of.
40
The simplest one is:
37
6^1110G
Where G is Graham's number
36
You are a physicist (or at least, you have heard a few physicists chatting at the water cooler).
Mike, your friend, is very obliging. Not obliging enough to chop off both ends of a loaf for you, but at least obliging enough to provide you with a sliced loaf.
You greet Mike and grab one end of a loaf from his display, immediately slicing off a crust. Then ...
35
How would you get 20, using two threes?
Any out of the box, non-mathematical solutions are accepted.
How about an
“in the box” solution?
You'd be lucky to not get 20, following the explicit formula published in
U.S.[A.] Code, Title 18:
Naturally, the threes are ...
This formula can be generalized
for any ...
35
Explanation:
Bonus:
34
I assume you start at two letters, as in your example. I'm using the circa 2013 Words With Friends dictionary.
If you can only add to the right end of the word, 8-letter words are possible:
ba
bar
barb
barbe
barbel
barbell
barbells
ma
max
maxi
maxim
maxima
maximal
maximals
pa
pas
past
paste
paster
pastern
pasterns
re
rep
repo
repos
repose
reposer
...
34
7 words, starting at 14 letters, ending at 20:
You’d have thought this old left-winger would be supportive of his descendants’ views — but apparently not.
33
27 characters
Bolt me fast, or bolt fast.
We have:
bolt: secure in place, or dash away suddenly
fast: firmly fixed, or quickly
The intended meaning is "Either tie me down securely or run away quickly". As @xnor remarks: "I guess the speaker is a werewolf" (thanks for helping!).
If the above sentence wasn't ambiguous enough for you, ...
32
Perhaps this is cheating, but my answer (inspired by the Wikipedia page on the longest English words) is
Formed by
Note:
32
I'll confess that I've always had a fondness for the Jester's riddle from Zork Zero:
"I once heard of a bookkeeper who, while working on the accounts of the Frobozz Magic Balloon Company, noted that the word 'balloon' has two double letters in a row! Stretching his limited imagination to the limit, this bookkeeper wondered if there were any words with ...
32
I think I can do 7 letters:
Which features the letter pairs:
29
Nikola Tesla, decrepit in old age, aggrieved by ailments, but still doing his experiments causing filaments (as in a light bulb) to explode.
A lamest Tesla sat at last - laments ailments, fulminates filaments.
(10 words)
In a post-apocalyptic world, farm animal meat is a thing of the past. To retain its customers, driven away by ever-increasing ...
28
Thirteen words:
13 Universalists
12 Universalist
11 Antiviruses
10 Intrusives
9 Intrusive
8 Inviters
7 Inverts
6 Strive
5 Rivet
4 Tire
3 Tie
2 It
1 I
Slightly contrived sentence:
Universalists rivet intrusive antiviruses, inviters tie intrusives (inverts it), I tire; Strive, Universalist!
Translation:
Those seeking a universal approach to ...
28
Question says nothing about landing.
28
Using a bit of punctuation to make the meaning clearer.
De Bruijn 3
De Bruijn 4
De Bruijn 5
De Bruijn 6
27
Fourteen words:
"Presentational toenail replantations entail senatorial alterations rationale", leant a relation, late, at alternations tea.
a
at
tea
late
leant
entail
toenail
relation
rationale
senatorial
alterations
alternations
replantations
presentational
A family member, at an afternoon event held to celebrate the swapovers (of a kind which ...
27
Here's another one:
Sorry for MS Paint skills
27
using Tetration, we can get much larger than the simple exponentiation..
Move the top and bottom matchstick from the zero in the ten's place, and form a subscript "11" after the resulting "61111110" to form:
_ _
|_ | | | | | | | |
|_| | | | | | | |_|
| |
Or: (provided you can ignore the incorrect ...
26
You need to:
Why?
Bonus:
More boni inspired by the coments:
Finally:
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
