A New Word Order

Question

These ten words are arranged in order according to a certain property they share:

festive
fixture
salient
resolving
recline
accessory
advise
headlight
redcoat
programming

Where should each of the following four words be inserted into the list?

abbreviate
twelve
humdinger
anecdote

What is the property shared by all fourteen words?

Hint

A word's meaning is not relevant to the property in question.

In looking for a pattern among these words, I realised for the first time that the word "salient" has an alien in the middle! — Rand al'Thor, Jul 14 '15 at 18:10
Wow, all 10 of the example words have 3 vowels (depending on your y-tolerance). Then only one of the additional 4 has 3 vowels... I wonder what the statistical odds of that are. — Going hamateur, Jul 14 '15 at 18:25
Ideally, the correct answer would also include the full sorted list of 14 words. — dennisdeems, Jul 14 '15 at 18:27
Once the property is found, then sorting the list becomes trivial, or so I assume! :) — JLee, Jul 14 '15 at 18:32
Does it have anything to do with translation into another language? — CodeNewbie, Jul 14 '15 at 18:47
hmm, I can see a Festive Humdinger or a Salient Mixture. Maybe an Advice Accessory will help me find the pattern ;D — Nyk 232, Jul 14 '15 at 19:03
@CodeNewbie "Does it have anything to do with translation into another language?" not really — dennisdeems, Jul 14 '15 at 19:39

score 47 · Accepted Answer · edited Jul 15 '15 at 19:33

47

That was a real humdinger. Now I'm feeling festive.

Roman numerals. Each word has, somewhere after the first character, a string of Roman Numerals, evaluating to a number. Let the property be that number. Then we get this ordering:
festIVe = 4
abbreVIate=6
fIXture=9
saLIent=51
tweLVe=55
resoLVIng=56
reCLIne=151
aCCessory=200
aneCDote=400
aDVIse=506
heaDLIght=551
reDCoat==600
huMDInger=1501
prograMMIng=2001

edited Jul 15 '15 at 19:33

dennisdeems

3,745
21
40

answered Jul 14 '15 at 21:54

RamblinRose

496
5
7

1

In that case, wouldn't mixture be 1009? – Zikato Jul 15 '15 at 13:14
he's looking past the first character, otherwise even the original order is wrong – dzastergamer Jul 15 '15 at 13:42
Nope, @Zikato is right. I goofed. I had fixture and changed it at the last minute. Argh! – dennisdeems Jul 15 '15 at 14:06

A New Word Order

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