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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.

Community
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BmyGuest
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  • Are prosigns allowed? Q codes? Morse abbrevs? – A E Dec 11 '14 at 11:10
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    Do you want us to refrain from writing code? Otherwise, it's fairly simple to brute force. – xnor Dec 11 '14 at 11:21
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    already brute-forced it for like 2 min (code-writing included) – dmg Dec 11 '14 at 11:28
  • @xnor The means you use to arrive at the solution is free to choose. I'm really interested in the result(s) here - also to be used at later time for other puzzles (not on this sits ;c)) If you do a brute-force technique, fine go ahead. (In fact, the provided link on top is a useful starting point.) However, the solution should not be code, it should be the morsagram(s) as in the example above. (BTW, there is never a way to prevent people from writing code to solve a puzzle - and many do.) – BmyGuest Dec 11 '14 at 11:28
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    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. – Aaron Dufour Dec 11 '14 at 15:57
  • BmyGuest, like the new open-ended tag? Created it myself just then when I saw this question. (Waiting for tag wiki to be approved) – warspyking Dec 12 '14 at 00:47
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    The follow-up question to this should be the longest possible morse palindrome. – No. 7892142 Dec 12 '14 at 08:01
  • @No.7892142 Where the morsecode is the same when flipped? I would love to see that. – Rik_S Dec 15 '14 at 15:08
  • @Rik_S Well, as a trivial example take the word "is", aka •••••. Or "wig" aka •--••--•. – No. 7892142 Dec 15 '14 at 15:11
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    I’m voting to close this question because open-ended puzzles are off-topic as of May 2019 – bobble Jul 21 '21 at 18:42

2 Answers2

23

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.

dmg
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  • Record is 18/19. Edited cause I forgot that some words are in the dictionary both capitalized and not. – dmg Dec 11 '14 at 11:31
  • What's the longest word in the dictionary? This will obviously put a cap on the challenge... – BmyGuest Dec 11 '14 at 11:34
  • @BmyGuest It's pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. Lovely word, right? – dmg Dec 11 '14 at 11:36
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    What dictionary did you use for this? – xnor Dec 11 '14 at 11:42
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    Lovely indeed. And the reason why I've restricted this search to English. In German you can have endless composite-words... – BmyGuest Dec 11 '14 at 11:43
  • Things do start to get quite meaningless after a while though, but it's quite subjective and would definitely be harder to brute force as it requires some linguistics insight as well. – dmg Dec 11 '14 at 11:51
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    Your next challenge is to use all of those words in a sentence. – A E Dec 11 '14 at 12:19
  • @AE I thought about that first, as the linked post provide the nice example of I AM HIS DATE being the same as SOS HELP, but then I thought that words would do for a start. (And victory condition is more clearly defined.) But maybe you're right, and I'll add that as bonus / 2nd challenge. – BmyGuest Dec 11 '14 at 12:23
  • Oh, I just meant that these words are so long and obscure that it would be a challenge to use all of them in a normal English sentence (and have it make sense). :) – A E Dec 11 '14 at 12:30
19

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 -.....-..-.-...-..
BmyGuest
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isaacg
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