Re: Elementless names

swp said:

On Apr 23, 7:49 pm, Richard Heathfield <r...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Mark Brader said:

Earlier tonight I watched the opening credits of an episode of
the TV series "Breaking Bad", and I noticed an unusual
typographical feature: in the names of every person, one or two
letters that form the chemical symbol of an element were
highlighted, For example, if someone named John Jones appeared
in the episode, they might highlight the NE in Jones,
representing neon.

Naturally, I wondered how many actors would be unable to ever
appear in the series because their names don't contain a
chemical symbol.

I'm not even going to try to answer this one. But out of sheer
curiosity (and partly prompted by the fact that my coffee mug
bears a Periodic Table (how sad is that?)), I decided to check
out my own name (Christian name and surname only, of course). It
contains:

Iodine (twice)
Carbon
Hydrogen (three times!)
Argon
Helium
Astatine
Thorium
Hafnium
Fluorine

And the initials give Rhodium.

Ignoring duplicates, but ALLOWING the Rhodium initials, and ALSO
allowing a cross-border element (last letter of Christian name,
first letter of surname, which doesn't apply in my case) provided
that it isn't a duplicate, that's ten distinct elements.

This seemed pretty high to me, So I wondered whether anyone here
could beat this number of DISTINCT elements, either in absolute
terms or as a ratio of elements to letters?

Well, I was rather surprised to discover that the answer is
"yes"!

Here are some sample scores for ten regs who appear to use normal
Christian name/surname for posting, in descending ratio order.
Where they habitually post with a shortened Christian name, I've
used the short form:

Phil Carmody: 10, 0.909091
Kevin Stone: 8, 0.8
Alan Morgan: 8, 0.8
Nick Wedd: 6, 0.75
Mark Brader: 6, 0.6
Dave Balderstone: 10, 0.666667
Richard Heathfield: 10, 0.588235
Leroy Quet: 4, 0.444444
Mike Williams: 6, 0.5
Sylvia Else: 5, 0.5

I was somewhat surprised to find myself way down the ratio list!
(And I wasn't quite as alone at the top of the absolute score
ordering as I was expecting to be.)

ObPuzzle: identify or construct a (plausible!) name, minimum
three letters for Christian name and three letters for surname,
that out-scores Phil Carmody's ratio.

--
Richard Heathfield <http://www.cpax.org.uk>
Email: -http://www. +rjh@
Google users: <http://www.cpax.org.uk/prg/writings/googly.php>
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999

I feel so .. unclean. almost as bad as having to use wikipedia or
worse yet, capital letters regularly. does my name not appear in
my
email address as part of the "from:" line for you? have I
offended in
some way? if you prick me, do I not bleed?

I stopped at ten.


s t e p he n p er [r] y == all but the 2nd 'r' in my family name
== 11/12 == 0.91667 (9 total)

I make it:

Sulphur, Tellurium, Phosphorus, Hydrogen, Helium, Nitrogen,
Neptunium, Erbium, Yttrium; 9 distinct elements in twelve letters,
giving 0.75.

--
Richard Heathfield <http://www.cpax.org.uk>
Email: -http://www. +rjh@
Google users: <http://www.cpax.org.uk/prg/writings/googly.php>
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999
.

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