How many of the 170k English words do you know? • Hacker News Board

Re: How many of the 170k English words do you know?

#571

Post by zamadatix » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 2:56 PM UTC

bobson381 wrote: post #174

zamadatix wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn't a "correct" way to incorrectly render the interrobang as 2 separate characters. The name was never supposed to suggest a certain ordering instead of just being both at the same time. The name "interrobang" just sounded better than "exclamaquest" (or any of the alternatives Type Talks readers submitted).

Huh, interesting. I retract my previous statement! I'd love to read about this if you have a source.

This series on it https://shadycharacters.co.uk/2011/04/the-interrobang-part-1... was always one of my favorites on the topic.

Re: How many of the 170k English words do you know?

#572

Post by mdnahas » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 6:01 PM UTC

Laurel1234 wrote: post #10

Pretty fun. I suggest skipping the submit button and just showing it's correct when pressing and moving on after a sec or so. Having to click on submit twice really breaks the flow. Also in all the words I tried I noticed out of the 4 options one is the correct one, another is the opposite of the correct one, and the other 2 are random stuff. You can basically skip any option whose antonym isn't present as well.

Another suggestion: update an estimate of words known after every word. E.g. start out with a range of 0 to 170,000. Then after the first word, show 100 to 170,000. Etc.

Users get drops of information and can stop whenever they feel. I stopped well before 100.

Re: How many of the 170k English words do you know?

#573

Post by luka598 » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 8:24 PM UTC

Whole thingy has one giant problem which is that correct answer is probably the longest one.

First try I noticed it in about the middle of the quiz and got ~65k Second try I selected only the longest and got ~78k

Re: How many of the 170k English words do you know?

#574

Post by tancop » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 6:04 AM UTC

analog8374 wrote: post #123

latexr wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's intentional. What is? > I'm guessing it's testing our susceptibility to machine-generated compliments I fail to see the point. For one, the compliments aren’t particularly good or interesting; for another, I didn’t even read them (I just went back to check after your comment), I simply clicked when seeing green.

too many clicks per word. and the distance between click points. that's intentional. well the point would be to see how susceptible you are to that. They're figuring out where your cost vs reward tipping point is.

its just a lazy clone of duolingo. its a ux pattern that works on mobile for a lesson with 10 complex questions where you have to retry the ones you failed until you get it right. when its 100 abcd questions on desktop its just annoying for no reason

Re: How many of the 170k English words do you know?

#575

Post by scubbo » Mon, Jun 29, 2026, 12:09 AM UTC

naishoya wrote: post #570

scubbo wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God, I loathee the use of "moreso" as a synonym for "more" (rather than as "having the previously-mentioned property to a greater degree"). I'm convinced it's a hypercorrection by people who want to sound educated without actually thinking about the meaning of the words they use. https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/211458/more-so-o...

lol, you have hit both of myreasons for using it: 1. the previously mentioned, as nothing in the quiz bothered me to a greater degree than what i previously stated, thus it's use here is 'cromulent'... and 2. this entire paragraph is tongue-in-cheek as a play at seemingly overreaching 'embiggenment'. Thanks for playing along. :)

o7