Random Word Generation

A little while ago I talked about how I use the dictionary to help me break through writer's block, or just to generate ideas from the aether.  It works great but my dictionary has a weird amount of pages, and even though I know my dice gives me an even distribution, I wanted an easier way to come up with words.

My first idea was to use Scrabble tiles.  I went to the store and was amazed at the cost of a Scrabble set.  OK, that may sound cheap but for $14.00 to $16.00 I can buy a can of water-putty and three tubes of silicone caulk, which would keep me in the terrain-making business for a year at least.  So then I went to trusty eBay... it seems like Scrabble tiles are popular with scrapbookers.   I really don't feel like bidding, then waiting all week only to get sniped.  So I skipped the boardgame purchase and researched the Scrabble letter distribution on the interwebs.  Figure 1 below shows the 100 letters included in a Scrabble set, including the spaces.  I set the figure up so people can use two d10s to generate random letters.  The problem is Scrabble letter distribution is set to make the game fun, not necessarily to match the english language's real distribution.  More importantly, if I just generate a bunch of letters and then construct words, a la Scrabble, then I'm defeating my intent of getting a truly random word.  I'm consciously building words at that point, which I don't want.  I want my muse to speak to me through the dice.

Figure 1: Distribution of letters in Scrabble

I found the distribution of English letters from a Cornell University study and translated them into the following two d12 charts.  Figure 2 shows the distribution for the first letter of 40000 words in the english language.  Figure 3 shows a different distribution, that for all letters of those words.  I massaged the percentages a little to get the really rare letters on the chart, but it's fairly accurate.  Use the first chart to get the first letter, then continue rolling on the next chart and get the other letters of the word.  I keep the dictionary open in front of me and after rolling the first four or five letters I've typically narrowed it down to a handful of words (10-20) that I can select randomly with a die roll.  If I get a crazy grouping of letters that isn't in the dictionary but rolls nicely off the tongue, I'll write it down for later use in case I need an exotic character or place name.

Figure 2: Distribution of first letter, english words

Figure 3: Distribution of remaining letters, english words

It's laborious I know.  If you need a way to generate a random word in english and want to go "old school" and use a chart versus a computer, well here you go.