Eight-Letter Word Search: abcbabcb Pattern

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The discussion revolves around finding an eight-letter word that fits the pattern abcbabcb. Participants explore various candidates, including "lavalava," which is confirmed as a valid word, and discuss other potential options like "kavakava" and "caracara." There is a focus on the word's likely Oceanic or tropical origins, with references to Scrabble solvers and the need for pattern-matching capabilities. Participants also share insights on parsing large word lists to identify suitable matches, suggesting methods like using grep in BASH for efficient searching. The conversation highlights the challenge of locating uncommon words that adhere to the specified pattern, ultimately leading to the confirmation of "lavalava" as the solution.
DaveC426913
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I am looking for a common eight-letter word of the form abcbabcb.
So monomono, or bakabaka or tikitiki would all match, if they were actual words.
There's some Scrabble solvers, but none of the ones I've found support pattern-matching.
Maybe I'll have to write one...
 
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lavalava - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lava-lava
This word is shown hyphenated in the title, but without the hyphen in the body of the article.

Sing Sing - the prison in Ossining, NY

Noncandidates, as they're too long - Walla Walla and Hamma Hamma, both are place names where I live.
 
lavalava Hmm. I'll try that. (I knew it would be something Oceanic)
P.S. how did you find it so quick?

Meanwhile, it's got to be in this list. I need someone to parse it. There's only 17,550 to look through. Anytime in the next 10 minutes will be fine.

(Maybe if I spellcheck it, I'll get 17,449 misspelled words, and one legit...)
 

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DaveC426913 said:
lavalava Hmm. I'll try that. (I knew it would be something Oceanic)
If you know it is "oceanic" and lavalava doesn't work, try kava-kava.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kava
 
From a quick google for words with four repeating letters:
hotshots, kavakava, lavalava, caracara, couscous, chowchow, froufrou, greegree, guitguit.
The bolded three are the only ones which match abcbabcb. Others are a form of abcdabcd.
 
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kavakava (more often just kava) and caracara were the ones of which I was thinking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caracara is probably the most legit.

Likely such a word is derived from foreign words, e.g., couscous or guitguit. It may be either oceanic or tropical.
 
Um...BoraBora, anyone :oldbiggrin: ?

Btw, I was married at Lavalava :oldlove:
 
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Cocacola
 
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  • #11
zoobyshoe said:
If you know it is "oceanic" and lavalava doesn't work, try kava-kava.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kava
I was going to suggest Kava-kava but got to looking at the medical research since the '70s when I was experimenting with it among other barks and roots. :olduhh:
 
  • #12
Sorry, neither BoraBora nor CocaCola match the pattern. The others aren't exactly common, but we'll see.
Wikiwiki is out because I and N are disqualified due to another condition which I did not feel the need to include.
 
  • #13
zoobyshoe said:
If you know it is "oceanic"
Nono. I'm simply guessing that it's likely to be a word from Hawaii or other Oceanic languge, simply based on the pattern. An eight letter word, using only three letters, one of the four times - probably a vowel.
 
  • #14
Another candidate: Kawakawa. I'll cook up a code to see what can be done when I have the time.
 
  • #15
At least I found out where "Wakawaka" came from.
My friend uses it profusely.

The line Fozzie the bear says after a very cheezy joke.

"Tell me, why do elephants have trunks?" asks Fozzie.
"Why?"
"Because they don't have glove compartments. WAKA WAKA."​
 
  • #16
Maybe KiWikiWi?
 
  • #17
  1. barabara
  2. caracara
  3. colocolo
  4. galagala
  5. kavakava
  6. kawakawa
  7. kivikivi
  8. kiwikiwi
  9. kolokolo
  10. lavalava
  11. matamata
  12. mocomoco
  13. murumuru
  14. palapala
  15. piripiri
  16. poroporo
  17. ramarama
  18. tikitiki
  19. torotoro
  20. tucutucu
  21. tukutuku
  22. wikiwiki
  23. wiliwili

Is there some context behind the word hunt?
Ed. - Struck out the ones with 'i'. 17 words left and none of them very common.
 
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  • #18
Me too. I'd like to learn what he would want to do with this string extraction.

(C1+V+C2+V)+(C1+V+C2+V)
 
  • #19
DaveC426913 said:
lavalava Hmm. I'll try that. (I knew it would be something Oceanic)
P.S. how did you find it so quick?

Meanwhile, it's got to be in this list. I need someone to parse it. There's only 17,550 to look through. Anytime in the next 10 minutes will be fine.

(Maybe if I spellcheck it, I'll get 17,449 misspelled words, and one legit...)
That list seems to be going at it backwards since it is not a list of words. The way to do it would be to get a list of 8-letter words and scan it for the pattern.
 
  • #20
phinds said:
That list seems to be going at it backwards since it is not a list of words. The way to do it would be to get a list of 8-letter words and scan it for the pattern.
Or you could fine tune 'grep' in BASH to find eight letter words with first four letters repeated and match it against the list of permutations like I did.
 
  • #21
phinds said:
That list seems to be going at it backwards since it is not a list of words. The way to do it would be to get a list of 8-letter words and scan it for the pattern.
Sure, presuming you can guarantee that this apparently odd word is on that list. How wide a net would you have to cast to get a large enough list of words to include this one?
 
  • #22
Silicon Waffle said:
(C1+V+C2+V)+(C1+V+C2+V)
BTW, we don't actually know which are consonants are which are vowels.

The pattern is more generally ABCBABCB or 2(ABCB).
 
  • #23
Enigman said:
  1. barabara
  2. caracara
  3. colocolo
  4. galagala
  5. kavakava
  6. kawakawa
  7. kivikivi
  8. kiwikiwi
  9. kolokolo
  10. lavalava
  11. matamata
  12. mocomoco
  13. murumuru
  14. palapala
  15. piripiri
  16. poroporo
  17. ramarama
  18. tikitiki
  19. torotoro
  20. tucutucu
  21. tukutuku
  22. wikiwiki
  23. wiliwili

Is there some context behind the word hunt?
Ed. - Struck out the ones with 'i'. 17 words left and none of them very common.

Hm. It appears strikeout tags are not compatible with spoiler tags. I do not see the strikeouts in your original post. (check it yourself in post 17)

I was in the process of quoiting your post and crossing them out myself, when I noticed that my quote contains the strikeout formatting.
 
  • #24
  • #25
Enigman said:
And strikeouts in spoilers are working for me (chrome).
Strange. Now they're working for me too. o_O
 
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  • #26
Hey, I just discovered something. This letter pattern is defined by a moebius strip!

moebius.png
 
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  • #27
Thanks all. The word was indeed lavalava.

This was for a particularly ornery codeword puzzle. It's essentially a crossword with no clues, but a number substitution algorithm. i.e.:

Code: 
            [16]            [24]
    [23]    [14]            [15]
[19][ 4][ 8][ 4][19][ 4][ 8][ 4]
    [22]    [ 1]
            [ 6]
 

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