alt Hacker NewsVery cool and fascinating. I wonder if there are other insights that can be drawn from what you've built. Like which two words (or such pairs) have the longest sequence of hops to connect? Or what are the top "superconnectors"? Or if there is a plausible correlation between how well a word is connected to how old it is?
Longest paths: The tail maxes out at 15 hops. These extreme paths are disappointingly mechanical—not the poetic distances you'd hope for:
* Technical jargon → unrelated obscurities: gryllacridid (cricket family) → microclots * Proper nouns → common words: Trish Stratus (wrestler) → federating Numbers → anything: 9451 → shoulds
Mostly hyper-specific terms with few inbound connections, obscure conjugations, or rare idioms.
Superconnectors: We systematically removed generic hubs, but your question prompted us to analyze which words still act as natural bridges. Added it to the article with an interactive explorer! Top survivors:
* polish (0.18% of paths) - verb/nationality homograph * symbiosis (0.14%) - biology → cooperation bridge * treaty (0.13%) - conflict → resolution bridge
Thanks for the curiosity—it led to an interesting addition. Age correlation: No hard data, but I suspect you're right. Older words have had centuries to accumulate meanings and develop polysemous bridges.