When Mark Rosenfelder decided to edit my Langmaker essays and conlang descriptions into a book, he had to do a lot of curation. As he wrote in the introduction, of one decision:
With some regret, I’ve omitted Oðblgshezi, a listing of 362 words which could be formed by writing on an old-style calculator and turning the display upside-down. (The name is 1234567890.) I’ll just note some of the better finds: BELIZE, BESIEGES, BIGGISH, BOLSHOI, ELIGIBLE, HOBBIES, HOGGISH, LESOTHO, OBSESSES, SIZZLES, THIGHS.
To my surprise, Oðblgshezi has taken a life of its own. My absolute favorite is that Goodfire Brewing not only named a Kölsch after it, they put a calculator on the can!
The beer:
Some other mentions:
- A Mental Floss article, “Calculator Words.”
- An Urban Dictionary entry.
- The Girl Guides of Canada wrote an article about it for a newsletter.
- Bringing it back to beer (well, a beer brand as sponsor), a weird Guinness World Record is for the longest word in Othblgshezi.
In middle school I collected beer cans, played with calculators before there were microcomputers, loved word games, loved Guinness World Records. A Guinness World Record tracing back to something I invented?! Middle-school me would consider my life a success.
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