5ive or Fewer

Just for fun, this blog has posts with words that have five _ _ _ _ _ or fewer. Can it be done? Who knows? But I’ll try and see how far I get. You may have to guess or work out what _’s are; here’s a clue: they make words, silly!

There is a novel of over 50,000 words that does not have one ‘e’ in the story – that’s hard to do, I guess. I’ve heard that too many E’s are bad for you, so once you’ve read it, you’re good to go. Oddly, you can get it as an e-book here.

But this blog is more like a 5-a-day diet; only I eat words, not fruit and nuts, so it can be tough going. I got the idea from that game where you get six tries to guess a word, given five blank _’s. You may get it on the first go, but that’s pure luck. Some use ADIEU as their first word because it has a high vowel count. Once I used ADOBE, which has three, and I got one in the right place and one in the wrong. If I had used ADIEU to start, I would have had two in the wrong place and none in the right, so there is no hard-and-fast rule; it’s up to you. Mind you, in the US, they use words like COLOR and LABOR, which is very non-U! So you have to take care, or afore you know it you’ll be at sixes and 7s and out for the count, LIMEY or YANKY; it’s all in the game.

With 5ive or Fewer, the bonus is that a child of eight can read it along with grown-ups who take the Sun and Daily Mail or watch GB News in the UK. But I’m not sure about those who live in the USA who vote for Trump or watch Fox TV. Will kids LOL, or laugh out loud? It’s the same with older folk (like me!) who may not even know what a blog is. By the by, LOL is the last time I’ll use text-speak. A dash or two is okay if each word is five or fewer, eg Wells-next-the-Sea.

Enjoy!

Rob