Fixed Length Words

word_size command

The command word_size sets the size in characters of the required words. When practicing at a challenging speed it is much easier to interpret shorter words correctly. Longer words may be introduced as comfort with the speed grows.

  # fixed_length_words.rb

require 'cw'

cw do
  comment "5 words having 4 letters (12 WPM)"
  shuffle
  wpm           12
  word_length   5
  word_count    4
  test_letters
end

word_length command

If you prefer you can use the command word_length to set word length (word size). Here we set word length to six characters, and require 4 words.

  # fixed_length_words_2.rb

require 'cw'

cw do
  comment "4 words having 6 letters (15 WPM)"
  shuffle
  wpm                 15
  word_length         6
  number_of_words     4 # you can use number_of_words!
end

having_size_of command

The command having_size_of also has the same effect. Just use the version which you remember the easiest!

Here we set word length to 3, and require 12 words:

  # fixed_length_words_3.rb

require 'cw'

cw do
  comment "12 common words having 3 letters (15 WPM)"
  shuffle
  wpm                 15
  having_size_of      3
  number_of_words     12
end

Most common words

As familiarity with receiving CW grows it can be useful to concentrate on the very common words in order to become familiar with the sound of the word itself, as opposed to the individual letters. To this end a dictionary of the one-hundred most common words is available for our use. Most of the most common words are short words. Here we select three letter words from this dictionary.

  # fixed_length_words_3.rb

require 'cw'

cw do
  comment "15 most common words having 3 letters (15 WPM)"
  load_most_common_words
  shuffle
  wpm                 15
  word_size            3
  number_of_words     15
end

Command order

Notice in the previous example we called number_of_words after calling word_size. Had we called number_of_words first, our fifteen words would probably contain several words having a size different from three letters. Thus by the time we had filtered out our three letter words, our fifteen original words would have reduced to a smaller number of test words. Swap number_of_words and word_size and re-run a couple of times to test this out.