letterize1

Usage

Overview

This program tries to help you find a letter mnemonic matching a given phone number.

It emits to standard output each possible pronounceable mnemonic, one per line, using the American standard mapping of dial letters to numbers (2 goes to ABC, 3 to DEF, 4 to GHI, 5 to JKL, 6 to MNO, 7 to PRS, 8 to TUV, 9 to XYZ).

The program uses a table of pronounceable letter-triples derived from a dictionary scan. Each potential mnemonic must be such that all of its letter-triples are in the table to be emitted. About 30% of possible triples are considered pronounceable.

A typical 7-digit phone number has 19,683 possible mnemonics, but this test usually cuts the list down to a few hundred or so, a reasonable number to eyeball-check. For some numbers, the list will, sadly, be empty.

It’s best to leave out punctuation such as dashes and parens.