Felix' Workshop

Abecedarian Distance

A word is abecedarian when its letters already run in alphabetical order — billowy, almost, aegilops. Nearly no word is. But nearly every word would be, if the alphabet ran in some other order: zebra needs only Z moved to the front and A to the back. So the question stops being yes or no and becomes how far — the fewest pairs of letters you would have to swap in the alphabet itself before the word comes out sorted.