I couldn't find an actual calculator lying around, so I used an LLM to quickly hack up a calculator upside-down view simulator. I'm usually a backend engineer, so it was a fun quick hack (done in less than an hour).

Here it is: https://calculator-word-simulator.vercel.app/

I was curious if the words could be used to form any sentences -- here's the corpus organized by part-of-speech. (Many words are missing due to gaps in the corpus I used):

NOUN 147 slob, Ellie, silo, bile, sell, Gil, belles, highs, Bessie, losses, giggles, Liz, hobo, Leslie, Bob, lies, bellies, soil, Hess, hells, Isis, Gog, Hiss, boogie, holes, bliss, oils, gel, leg, lobes, globes, Gill, Leigh, geese, bogies, bilge, Lizzie, Leo, boil, legs, shoe, shells, Ozzie, giggle, ooze, size, eel, high, bill, gob, hole, hog, soles, libel, Hill, bee, shills, ills, Lois, glee, Bess, lobe, gig, Beebe, sizes, Gogol, sloe, hiss, Ellis, Sol, boos, Ohio, bees, HBO, bobbles, ill, lie, sobs, booze, bibles, Gibbs, hobbies, sighs, shell, isle, bib, Hegel, hills, Zoe, Eloise, Giles, sill, Elsie, Bill, bells, loss, egg, eggshell, bills, hoses, Shiloh, siege, Bible, solos, sigh, Hillel, logs, hose, lobbies, hill, log, hob, bell, shoes, Lee, gloss, heels, Hobbes, bosses, soils, solo, Oslo, hoes, goose, oil, Bell, blob, goggles, Eli, sole, ego, silos, hogs, lilies, Billie, gibes, ell, hell, shill, globe, oblige, loose, eggs, gibe, boss, heel, Bobbie

VERB 34 sells, loses, Lie, boil, sell, ebb, lob, seize, solo, begs, see, ebbs, sizzle, beg, lie, besiege, ooze, size, goes, hole, lies, hobble, bog, obsesses, soil, boils, loose, bless, solos, sigh, gobbles, shies, lose, sees

ADJ 9 sole, loose, ill, high, less, glib, big, beige, eligible

ADV 5 loose, ill, less, high, else

PRT 4 gosh, hello, see, hell

X 3 his, Les, les

DET 1 his

PRON 2 his, she

A couple of weeks ago a kid comes up to me on the street carrying a calculator, like a kind of rough kid who for some reason was hanging out with a couple of his friends and enamoured with it, but not the kind of nerdling one would expect to be playing with a calculator on the street. He goes (giggling to self) “hey mate what’s the square root of 64,128,064“ clearly hoping to catch me out with some piece of mathematical hilarity… but naturally I’ve been that kid in my youth and snapped back to him, before cycling off: “8008”

Since apparently this list allows decimals (bozo: 0.208), why does the regex need to exclude words ending in two o's? Words like "boo", "goo", and "igloo" can be made with the same rules, and it's a simpler grep -i '^[izehsglbo]\+$' /usr/share/dict/words

Needs a 7-segment calculator font or at least any font with an open 4. Looks like there are lots of web fonts available that have an open 4.

Others here have pointed out boobless is missing… that’s one of the only words I saw on calculators as a fifth grader. ‘Hello’ was a distant second.

Note that the grep command used to compile that list is shown at the very top of the page.

one of the first things you learn with a calculator in high school is how to write boobs.

When I was a kid, SHELL.OIL was the classic.

And how about words you can spell in hex, like 0xcafebabe?

Hmm, I wonder about words that end in -oo? Don't have a calculator with me atm to see if it will work/look good to lead with 0.0 ...

If so we could add boo, goo, loo, and zoo, and maybe some longer words. Maybe.

I wonder if:

0) any businesses are successfully using calculator numbers in their marketing? Like a clown service that hands out business cards with their phone number 5376616?

1) there are any non-English languages with a substantial amount of calculator words? It's not like there's some inherent bias the Hindu-Arabic numberals themselves should be expected to have in favor of upside-down English, although the seven segment display was developed in the US, so perhaps there's some argument to be made from that angle.

There's a pretty cool word you can spell with your calculator:

They are typically and roughly hemispherical in shape, and come in different sizes.

Although they can gradually droop over time due to gravity and other factors.

They can help keep babies alive, but that is certainly not their only use.

They have small round protrusions sticking out the front.

The number that spells the word has a couple of zeroes in it.

Multiply 7257 by 69. Then add 28. Then flip your calculator upside down.

No “boobless” as a shout out to us gen X kids??

Is this still a thing?

I remember doing this c.1974 when the affordable Sinclair Scientific calculator came out, since it was such a novelty to have a calculator.

Even more fun than spelling words is to actually calculate with them. lol + lol = hihi And it makes sense...

I remember some old puzzle book, where equation was given to type into calculator and it would provide answer to a given question.

That gives me idea of "encrypting" a poem where each operation gives you next word.

Its missing 5038 aka BeOS, there is even a song about it …

Missing "Boobless"

With some creative squinting and the risk of some ambiguity, you can get additional letters by using digraphs and trigraphs:

9 = G

6 = q

10 = a

21 = R

14 = N

17 = U/V

111 = M

177 = W

To make your calculator word search more attractive here is a video about segmented display fonts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTB5XhjbgZA

Not all calculators are restricted to a 7-segment display.

Took me a minute to figure out why some had decimal points.

Goofy 10-year old mode activated:

We are missing boobless 55378008

No “blog”? (6018)

I wish they had used a calculator font then

Missing the obvious 710 - OIL

"Lossless" too

this is like the rosetta stone for 11-year-old me

no boobless but definitely got Goebbels, eh? :-/

Bezos

lol+lol=hihi

Without reading the article, I'm guessing this needs the NSFW tag.

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And what about all the words/phrases you can spell with the calculator upside down? for example : 7.1077345