AUTUMN IS UPON US, and you know what that means: the sudden appearance of neologisms and portmanteaux designed to mimic the word “oktoberfest.” Rocktoberfest, Shacktoberfest, pop and lock-toberfest. It’s an annual profusion of textual creativity! And as readers of this blog should know, where there is a profusion of textual creativity, there is a text generator waiting to happen.

So I put it to myself to create a -toberfest portmanteaux generator with the tools most readily at hand: grep and awk. Here’s the command-line I ended up with:

egrep '^[^aeiouy]*(o|aw)[^aeiouy]?[cfhkptx]+$' sowpods.txt | awk '{print $0 "toberfest"}'

The source file sowpods.txt is my standby English word list for text generation tasks. The regular expression reads: “find me every word that has o or aw following zero or more non-vowel letters at the beginning of the word, perhaps followed by a single non-vowel letter, and ending with one or more of any of the following letters: c, f, h, k, p, t, or x.” The awk program appends the string toberfest to matching words and prints them out.

The full list of portmanteaux that this simple program generates (all 365!) is below the cut, but here are a few of my favorites:

• Miami Heat fans! Start the NBA season out right with Boshtoberfest!
• Spoonflower announces a two yards for one deal during Clothtoberfest!
• Gather all ye dandies in your finest lederhosen as you celebrate Foptoberfest! (related: Tofftoberfest)
• If your -toberfest has a seating capacity of 99 to 500, and you’re not in the “Broadway Box,” it’s technically an offtoberfest.
• Why yes, there is a festival specifically for the nineteenth letter in many Semitic abjads. It’s Qophtoberfest!
• When, oh when, during the year can we get together to sharpen and polish our razor blades? Why Stroptoberfest, of course!

Lochtoberfest is already exactly what you expect it would be.

In generating this list, I had two criteria: (a) that around 90% of the generated strings “feel right” and (b) that the string “scotchtoberfest” be included in the results.

Criterion (b) was easily met, but (a) was not so easy. What does it mean for a -toberfest portmanteau to “feel right”? It’s highly subjective. For me, the quality of the vowel sound is key: the initial vowel in the portmanteau must rhyme with the initial vowel in “october.” I also found that the length of the vowel is key: the shorter the better, which is why my algorithm selects only words ending with voiceless consonants. (More on allophonic vowel length in English.) I singled out monosyllabic words simply because they’re easier to grep for.

I’m pleased with the results. A few quick googles reveal that many of these words refer to existing festivals, but many return no results (“did you mean bocktoberfest?”). Let me know if this list inspires you to create your own -toberfest, or if you have suggestions to improve my greps and awks.

Here’s the full list:

bloctoberfest
blocktoberfest
blottoberfest
blotchtoberfest
bocktoberfest
bofftoberfest
bohtoberfest
boktoberfest
bolttoberfest
bonktoberfest
boptoberfest
borktoberfest
borttoberfest
boshtoberfest
bosktoberfest
bottoberfest
botchtoberfest
bothtoberfest
botttoberfest
boxtoberfest
brochtoberfest
brocktoberfest
broghtoberfest
bronctoberfest
brothtoberfest
cawktoberfest
chawktoberfest
choctoberfest
chocktoberfest
chomptoberfest
choptoberfest
chotttoberfest
chowktoberfest
clocktoberfest
clofftoberfest
clomptoberfest
clonktoberfest
cloptoberfest
clottoberfest
clothtoberfest
cochtoberfest
cocktoberfest
cofftoberfest
cofttoberfest
colttoberfest
comptoberfest
compttoberfest
conchtoberfest
conftoberfest
conktoberfest
coptoberfest
corftoberfest
corktoberfest
coshtoberfest
costtoberfest
cottoberfest
cothtoberfest
cotttoberfest
cowktoberfest
cowptoberfest
coxtoberfest
croctoberfest
crocktoberfest
crofttoberfest
cronktoberfest
croptoberfest
crosttoberfest
crotchtoberfest
dawktoberfest
dawttoberfest
doctoberfest
dochttoberfest
docktoberfest
doftoberfest
dofftoberfest
dohtoberfest
dolttoberfest
doptoberfest
dorktoberfest
dorptoberfest
dorttoberfest
doshtoberfest
dosttoberfest
dottoberfest
dothtoberfest
dowftoberfest
dowptoberfest
dowttoberfest
droptoberfest
dropttoberfest
floctoberfest
flocktoberfest
floptoberfest
floshtoberfest
fohtoberfest
folktoberfest
fonttoberfest
foptoberfest
forktoberfest
forttoberfest
forthtoberfest
fowthtoberfest
foxtoberfest
frocktoberfest
fronttoberfest
froshtoberfest
frosttoberfest
frothtoberfest
gawktoberfest
gawptoberfest
ghosttoberfest
gloptoberfest
glosttoberfest
gofftoberfest
golftoberfest
golptoberfest
gonktoberfest
gorptoberfest
goshtoberfest
goshttoberfest
gottoberfest
gothtoberfest
gowftoberfest
gowktoberfest
goxtoberfest
groktoberfest
grottoberfest
growthtoberfest
hawktoberfest
hoctoberfest
hocktoberfest
hoghtoberfest
hohtoberfest
holktoberfest
holptoberfest
holttoberfest
honktoberfest
hoptoberfest
hosttoberfest
hottoberfest
hotchtoberfest
howftoberfest
howfftoberfest
howktoberfest
hoxtoberfest
jocktoberfest
jolttoberfest
joshtoberfest
jottoberfest
knocktoberfest
knoptoberfest
knosptoberfest
knottoberfest
kofftoberfest
konktoberfest
koptoberfest
kophtoberfest
kotchtoberfest
lawktoberfest
lochtoberfest
locktoberfest
lofttoberfest
loptoberfest
loshtoberfest
losttoberfest
lottoberfest
lothtoberfest
lowptoberfest
lowttoberfest
loxtoberfest
mawktoberfest
moctoberfest
mochtoberfest
mocktoberfest
molttoberfest
monktoberfest
monthtoberfest
moptoberfest
morphtoberfest
morttoberfest
moshtoberfest
mosktoberfest
mosttoberfest
mottoberfest
mothtoberfest
motttoberfest
nocktoberfest
nohtoberfest
norktoberfest
northtoberfest
noshtoberfest
nottoberfest
notchtoberfest
notttoberfest
nowttoberfest
noxtoberfest
ochtoberfest
oftoberfest
offtoberfest
ofttoberfest
ohtoberfest
optoberfest
opttoberfest
orctoberfest
orftoberfest
orttoberfest
owttoberfest
oxtoberfest
pawktoberfest
phloxtoberfest
phohtoberfest
phottoberfest
plonktoberfest
ploptoberfest
plottoberfest
pocktoberfest
pohtoberfest
polktoberfest
polttoberfest
pomptoberfest
ponktoberfest
ponttoberfest
poptoberfest
porchtoberfest
porktoberfest
porttoberfest
poshtoberfest
posttoberfest
pottoberfest
potchtoberfest
potttoberfest
poxtoberfest
proftoberfest
prompttoberfest
pronktoberfest
proptoberfest
prosttoberfest
qophtoberfest
roctoberfest
rochtoberfest
rocktoberfest
roktoberfest
rolftoberfest
romptoberfest
ronttoberfest
rorttoberfest
rosttoberfest
rottoberfest
rotchtoberfest
rowttoberfest
rowthtoberfest
schlocktoberfest
schmocktoberfest
scofftoberfest
scoptoberfest
scorchtoberfest
scottoberfest
scotchtoberfest
scowptoberfest
scowthtoberfest
scrawptoberfest
scrorptoberfest
shlocktoberfest
shmocktoberfest
shocktoberfest
shoptoberfest
shorttoberfest
shottoberfest
shotttoberfest
shrofftoberfest
skofftoberfest
skorttoberfest
skoshtoberfest
sloptoberfest
sloshtoberfest
slottoberfest
slothtoberfest
smocktoberfest
smolttoberfest
smowttoberfest
snorttoberfest
snottoberfest
snowktoberfest
soctoberfest
socktoberfest
softtoberfest
sohtoberfest
soptoberfest
sophtoberfest
sorttoberfest
sottoberfest
sothtoberfest
sowftoberfest
sowfftoberfest
sowptoberfest
sowthtoberfest
soxtoberfest
sploshtoberfest
splotchtoberfest
sporttoberfest
sposhtoberfest
spottoberfest
stocktoberfest
stomptoberfest
stonktoberfest
stoptoberfest
stopttoberfest
storktoberfest
stottoberfest
stotttoberfest
stowptoberfest
stroptoberfest
swoptoberfest
swopttoberfest
swottoberfest
tawttoberfest
thofttoberfest
thorptoberfest
toctoberfest
tocktoberfest
tofftoberfest
tofttoberfest
tolttoberfest
tonktoberfest
toptoberfest
tophtoberfest
torctoberfest
torchtoberfest
torttoberfest
toshtoberfest
tosttoberfest
tottoberfest
towttoberfest
trocktoberfest
tromptoberfest
tronctoberfest
tronktoberfest
troptoberfest
trottoberfest
trothtoberfest
trowthtoberfest
volktoberfest
volttoberfest
voxtoberfest
vrottoberfest
whomptoberfest
whoptoberfest
whorttoberfest
whottoberfest
wocktoberfest
woftoberfest
woktoberfest
wolftoberfest
wonktoberfest
wonttoberfest
woptoberfest
worktoberfest
worttoberfest
worthtoberfest
wosttoberfest
wottoberfest
wowftoberfest
woxtoberfest
wrothtoberfest
zonktoberfest

• A quick post on Warp Skip concerning Nick Montfort’s recent work in the ludonomastics of Zork.
• Friend and colleague Brendan Berg posts an informative follow-up to my recent comparison of Pokémon and PHP.
• When Leonard Richardson and I recorded our conversation about Scribblenauts a while back, the portions of the conversation that concerned Earl Grey had to be cut for procedural reasons. Now that IFComp 2009 is over, Leonard recently posted the missing segment of the conversation, in which we compare the mechanics of Earl Grey and Scribblenauts.