The Czech Language
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Hidden words

Another type of language games is represented by hidden words. A sentence considered as a string of characters can contain a hidden contiguous substring which is not detectable at face value. You can devise a great variety of them. For example, try to find names of Czech towns in the following "innocently" looking sentences:

Řekla to vysokému úředníkovi z ministerstva.
Proč ta telata chováte v tak nesnesitelných podmínkách?
Ti prodavači berou na hůl každého!
Pro Anežku byl lidoop a vačice v zoologické zahradě největší atrakcí.

The hidden words can have a very manifold form. For instance, we can require that some word denoting an animal contain another word also designating an animal. At first glance you would say that there can be no such peculiar words fulfilling the given condition. In fact, up to 15 such words have been found for Czech! One of the most beautiful is the following:

st rak a

There exist, however, longer and even shorter words meeting the abovementioned condition! Find them!

A Riddle

Does the following sequence of words contain something meaningful?

Židle le žídle židle

Renata Blatná, Vladimír Petkevič, ©2001

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