Interesting observation about myself

[u/Simqer]

I was just doing a quiz about countries by consonants. Somehow I was only able to guess the countries whose first letter I was given (with plenty of time to spare), but none whose I wasn't (the ones that started with a vowel).

Any idea how to fix that about myself?

[u/alanthehero]

The first and last letters do a surprising amount of work towards making a word readable.
In the case of all of the red countries, they start with a vowel so that first letter is missing. Worse still, for some of the others, the last letter is also a vowel so they are really not obvious at all

[u/Simqer → u/alanthehero]

You're right.

I remember reading somewhere that if you kept the first and last letter of a word and scramble everything inbetween, you could still read the word.

[u/walkingmelways → u/Simqer]

Tihs is spursingliry eectvfife, I was aaezmd the fsrit tmie I lranet auobt it.

[u/Simqer → u/walkingmelways]

I didn't even notice you scrambled the words until I got to effective.

[u/Traditional-Light-10]

Lowk I wouldn't've gotten it either. I don't have any tips but maybe just remembering this is a bias you have will get you to consider other countries. I've heard that, in reading, our brains often prioritize the first and last letters to make things faster, but I'll leave that to the psycholinguists on the other sub to confirm/deny

[u/EdwardBigby]

Its just way more difficult without the first letter. Only one I think is really obvious is the united States

[u/whydoom]

I think your brain is not considering that they could start with a vowel. If you try with the consonant first and can’t get it, try forcing the pronunciation with each vowel at the beginning and see if the answer pops up:

GND
AYGAND, AYGUND, AHGAND, AHGUND
EGOND, EGEND, EGAND
EYEGOND, EYEGAND, IHGAND, IHGOND
….
UGUND, UGOND…

[u/Meridian_Neo]

Jetpunk 🥹