The following question appeared earlier this month in the weekend edition of The Guardian, in the quiz compiled by Thomas Eaton: “What tool is made from potassium, nickel and iron?”

It’s more cryptic than most of the questions in this weekly quiz. The answer is “Knife”, made up of the chemical symbols for potassium, nickel and iron: K-Ni-Fe.

This got me thinking about other quiz rounds offering similar challenges. They have certainly appeared in the BBC quiz show “Pointless”. There have been examples of contestants being given the names of elements and having to work out what word is spelt by putting their symbols together.

A few years back, when we had a poster of the Periodic Table on our kitchen wall, I set my children a few of these challenges, creating words out of the 1- or 2-letters that make up each chemical symbol. For example:

Which sweet foodstuff can be made using carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, cobalt, lanthanum and tellurium?

The answer: Chocolate (C-H-O-Co-La-Te).

If you have tried this sort of thing you will have learnt very quickly that the number of words that can be created is very limited. There is no J or Q in the Periodic Table. The vowels A and E only appear in symbols with 2-letter combinations, such as Al (aluminium), Ar (argon), Er (Erbium) and Te (Tellurium).

The less frequently used vowels all form 1-letter chemical symbols: I (iodine), O (oxygen) and U (uranium). A few of the most commonly used letters of the alphabet are used individually as symbols: H (hydrogen), N (nitrogen), S (sulfur, using its the current official spelling). In addition to A and E the following commonly used letters do not appear individually as chemical symbols: L, R, T.

I have spent some time in the last fortnight trying to work out which combinations of letters can be used, thematically, for groups of items. How many country names, or UK cities, can be created using the letters from chemical symbols? The answer, from going through dozens of each: not very many. The 2-letter combination “IA” at the end of a word cannot be created using chemical symbols, so that’s 38 of the 193 countries that can be discounted straight away. Similarly the names of the the UK’s biggest cities (London, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow, Edinburgh) cannot be created using these symbols. Bath was the first city name that I found that could be created this way: Ba-Th (barium thorium), or even B-At-H (boron, astatine, hydrogen). The word “land” can be created with chemical symbols, so the following were the first two country names that I found: Ireland and Finland. I-Re-La-Nd (iodine, rhenium, lanthanum, neodymium); F-I-N-La-Nd (fluorine, iodine, nitrogen, lanthanum, neodymium), or F-In-La-Nd (fluorine, indium, lanthanum, neodymium).

I then moved on to food and drink and found that the following words could all be made, in addition to chocolate, as shown above:

Wine: W-I-Ne (tungsten, iodine, neon)

Beer: Be-Er (beryllium, erbium)

Water: W-At-Er (tungsten, astatine, erbium).

You can get Biscuits but not Biscuit, Cakes but not Cake:

Biscuits: Bi-Sc-U-I-Ts (bismuth, scandium, uranium, iodine, tennessine)

Cakes: Ca-K-Es

Most words ending in “ts” have only been possible since November 2016, when tennessine (symbol Ts) was officially adopted as the name for the element with atomic number 117. At (astatine), Mt (meitnerium) and Pt (platinum) all end in T, but there aren’t many words that can be constructed that end with any of these combinations and the letter “S” (sulfur).

This bit of wordplay will probably occupy my mind for a while. If I end up with definitive lists, like all the country names, or all the UK cities, that can be constructed using chemical symbols, I’ll try and post them here. In the meantime, and in case you want to try a few yourself, here are all 118 chemical symbols in alphabetical order:

Ac (Actinium)
Ag (Silver)
Al (Aluminium)
Am (Americium)
Ar (Argon)
As (Arsenic)
At (Astatine)
Au (Gold)
B (Boron)
Ba (Barium)
Be (Beryllium)
Bh (Bohrium)
Bi (Bismuth)
Bk (Berkelium)
Br (Bromine)
C (Carbon)
Ca (Calcium)
Cd (Cadmium)
Ce (Cerium)
Cf (Californium)
Cl (Chlorine)
Cm (Curium)
Cn (Copernicium)
Co (Cobalt)
Cr (Chromium)
Cs (Caesium)
Cu (Copper)
Db (Dubnium)
Ds (Darmstadtium)
Dy (Dysprosium)
Er (Erbium)
Es (Einsteinium)
Eu (Europium)
F (Fluorine)
Fe (Iron)
Fl (Flerovium)
Fm (Fermium)
Fr (Francium)
Ga (Gallium)
Gd (Gadolinium)
Ge (Germanium)
H (Hydrogen)
He (Helium)
Hf (Hafnium)
Hg (Mercury)
Ho (Holmium)
Hs (Hassium)
I (Iodine)
In (Indium)
Ir (Iridium)
K (Potassium)
Kr (Krypton)
La (Lanthanum)
Li (Lithium)
Lr (Lawrencium)
Lu (Lutetium)
Lv (Livermorium)
Mc (Moscovium)
Md (Mendelevium)
Mg (Magnesium)
Mn (Manganese)
Mo (Molybdenum)
Mt (Meitnerium)
N (Nitrogen)
Na (Sodium)
Nb (Niobium)
Nd (Neodymium)
Ne (Neon)
Nh (Nihonium)
Ni (Nickel)
No (Nobelium)
Np (Neptunium)
O (Oxygen)
Og (Oganesson)
Os (Osmium)
P (Phosphorus)
Pa (Protactinium)
Pb (Lead)
Pd (Palladium)
Pm (Promethium)
Po (Polonium)
Pr (Praseodymium)
Pt (Platinum)
Pu (Plutonium)
Ra (Radium)
Rb (Rubidium)
Re (Rhenium)
Rf (Rutherfordium)
Rg (Roentgenium)
Rh (Rhodium)
Rn (Radon)
Ru (Ruthenium)
S (Sulfur)
Sb (Antimony)
Sc (Scandium)
Se (Selenium)
Sg (Seaborgium)
Si (Silicon)
Sm (Samarium)
Sn (Tin)
Sr (Strontium)
Ta (Tantalum)
Tb (Terbium)
Tc (Technetium)
Te (Tellurium)
Th (Thorium)
Ti (Titanium)
Tl (Thallium)
Tm (Thulium)
Ts (Tennessine)
U (Uranium)
V (Vanadium)
W (Tungsten)
Xe (Xenon)
Y (Yttrium)
Yb (Ytterbium)
Zn (Zinc)
Zr (Zirconium)