You mean like this?

Curkananotes prisoneens' facaninil brendus iseranced bnoyed paittillabay falilny atbead.

I learned to read using phonics, and that worked well, despite the vagaries of English spelling. However, teaching kids to read by recognizing whole words caught on in the US, and I suppose, in the UK. Apparently the learning curve is pretty steep at first. In addition, parents were not able to help their kids learn to read by the whole word method. That's why we started seeing ads on TV for aids to teaching phonics. I don't see those ads much these days. Maybe phonics made a comeback in the schools. Or maybe parents who were taught by the whole word method were happy with their kids learning that way.

BTW, the shortened version illustrates the fact that most of the meaning of text is carried by the consonants.

How about this:



It's not of much help that English isn't particularly phonetic to begin with.

For simplicity's sake, let's just look at Black to Kill type problems.

I learned whole word, my kids are being taught in school with phonics. The pendulum has swung back, possibly too far, English doesn't lend itself that well to phonics alone and word lists based on phonics are less useful to children than word lists based on frequency. The linguist David Crystal commented on the pointlessness of having children learn off words they neither will read or write in the next year rather than giving them word lists of the things they will want to write down and read. Kind of like whether you mention "rite" when explaining the difference between "right" and "write" to a learner to take an extreme example.

Don't wee want are kids too rite rite?

I thought a bit about learning to read, and I think that the focus on single words may be too narrow. If I were teaching kids to read something I might try is reading stories to them, pausing at certain points to ask them to guess the next word, and then telling them the next word and writing it down for them. Reading involves context. I imagine that I could do without word lists.

I remember that in first grade we thought that our readers were stupid. "Look. See." Nobody talks like that.

I believe "White to live" is considerably more complex, and that suggests there is something artificial about this business.

What good is reading if I don't even know which part of the board I should be playing in next?

But seriously, if it helps for black to kill but not for white to live, wouldn't that still be a good thing?

In practical play and shinogi, finding an extra half eye or weakness in the surrounding groups are both complex reading issues. There are problem sets about bridging under, I recall, which are quite tough; and any sort of shortage of liberties issues occur. These are big areas, and "combinatorial" (probably not reducible to a short list of things to try).

Pure curiosity: Are they tough because the stones end up in unusual patterns which make normal candidate moves for similar shapes not work? Outside of factors like reading depth etc. Interested from a "how much of high dan problems are taking the solver away from the usual shapes/patterns they are familiar with rather than just being a case of needing deeper reading" perspective. Might be a trite question.