A Terrible Temptation vs Searchlights on Health
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
485words between them — 2 min of it
A Terrible Temptation is longer — 133,916 words against 133,431 for Searchlights on Health, a difference of 485 words or about 2 min of extra reading. Searchlights on Health is the harder read, at grade 8.7 against 7.4.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| A Terrible Temptation | Searchlights on Health | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Reade, Charles | Jefferis, B. G. (Benjamin Grant) |
| Words | 133,916 | 133,431 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 8h 56m | 8h 54m |
| Unique words | 10,318 | 12,040 |
| Sentences | 7,293 | 8,129 |
| Average sentence length | 18.4 words | 16.4 words |
| Reading grade | 7.4 | 8.7 |
| Reading ease | 75 | 62.3 |
| Long words | 6.6% | 12.8% |
Highlighted cells are the larger figure — except reading ease, where higher means easier.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions, same counting rule·REVIEWED JUL 2026
How this is worked out
- Both texts are counted the same way, from the same source, with Gutenberg's header and licence footer struck first.
- The gap is stated in words and then in time at 250 words a minute — the rate is printed because a duration without one cannot be checked.
- Difficulty is compared on Flesch–Kincaid grade, which reads sentence and word length only. It cannot see irony or dialect, so treat it as a measure of surface, not of effort.
gap = |133,916 − 133,431| = 485 words 485 ÷ 250 wpm = 2 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, A Terrible Temptation or Searchlights on Health?
A Terrible Temptation is longer — 133,916 words against 133,431 for Searchlights on Health, a difference of 485 words or about 2 min of extra reading. Searchlights on Health is the harder read, at grade 8.7 against 7.4.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 7895 and no. 23609 — and from no other source. Neither book’s text is set on this site.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·US public domain·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Word counts and reading levels are computed from a specific public-domain edition and will differ from other editions and from other counting methods — see the method page.
