Project Daedalus vs Doctor Cupid
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
163words between them — 1 min of it
Project Daedalus is longer — 123,618 words against 123,455 for Doctor Cupid, a difference of 163 words or about 1 min of extra reading. Doctor Cupid is the harder read, at grade 8.9 against 6.3.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| Project Daedalus | Doctor Cupid | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Hoover, Thomas | Broughton, Rhoda |
| Words | 123,618 | 123,455 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 8h 14m | 8h 14m |
| Unique words | 11,572 | 11,769 |
| Sentences | 9,724 | 5,736 |
| Average sentence length | 12.7 words | 21.5 words |
| Reading grade | 6.3 | 8.9 |
| Reading ease | 72.8 | 69.4 |
| Long words | 10% | 7.7% |
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 = |123,618 − 123,455| = 163 words 163 ÷ 250 wpm = 1 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, Project Daedalus or Doctor Cupid?
Project Daedalus is longer — 123,618 words against 123,455 for Doctor Cupid, a difference of 163 words or about 1 min of extra reading. Doctor Cupid is the harder read, at grade 8.9 against 6.3.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 34320 and no. 35548 — 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.
