The Pirate vs The Goose Man
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
1,076words between them — 4 min of it
The Pirate is longer — 198,078 words against 197,002 for The Goose Man, a difference of 1,076 words or about 4 min of extra reading. The Pirate is the harder read, at grade 16.3 against 7.7.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| The Pirate | The Goose Man | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Scott, Walter | Wassermann, Jakob |
| Words | 198,078 | 197,002 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 13h 12m | 13h 08m |
| Unique words | 16,016 | 12,636 |
| Sentences | 5,056 | 10,750 |
| Average sentence length | 39.2 words | 18.3 words |
| Reading grade | 16.3 | 7.7 |
| Reading ease | 48 | 72.4 |
| Long words | 9.1% | 8.3% |
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 = |198,078 − 197,002| = 1,076 words 1,076 ÷ 250 wpm = 4 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, The Pirate or The Goose Man?
The Pirate is longer — 198,078 words against 197,002 for The Goose Man, a difference of 1,076 words or about 4 min of extra reading. The Pirate is the harder read, at grade 16.3 against 7.7.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 42389 and no. 25345 — 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.
