Magic Squares of (probabilistically chosen) Words

Thinking about magic squares, I had the idea of doing something roughly similar with words, but using usage patterns rather than arithmetic equations. I’m pasting below an example, using statistical data from Poe’s texts:

Poe

the same manner as if
most moment in this we
intense and his head were
excitement which i have no
greatly he could not one

The word on the top-left cell in the grid is the most frequently used in Poe’s writing, “the” — unsurprisingly so, as it’s the most frequently used word in the English language. Now, the word immediately to its right, “same,” is there because “same” is one of the words that follows “the” most often in the texts we’re looking at. The word below “the” is “most” because it also follows “the” very often. “Moment” is set to the right of “most” and below “same” because it’s the word that most frequently follows both.

The same pattern is used to fill the entire 5-by-5 square. If you start at the topmost left square and then move down and/or to the right, although you won’t necessarily be constructing syntactically correct phrases, the consecutive word pairs will be frequent ones in Poe’s writing.

Although there are no ravens or barely sublimated necrophilia in the matrix, the texture of the matrix is rather appropriate, if not to Poe, at least to Romanticism. To convince you of that, here are the equivalent 5-by-5 matrices for Swift and Chesterton.

Swift

the world and then he
same in his majesty would
manner a little that it
of certain to have is
their own make no more

Chesterton

the man who had been
other with that no one
and his it said syme
then own is i could
there are only think be

At least compared against each other, it wouldn’t be too far fetched to say that Poe’s matrix is more Poe’s than Chesterton’s, and vice versa!

PS: Because I had a sudden attack of curiosity, here’s the 5-by-5 matrix for my newest collection of short stories, Time of Punishment (pdf link).

Time of Punishment

the school whole and even
first dance both then four
charge rants resistance they think
of a hundred found leads
punishment new astronauts month sleep