What Are The Odds of CAGED?

Lately I have been obsessing over the likelihood of CAGED.

For those that aren’t totally familiar, CAGED is a way to understand your Guitar, Bass or Ukulele fretboard.

What has piqued my obsessive gene is the likelihood that the underlying fretboard structure of Guitar, Bass and Ukulele tuning can be captured by a correct English word; the word CAGED.

I made a short too:

So if there are any mathematicians out there that can satisfy my curiosity here are the facts.

• There are only five major open chords A, C, D, E, G.

• These can be rearranged to create anagrams in 5! (5 factorial) ways. That is 120 ways.

• Of those 120 possible 5 letter words two spell correct English language words

  • CADGE and CAGED

• CAGED happens to be the order in which chords appear on the fretboard!

What are the odds of that? It seems highly unlikely, but I have no idea how unlikely. I am just happy that it is a word rather than having to learn another acronym. (I am thinking of you “Father Charles Goes Down And Ends Battle”)

If anyone is a lot better at maths than me please let me know.

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