My Toaster is Amazing

So here's a simple example that shows my continuing childlike wonder .... or something.

My toaster is amazing.  Not that there's anything special about my toaster - it's a 2-slice Toastmaster.  I expect I bought it some 15 years ago for $15 or less, and most likely at Walmart.  I suppose what I find amazing about it, aside from toasters being one of the most reliable devices you'll ever buy, is that I don't really know how they work.

Now, I generally understand the electricity makes heat part, but the "brownness" selector is something of a mystery.  I always assumed that this was tied to a variable resistor that affected some timer.  Not so.

I don't really care to go shopping.  You may wonder if my brain just skipped the tracks.  A reasonable assumption but bear with me:  Because I don't care to shop, I tend to avoid it.  This means that I tend to "stock up" when I do go shopping.  Long story short, this means I have lots of bread in my freezer.

One day I thought I'd defrost some bread by popping it into the toaster.  It may be uneven and a bit crisp on the edges, but I can deal with that - or so I thought.  It turns out that the toaster toasts my bread to perfection even when it's initially frozen solid.  Clearly, this toaster is a more complex device than I had imagined.


In an assuredly unrelated topic, turkey and cheese on frozen wheat bread - 3 stars; turkey and cheese on toasted wheat bread - 11 !

A word-game riddle

A while ago I came up with a simple riddle while driving (no, I don't need a cell phone to be distracted, TYVM).  I haven't really figured out the best way to describe it, but this is the premise:

There exist sets of five words (in english) such that the only difference between the words is that one of the letters can be replaced by each of the five vowels.  As an example, the pattern "b_g" expands into "bag", "beg", "big", "bog", and "bug".  I believe all the three letter combinations are that plus "f_r", "p_p", "p_t", and "t_n".

I know of a similar set consisting of words of seven letters.  The challenge is to find it.  Is it the longest?

A secondary challenge is to simply find other sets, of any length.