STONKS always go up

Well done, sir. I consider your oath fulfilled.

Can we talk about Oxford commas...or the lack thereof. Yes I went there. :)

Yep, readability and maintainability for the win. Regex can be great for performance, but until you minify for production, comments are a must.

So many things to like about this solution, not the least of which it's not ugly (like many think JavaScript just has to be). Nice bit of code.

"pop.pop" - YES. I've never used this in code before, though there were some missed opportunities I shoulda coulda. Waiting for my next chance...

Hmmm, after much coding come to find out that order apparently matters(?) (that is, difference between "read" and "dear" not zero). I was reading the description literally which would have you thinking it a simple matter of of returning min of max(length - hits). This type of code will pass all tests but the last one (i.e. zqdrhpviqslik).

best combo of brevity and readability

This is a beautiful piece of code. Props.

First time my code matched the top result! Usually I get humbled after seeing what other people got, then go off to get smarter on some Ruby method I didn't fully appreciate.

Me no understand. Me go get smarterer now.