[mahcuz]

Regarding the squaring - would it be enough to take the absolute value of the distance? (abs -5) + (abs 5) = 10.

[jessedhillon]

It's still a problematic way to quantify distance between strings. It says that "Rello World" is as close to the target as "Ifmkn Vpqkc"

Levenshtein would quantify those differently, and I'd argue, more correctly. It would say the first is much closer than the second.