Fix

Setting MINIMUM_WORDS to an initial value of 10 was kind of cheap and
amateurish.  Setting a real initial value on the first iteration is a
little better, but still not ideal as the condition is unnecessarily
evaluated on every iteration there after.  Not really sure there is a
better method in this context tho.
Comment regarding exception

Could be easily handled with a try/catch block (and should be outside of
the scope of the assignment), but this was not yet technically covered
in class as of yet.