List iteration

Question

How do I iterate through a list and return its various elements from the string with most alphabets to the least.
Example.
L=["television","fan","ant","horse","mode"]
Returns ["television","horse","mode","ant""fan"]

Answer 1

L = ["television","fan","ant","horse","mode"]
L.sort(key=lambda a: len(a))
L = L[::-1] # <-- had to do this way as otherwise fan comes before ant if you do reverse=True in the sort function.
print(L)

Answer 2

When you say "most alphabets", do you mean most total letters or most unique letters. E.g. Mississippi has 11 total letters but only 4 unique letters.

Answer 3

lambda x: len(set(x))

Answer 4

print(sorted(L, key=len, reverse=True))

Answer 5

David Ashton, I mean "most total letters"but I would also appreciate the solution for most unique letters. Thanks