I\'m trying to find \"the zen\" string in a field containing \"The Zen Circus\". I\'ve got a FULLTEXT index.
select url,name,
, MATCH(name) AGAINST ( \'zen
See this answer MySQL full text search for words with three or less letters
[mysqld]
ft_min_word_len=3
Then you must restart the server and rebuild your FULLTEXT indexes.
Remeber to restart and rebuild indexes.
show variables like 'ft_%';
to confirm that the word length matches what you set it to.