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Topics - Alan W

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421
Say Hello / Welcome macca
« on: July 02, 2007, 11:27:49 AM »
Hi macca. Welcome to the forum. As you said, you've been playing regularly for a long time, so it's great to hear from you. Hope you get a chance to join in the chatter here from time to time.

422
This Forum / Forum Preview Panel
« on: June 29, 2007, 05:11:02 PM »
I'm thinking of putting a box next to the Chihuahua puzzle that would show a summary of recent posts to this forum. Have a look at the attached image.

It would be to the right of the scoreboard, and would list the latest five topics to have messages posted in them. You could click on a topic to open it up in a new window.

It might make things a little easier for us forumites, because we could keep an eye on what's happening on the forum while we play. The information would be updated whenever you click on the refresh button in the corner. It would also give the forum a higher profile to other Chi players.

Possible disadvantages? All I can think of is that it makes the page look more cluttered, and might be a distraction to a new player trying to get the hang of the game.

Please let me know what you think of this idea.

423
This Forum / Guests Broken Down
« on: June 25, 2007, 06:04:54 PM »
I've just installed a modification to the forum software (created by some clever person, not me) that gives a breakdown of the visitors to the forum on the "Who's Online" page. This is the page you see if you click on the link just under the People Online heading near the bottom of the main page.

In particular, it shows who is a real guest, and who is a robot (a.k.a. spider) from one of the search engines.

If you feel a bit queasy about these creatures reading your posts on the forum, you needn't. It's just search engine computers collecting data for their indexes of the Web. On the other hand, if you feel a bit queasy about the possibility that anybody in the whole world who has an Internet connection might stumble on one of your posts via a search engine, then you probably ought to bear that in mind when you're sending messages. It might feel like we're in our own little private clubhouse here, but we're actually putting our comments into the public arena.

424
Word Games / Letterbox Game on the Radio!
« on: June 21, 2007, 04:30:38 PM »
There's going to be a brief interview with me on Sydney radio station 2UE this Saturday, talking mainly about Letterbox.

It will be on a nostalgia program presented by Paul Makin. He's going to be talking about an Australian TV game show he hosted in 1981, "$50,000 Letterbox", which was most likely one of the (indirect) sources of the Letterbox game on this website. He got on to me because I've got a note about the TV show on the About Letterbox page.

The interview has already been recorded over the phone, just a little while ago. It only goes for a few minutes. If you're in Sydney you can listen on 2UE between 7 and 8 pm on Saturday. If you're anywhere else, you can listen at http://www.mytalk.com.au/NewDesign/Pages/S_Talk_2UE.aspx, by clicking on "Listen Live", at about 9 hours after Saturday's Chihuahua puzzles start. But if you're in North America or the UK, I wouldn't bother getting up early on a Saturday morning for it - it doesn't include anything startling.

425
Words / Come in, Spinner!
« on: June 20, 2007, 12:02:57 PM »
The phrase "come in, spinner!" meaning "Ha! tricked you!" has been used by Viz a couple of times, to the consternation of non-Australian readers.

It seems this usage of the phrase is yet to be covered by any of the Australian dictionaries, even though it's quite widely used. Lexicographer James Lambert has recently written a note about it on a Web page, http://www.anu.edu.au/andc/res/aus_words/lambert/lambert_more.php, but he was only able to find one written example.

The same phrase is used in the gambling game two-up, played with coins, where it means that all the bets have been placed and the coins can be tossed. But it's not totally obvious why this should have come to mean "You've been duped". My own hypothesis is that there might have been an influence from fishing. Another way of expressing the same idea is to mime an angler reeling in a line, and a spinner is a type of fishing lure, so maybe people felt the phrase come in, spinner suggested reeling in a fish that's been fooled by a lure.

In any case, it's a good phrase, and quite apt sometimes on the forum.

426
This Forum / Hi Tea goes Even Higher!
« on: June 20, 2007, 11:13:58 AM »
Yes, folks, Technomc has attained the exalted forum rank of Glossologian  - the first ever forumite to ascend to this towering level. Congratulations, T.

So, what is a glossologian? Well, glosso- is from the Greek for tongue, or language. Glossolalia is speaking in tongues - not totally irrelevant to what sometimes goes on in the forum, but not quite what we're aiming for. A glossologist, according to the Shorter Oxford, is a person who defines or explains terms, or an expert in or student of language or languages.

However, glossologian is a specially coined word meaning a forumite who has posted 1000 messages to the Lexigame Forum, or, more broadly, someone who knows how to use their tongue. (Colloquially - tonguey: "Ready or voluble in speaking".)

Just to recap, here are the current levels:

0+Neophyte
50+Logologist
100+Lexicomane
150+Word-meister
200+Linguissimo
300+Paronomaniac
500+Cryptoverbalist
1000+Glossologian

To give us a bit of breathing space, I propose that the three-green-star level kick in at 1000000 posts. A suitable name will be decided in good time. (I should have at least a couple of months.)

427
Whatever / The Apostrophe and "Eats, Shoots & Leaves"
« on: June 19, 2007, 12:08:47 PM »
Now that things have quietened down a bit, I'd just like to throw in some comments about Lynne Truss's book Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, which was mentioned in another topic (that subsequently went haywire).

I got the impression that presenting the book as a tirade against bad punctuation was a bit of a publisher's ploy to get people interested in a book about punctuation. The bulk of the book tells the history of each punctuation mark, in which it is made obvious that people's ideas of correct punctuation have changed dramatically over the centuries, and that many of the usages considered correct today were decried as ignorant mistakes in the past. (As is often the case with spellings and meanings of words too.) The indignation about sloppy punctuation seems to have been tacked on, as an afterthought.

Having said that, I must admit that my hackles rise when I see apostrophes wrongly used. But Lynne Truss's fixation with this issue would have been more effective if she had managed to collect a lot of examples of apostrophe misuse by well-known authors and respected publications, rather than picking on the hapless shopkeeper. (I find I'm not so bothered by apostrophes being left out as by them being wrongly inserted. Some writers have suggested that text messaging is hastening the complete disappearance of the apostrophe, which wouldn't cause any problems of comprehension in most cases.)

And, while some punctuation issues are clear-cut, others are debatable. Some reviewers have claimed that the book is full of errors itself (for example the New Yorker's review). And shouldn't that be "zero-tolerance approach"?

(I've also commented on the book's title on the Ozlip site.)

428
Say Hello / Welcome Cornflake Girl!
« on: June 18, 2007, 05:12:13 PM »
Hi Cornflake Girl. Welcome to the forum. I hope you'll join in the chat from time to time.

(Most of you will have noticed Cornflake Girl as a very regular Chi player - or CHIller, to use the modern idiom. She's been a loyal player since early days, and has conversed with me via email a few times with helpful comments.)

429
Words / Word suggestion - "tepor"
« on: June 14, 2007, 11:29:16 AM »
"Jenny" sent this message a few days ago via the Web page:

Quote
Hi a new word is tepor - listed in onelook under 8 dictionaries.  Just love this puzzle!!

Jenny, I don't know whether you're Cleverjen or jenii, or someone else entirely, but you uttered the secret pass-phrase ("love this puzzle"), so your suggestion deserves to be taken seriously.

It seems tepor is an old word for the quality of being tepid - more commonly tepidity, or tepidness. Onelook.com does have links to eight dictionaries that list the word, but quite a few of them seem to have taken it from the same source - Webster's 1913 dictionary. I also found it in the Shorter Oxford, where it is marked as obsolete.

So I think we can say it's not in widespread current use - but the same could no doubt be said of thousands of the words already in our list. So I'll add tepor to the list. Thanks for the suggestion Jenny.

430
Whatever / I'm leeeeaving.. on a jet plane...
« on: June 08, 2007, 10:39:18 AM »
Just to let you all know that I'm heading off in a few hours for a short holiday in Hobart (brrr). I'll be back Tuesday evening my time - about 4 and a half days from now.

I don't know how often I'll get to use a computer while I'm away, so you mightn't be seeing much of me in the forum, but I'm sure the chat will go on merrily enough. Chi and the other games should chug on automatically, as they have been doing these past many weeks. (But if Sod's law kicks in, and there is some problem, and you can't get in touch with me... don't panic! - I'll be back and everything will be fixed up before you know it.)

431
Word Games / Mouse or Keyboard?
« on: June 01, 2007, 11:45:17 AM »
Please feel free to add comments about your experiences.

432
This Forum / All hail Technomc, our first cryptoverbalist!
« on: May 29, 2007, 11:25:03 AM »
Yes, T has surged across the line to earn the new title. Congratulations, o prolific poster.

When we were discussing possible titles, cruciverbalist was mentioned. Although some definitions include a player of any word puzzle, it's mainly used for crossword players, and the cruci- prefix relates to a cross, so I coined cryptoverbalist as a more general term for a player of word puzzles - or in this case, an adept of word puzzles.

You'll also notice I've started a new series of special-coloured stars for the higher ranks of the forum. The existing sequence of stars seems to have about reached the limit of usefulness.

433
I realise it's a hopeless task to try to limit the spontaneous self-expression of forumites, but if you wish to ask for, or give, hints for a current Chihuahua puzzle, you might consider doing it here, so those who do not wish to see such hints can avoid them.

Hints given so far have tended to be cryptic, if not completely unfathomable, but I can see the way things are likely to go.

434
This Forum / New Bedtime Smileys Added
« on: May 28, 2007, 02:14:09 PM »
 :-Z
 :-S
 :-P
 :-Y

(Other types of bedtime imagery will not be provided, no matter how pertinent to the content of some forum discussions.)

435
Words / Common vs uncommon - betel and embattle
« on: May 25, 2007, 11:40:47 AM »
Weighing into the debate on what is a common word, chavez sent the following from the website, without providing an email address:

Quote
Today: betel is a common work but not embattle. I would disagree with this.

Great game!!

Chavez, if you're reading this, you may be right - not just on saying Chihuahua is a great game, but on the relative commonness of the two words. At least the players found it so - 71 found "embattle", but only 52 found "betel".

As mentioned in other topics, I'm keeping in mind the possibility of fine-tuning the grouping of words into the common and rare categories.

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