Author Topic: New word? (5 May 2009 Standard)  (Read 2071 times)

Punnivinn

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New word? (5 May 2009 Standard)
« on: May 05, 2009, 09:30:38 PM »
I am an cruciverbalist, and have also made puzzles like these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonogram

Or google a bit. These puzzles have different names, 'nonogram' is perhaps the most international one, I used the same word in Estonian (only with two m-letters like it must be in Estonian).

I think that this word may be quite common among the people who are interested in word games for adding to the glossary here.

Alan W

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Re: New word? (5 May 2009 Standard)
« Reply #1 on: May 17, 2009, 06:54:34 PM »
Punnivinn, we have had some talk about nonograms on the forum before. Some of the other forumites have recommended these puzzles. However, we haven't yet discussed the word nonogram.

The Wikipedia article you linked to informs us that the word was invented by a James Dalgety in 1990. So far it doesn't seem to have been picked up by any dictionaries.

This website states that "NONOGRAM(r) is a registered Trademark as of 2nd November 1995 of James Dalgety." A word being a trademark does not necessarily rule it out for our purposes, but it does make it more likely that the word will be written with an initial capital letter - which would rule it out. And it does seem that many of the websites using the word nonogram write it with a capital N. Another reason this might happen is that the word is apparently derived from a person's name - the Japanese graphics editor Non Ishida.

Another thing I've noticed is that many of the websites talking about nonograms have long lists of other names for this type of puzzle.

So I'm not convinced nonogram has established itself firmly enough as a word (as opposed to a brand name) for us to allow it in our puzzle.
Alan Walker
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pat

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Re: New word? (5 May 2009 Standard)
« Reply #2 on: September 29, 2020, 07:55:23 PM »
I'm wondering if this word may be due for reconsideration for inclusion as it's 11 years since it was first suggested (rejected by the agronomy puzzle).

For anyone who might be interested in picture logic puzzles as a change from word puzzles, there's a free app called Nonograms Katana which contains thousands of them of varying degrees of difficulty. A word of warning though - they can become very addictive!

Alan W

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Re: New word? (5 May 2009 Standard)
« Reply #3 on: November 01, 2020, 06:34:14 PM »
One thing that's changed since this suggestion was previously looked into is that nonogram is now listed in Wiktionary:

Quote
(games, puzzles) A puzzle in which cells of a grid must be filled or left blank, according to sets of numbers given at the side of the grid, to reveal a hidden picture.

In view of Wiktionary's all-inclusive policy, this is not a very strong argument for accepting the word in Chi, but it helps.

I noted, when I considered this in 2009, that the word was sometimes written with an initial capital letter, but from what I can see, it's usually written in all lower-case letters.

It appears so infrequently in the corpora that it's hard to say if there's been any trend in how often the word is used. But the Google ngram viewer doesn't show much change over the past thirty odd years.

If nonogram was a word used by anatomists or stockbrokers - or even by bird watchers, pat - I'd probably rule it too obscure. But since its specialist field is puzzles, meaning that quite a few of the Chi community may know of it, I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. So nonogram will be accepted in future, as a rare word.
Alan Walker
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pat

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Re: New word? (5 May 2009 Standard)
« Reply #4 on: November 01, 2020, 06:36:31 PM »
Thanks, Alan.