Author Topic: A dearth of rosettes  (Read 5228 times)

Morbius

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A dearth of rosettes
« on: August 27, 2014, 06:37:45 PM »
I finished two words short of a rosette on yesterday's 10 letter puzzle (the PLANTATION game).  Given that only two people got a rosette, I expected at least one of those missed words to be something unusual, so I was surprised to find that the two words I missed were both indisputably common (attain and titan).  There weren't any really strange common words in that puzzle. 

I wonder why so few got them all.  ???
 

mkenuk

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Re: A dearth of rosettes
« Reply #1 on: August 27, 2014, 09:56:48 PM »
Quite a coincidence then, Morbius, that 'titan' and 'attain' were the same two words that I missed!!

I would have said that 'lapin', 'pinot', 'piton' and 'pianola' (which my computer's semi-literate spell-check has just underlined!) were less common than 'titan' or 'attain' and it was one or more of those four words that probably accounted for the shortage of rosettes.

MK


rogue_mother

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Re: A dearth of rosettes
« Reply #2 on: August 27, 2014, 10:07:43 PM »
I missed the same two words! These are words that come up fairly frequently and I don't usually miss them, especially titan. I think part of the problem was just the volume of common words, and part of it was the three sets of repeating letters. For myself, my brain just got tired. I disagree that there weren't any really strange common words. I would submit that pianola does not merit common status. I found it strictly by luck. Additionally lapin always seems strange to me. I never knew it before I started playing Chihuahua, and I never encounter it in my daily life, written or aural. Back when I started playing the game, I never questioned whether a common word ought to have that status; I just learned it. Lapin is one of those.

Piton and pinot come up often enough that people have had more than enough time to comment on these, even newcomers to the game.
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Linda

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Re: A dearth of rosettes
« Reply #3 on: August 27, 2014, 10:49:57 PM »
I missed anon and plaint - perhaps we should have put our heads together and got the lot!

mkenuk

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Re: A dearth of rosettes
« Reply #4 on: November 14, 2014, 08:55:22 PM »
There was another dearth of rosettes on the recent 'promenade' challenge game (only 4). In fact quite a few of the 'rosette every game' club fell short on that puzzle. I wonder why?

There were several 'less common' common words (if I can put it like that) in the game: daemon, demeanor, namedrop, pomade and pomander for example are all common words but for one reason or another they don't appear in Chi puzzles very often.

It got me wondering if there was any way to show, as part of the solution to the games, the common words that were submitted by fewest players? I missed 'pomander' in the 'promenade' game, for example. It would be interesting to know how many other players saw it.

Just an idea.

MK

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Re: A dearth of rosettes
« Reply #5 on: November 15, 2014, 12:43:28 AM »
I missed pomander. I'm familiar with pomanders -- just didn't see the word. Besides that one I also missed namedrop; for some reason I seldom think of it in its naked form. Usually I think of namedropper or namedropping.
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Alan W

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Re: A dearth of rosettes
« Reply #6 on: November 16, 2014, 12:05:41 PM »
To satisfy our curiosity about that particular puzzle, the common words found by the fewest players were:

NAMEDROP 10
ENAMORED 33
DEMEANOR 39
POMANDER 45
MONAD 49
DAEMON 54
RANDOM 75

Interestingly, MONAD is the only one of these queried by my spell-checker. ENAMORED and DEMEANOR both have an -OUR spelling in places where British style spelling is followed, so that may have caused some players to miss them.

Quite a few "rare" words were played by many more people than any of these, such as:

DOPER 185
MOPER 169
OARED 130
PONE 121
REPO 107
DORE 104
AERO 100

Some of these, I think are "Chi-words", that is, words that people have got to know from the puzzle, rather than from usage.

MK, I like your idea of making this sort of information available when looking at any solution, but I'll have to look into the practicalities of it.
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Tom44

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Re: A dearth of rosettes
« Reply #7 on: November 16, 2014, 01:31:46 PM »
As to the rare words, I admit to not knowing dore, but I know all the others (indeed, they seem common, not rare, to me) and did not learn any of them in Chi.  Doing a lot of crossword puzzles probably help, though.
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