SALTPETER game -- Tuesday 16th May.

[Les303]

I really struggled to find the big word in this game & i became all the more frustrated as i noticed that many other players had managed to find two big words.
So after much perseverance i was pretty pleased with myself when i eventually stumbled across the common big word & was happy enough to concede defeat at ever finding that second big word which i thought would probably be something rare & totally unfamiliar to me.
I also noticed that there was a considerable number of other players who had only managed to find the one big word.
So i was just wondering if any of those players felt a bit like i did.
And that feeling was that when i viewed the solution this morning it left just a bit of a bad taste in my mouth when i realised that if i had simply viewed the definition of the word that i had found then it would have provided me with that second word or even more embarrassingly , maybe you did view the definition but still failed to play the second word.

Also thought it interesting that the U.S. spelling was given the common classification & not the other way round?

[rogue_mother]

Also thought it interesting that the U.S. spelling was given the common classification & not the other way round?

Les, there were two big words, not one. There was the U. S spelling of saltpeter, as you noted, but the British spelling, saltpetre, was also listed as common. I share your frustration, however, since I only found one of the big words (the U. S. one) and missed the British one. Lesson learned. I usually manage to get both versions of the really common words like center/centre and liter/litre. This one was not on my radar, but will be in the future (I hope).

[yelnats]

I too struggled to find the 2 big words and only got it by doing a shuffle, and then realised there would be a US version as well.

Sorry, I just had to change the heading to SALTPETRE!

[Greynomad]

As a philosophical consideration, was it 2 common words with the same meaning, or one common word with 2 spellings?

I know, search under "chicken and the egg"!

[Les303]

I worked the dog shift last night & got home at about 0630hrs.
While waiting for brekkie to cook , i logged on to chi to view the solution.
I normally only look to see which common words I have missed however for some reason I clicked the show all button this morning & in that sea of red words was saltpetre which in my tired state , i mistakenly took to be classified as rare which thoroughly confused me. ( Not a difficult thing to achieve at the best of times. )

Following , for your amusement , is my ever growing list ( in no particular order ) of when not to post.
DRUNK , ANGRY , UPSET, CONFUSED , UNCERTAIN , OVERCONFIDENT , UNAMUSING ,  subjects relating to ; POLITICS , RELIGION , SEX & the latest addition OVERTIRED.
Unfortunately , i seem to have a bit of trouble adhering to this list.

[Hobbit]

Oh Les you do make me laugh
Is that your toast & marmalade sitting on top of that very old monitor?
Penny

[Hobbit]

Incidentally I fell foul of the uncommon nine letter words in the "screening" game. I have never come across secerning or recensing

[Les303]

More likely toast & vegemite.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_sUhTWtvG4

Re the uncommon nine letter words ; I share the angst that I thought Greynomad expressed very well in his " Inclusion of words " post.

[Leedscot]

I thought they were your floppies, Les.

[Les303]

Well , here i go again , ignoring my own advice & posting on a subject that i know bugger all about & while still on the night shift ( last one tonight , thank goodness ) so also tired , hungry & a little bit more confused than usual.

Anyway , Jock , as you are a relatively new forumite you may be shocked to learn that i am one of those stubborn old fashioned blokes that has been dragged kicking & screaming into the mind boggling world of smart televisions , smart phones & smart computers all of which are way smarter than me. (not that being smarter than me is any great achievement).

So with regard to " floppies ' , i do vaguely recall that a few years ago while at work i got involved in a conversation where a couple of colleagues were discussing all the wonderful things that they could do with floppy discs.
As my computer skills in our section were almost legendary , they took the time to try to explain to me how to use a floppy disc & handed one over for me to have a look at.

While i continually nodded my head in a vain attempt to feign some sort of understanding of their explanation i was also taping this disc on knuckles.
So Les , they asked , do you understand now & do you have any questions?
Pretending was not going to fool anyone so i responded that i was none the wiser as i barely understood  a single word of the gibberish that i had just heard & the only question i had as i continued to tap this disc on my desk , was why do they call it a floppy disc as this is actually quite firm & hard?

One of the them simply started laughing , while the other bloke took a huge sigh & with a pained expression on his face explained that the disc is still in its outer casing & has to be removed.

So i removed the disc from its casing & while it was a little flexible , i would hardly describe it as floppy so i never did get a reasonable answer as to why they called it a floppy disc?
I belief that floppies have become almost obsolete & now they use something called a " flash drive " ( sounds like a fancy car ) so here is another stupid question , why is it called a flash drive?

 

[yelnats]

Floppy disks have gone through an evolution as most computer things have. After tapes (I've used an Atari PC with a cassette tape drive came floppy discs, 8 inch, 5.25 inch, and then 3.25 inch, which is possibly what you took apart. The 8" was floppier than the later ones. They came in different storage capacities with 3.25 inch originally holding about 772kb and the High Density (HD) held an amazing 1.44 Mb. My first Mac Classic ran on HD discs without a hard drive. You often had to put them in and out to accomplish some amazing feat like copying text from one program to another.

And then I got a 32Mb Hard drive!

I now have a USB stick/Flash drive (I believe "Pendrive" in England and Spain) of about 120Gb. I think the flash comes from being electrically written or erased.

Penny, my breakfast, toast and vegemite, then toast and marmalade.

[Hobbit]

Sounds good Stanley Savoury first and then something a bit sweeter to finish off with!  Is vegemite similar to Marmite? Is it good in a toastie with cheese? yummy!  Penny

[yelnats]

Hoplng not to be charged with being "un-Australian", yes it is and Marmite is available here, but it's just a shadow of vegemite.