woolier / woollier inconsistency

[TRex]

Playing a Your Puzzles 7-by-many game. When woolier came up as rare, I didn't bother to try woollier. Got a surprise when the latter came up as common. Shouldn't they be the same?

[Jacki]

They sure should!

[les303]

Shear madness that they are not the same.

[Alan W]

The only reason I can think of why they might be different is that wooly, woolier and wooliest are actually less common forms than woolly, woollier and woolliest.

[Alan W]

TRex, I gather the way you like to play Chihuahua is to find as many of the common words as possible, while avoiding all rare words. Hence your decision not to play woolly when you thought it would be classed as rare. Jacki, I get the impression you play the puzzle this way too. In effect this way of playing requires you to predict whether each word you think of will be classed as common or rare. Given the rough and ready way this classification was set up - as I've described somewhere - you are setting yourselves quite a task.

I've said before that I have no problem with people playing Chihuahua however they wish. Still, the puzzle is not designed to be played in this way. This is obvious from the "How to play" section right under the puzzle on the main page: "Make as many words as you can with the letters given..." And from the first sentence on the Help pages: "Use the letters shown to make as many words as you can." (Emphasis added.) When I play, if I think something is a word, I'll play it.

So, in refining the word list, I'm not inclined to aim for predictability if I think that one variant of a word is actually more commonly used and known than another.

In this case, we currently have wooly, woolier and wooliest as rare words and the double-L versions of these words as common words. My spell checker queries the single-L words, but let's look further. The online Oxford identifies wooly as a US variant spelling, but the two main US-published dictionaries, Merriam-Webster and American Heritage both have woolly as the main entry. M-W says, "variants: or less commonly wooly".

Looking at usage frequency, woolly is about 3 times as common in US texts in both the News on the Web corpus and the Corpus of Contemporary American Usage. (A surprising number of the occurrences of wooly are in references to "Wooly Bully", the 1964 song by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs.) In British news articles woolly outnumbers wooly by more than 10 to 1. The Google Ngrams viewer shows woolly used vastly more often than wooly in both American English and British English.

I feel the current classifications are probably correct.

[Jacki]

Thanks Alan. The reason I decided to play the common words only is that there are so many words! I get that the game isn’t designed to be played this way. But it’s interesting to see how much is involved with all your research.
Probably when you started Chihuahua you didn’t envisage all the effort you would have ahead of you.
Do you worry about the future of the game? Are you tired of us all?
My dad’s best friend has run a footy tipping comp for years - it started out as a few mates and now there’s over 180 tipsters and each year he says it will be his last. He’s 80 this year and he’s vowed it’s his last!
Do you have an end date in mind? Do you have a successor in mind?

[TRex]

A disappointed thanks, Alan. Perhaps this discussion will be remembered the next time I encounter those letters.

There are multiple reasons why I try to play only common words. When comparing results with my much better half, since we only compare common words it is easier if I don't need to sift through words we aren't comparing. Also, playing 'as many words as you can' would mean even more time spent on this addictive game and not doing things I ought to be doing. But, perhaps more importantly, my vocabulary is extremely eclectic and many words, were I to attempt to play them, would get a 'not known' response — and I'm not even including the many re- and un- words which aren't included in Chihuahua's dictionary. (Also, I try to not be too irritating with word suggestions.)

[Alan W]

Perhaps I should clarify my remarks. My goal in playing - and I'm sure this is true of many players - is to get as close as possible to 100% of the common words. I don't try to get most of the rare words - which would be futile since I don't know most of the rare words - but I don't make an effort to avoid rare words either. If a word could conceivably be common, I'll certainly give it a try.

But each player will, of course, play the game as they see fit.

You ask some good questions, Jacki. Most of the time I spend on Chihuahua and the forum is spent doing things that don't need to be done to keep the site running: considering word suggestions and complaints; adding new features like the 7-by-many puzzles; compiling additional volumes of the Chi puzzle books. I do these things because I want to. And when I don't feel like doing them, I don't do them for a while. But there is also some technical support work that has to be done from time to time to keep the site running.

There certainly will be an end date, but I don't know when it will be and I don't currently have any plans for it. Hopefully I'll work something out before I get to 80.

[Jacki]

Well Alan when it’s more of a burden then it’s fun then that’s the time to pull the pin. Hope it’s a while away but at least I’ve had five good years!