What do these words have in common? Anyone figure it out yet (I haven't but that's par for the course)?

extemporize, impresario, macroscopic, postdiluvian, plausive

I haven't either...I'll probably kick myself (figuratively!) when someone else does and lets us know.

Silly, but fun.........

The composer, known for his macroscopic world-view, received plausive reviews for his postdiluvian opera, in which he was both impresario and performer; his ability to extemporize when the conductor dropped his score was phenomenal.

I have way too much time on my hands...

Dum-dee-dee, doo-dee-dee,
A noted composer
Liked life macroscopic;
Plausive replys
To staggering lines in
Songs postdiluvian-
The impressario
Extemporised.

Harrumph®

I shoulda known by now it was something mechanical and nothing to do with word origins.

Err, call me slow but... what was the theme?

The theme was words that require all eight fingers (not counting the thumbs as fingers) to be touch-typed on a standard qwerty keyboard. Not exactly a category of the words per se. They all contained the letter p because the letter p is the only one that uses the little finger of the right hand.

Marilyn Vos Savant will occasionally have a theme of this sort, e.g., words that use only the fingers of the left hand.

dogette, the theme was revealed in AWADmail #91, which subscribers received today.

Ah, haven't checked yet!

That theme applies only to the Scholes layout, which makes typing unnecessarily slow and fatiguing. I use the Dvorak layout, which is available on all modern computers (In Windows: Control Panel > Keyboard > Input Locales). Anyone who types, and who expects to live more than another two months will benefit by switching. The only limitation is that it requires the maturity to accept short-term inconvenience for long-term convenience.

I seem to remember reading that it is very easy to covert from qwerty to Dvorak but very difficult to convert back.

The qwerty layout *was designed to slow the typist down. They were worried about keys jamming.

Ron, how do you find out which kewys are which? I have selected "Dvorak for left-handers" as an alternate input locale, but where can I find something that tells me what each character key has now become?

The "Dvorak for left-handers" layout is for people who have no use of their right hands, as distinct from two-handed people who use their left hands for writing etc.. I mention that, because the name of the layout is ambiguous.

I found diagrams and related information for one-handed typists at

http://home1.gte.net/bharrell/kbdtxt.htm

The two-handed Dvorak layout is described at

http://thisistrue.com/dvorak.html
http://www.dcn.davis.ca.us/~sander/mensa/dvorak1.html
http://www.mwbrooks.com/dvorak/

There is a course on the subject at

http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/jcb/Dvorak/dvorak-course/

>The "Dvorak for left-handers" layout is for people who have no use of their right hands,


That pretty much describes me - I have very limited use of my right hand. Thanks for the link. If you put [$url$] and [$/url$], without the $s, it makes the links hot.