the hogmaster™ claims he has a headache from collating all that data and asked me to comment as I see fit, so here goes (you'll have to refer back to the voting thread for this to make sense):

a) if belMarduk had consistently carried out her analysis, she should also have eliminated the three Scots entries (as did wofa), thereby purging the correct answer too (as did wofa).

b) as to milum's analysis, he pretty much came out 50% (3 or 4 out of 7, and on the Big Ones, 2 of 4); and I challenge him to scold (or whatever) James Murray (first editor of OED).

c) some smug person posted, "it does sound Aussie but no way is any culture going to specify a 'young' platypus." I had to laugh at this since a homonym for our recent entry "puggle" is the name of the baby echidna (spiny ant eater) or baby platypus [when] they hatch out of the egg and move into the pouch to be suckled. and I confess that yet another homonym for puggle ([chiefly dial., freq. of pug (poke)] [v] to clear out or stir up by poking) led me directly to my (poor) bluff.

d) I really have no comment regarding the odd veterans vs. newbies results; I just thought it.. odd.

but hey! thanx to all of you for playing!!


Last edited by tsuwm; 03/07/07 08:39 PM.