Wordsmith Talk |
About Us | What's New | Search | Site Map | Contact Us | |||
Register Log In Wordsmith.org Forums General Topics Wordplay and fun word freak
Previous Thread
Next Thread
Print Thread
OP the quote, of course, is taken out of context -- we really don't know what Borgmann had in mind. but in juxtaposition with the other quotes, the epigraph in total (having now read 180 pages) seems to be getting at the notion that Scrabble, in the hands of the competitive 'geniuses' is no longer a recreational word game testing the players' luck and vocabulary depth; but more an exercise in memory, anagramatic skill, psychology and competitive nature -- based on mathematics and symbology rather than language, with the rules being an arbitrary set of (meaningless) character strings.
this can be applied to a lot of the strange games that are played with words, like anagrams and palindromes -- little or no real information is communicated.
btw, Borgmann's other major title gives one more clue as to where he was coming from: "Language on Vacation: An Olio of Orhographical Oddities", which smacks of some of Anu's weekly themes.
Moderated by Jackie
Link Copied to Clipboard
Forum Statistics Forums16Topics13,913Posts229,433Members9,182 Most Online3,341
Dec 9th, 2011
Newest Members Ineffable, ddrinnan, TRIALNERRA, befuddledmind, KILL_YOUR_SUV
9,182 Registered Users
Who's Online Now 1 members (wofahulicodoc), 302 guests, and 3 robots. Key: Admin, Global Mod, Mod
Top Posters(30 Days) A C Bowden 17
Top Posters wwh 13,858Faldage 13,803Jackie 11,613wofahulicodoc 10,601tsuwm 10,542LukeJavan8 9,922Buffalo Shrdlu 7,210AnnaStrophic 6,511Wordwind 6,296of troy 5,400
Forum Rules · Mark All Read Contact Us · Forum Help · Wordsmith.org