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#72349 06/12/02 06:36 PM
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Word play and fun isn't word games. this is not a game site.

Despite the gentleman who pules,
"We don't need no steenkin' rules,"
Upon your point I must agree;
I side with you and not with he.
Your principle thus demonstrates
How rules can help forestall debates.
(Yet I confess that all the same,
I rather much enjoyed the game! )


#72350 06/12/02 06:54 PM
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a further point... its not so much a rule that we can't have games here, but games need to meet the function of the board.. this is not set up as game board, and since it in theory, if not in acuality, has members who post from all points of the globe, its hardly fair or fun to have games that are unable to particapate in, or if they do, they are at a handicap.

hogwash invites suggestions for a week or so, (and has a deadline,) then has another week to vote. so everyone in the world can play, on equal footing. personally i found it boring and slow. and never joined in.. but any one who wanted too, could. a game of similar to hang man might be divised that could be fairly played across 24 time zones, and several days.. but this game wasn't.

game sites have software that responds differently.. and makes games available 24 hours a day.. this has never been a game site, (and changing to one would require new software. has any asked Anu to host a word game site? that might be an other solution.


#72351 06/13/02 04:37 AM
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Not to sound like a broken record, but this is another reason I like of troy: she didn't just identify a problem, she explained WHY it was a problem (thanks Helen, because I hadn't thought of the time-zone unfairness!), AND (most important of all) - she suggested a possible solution or two.

So one of us could try to come up with a way to make hangman something fair we could play here - although it might be boring and slow, like hogwash - or we could leave it (as of troy mentions, there are several game sites out there), or ask Anu about a word games site.....

For now, for those who love word games and perhaps don't know about it, might I recommend http://www.yourdictionary.com/ and click on the "games" portion of the site? I just spent some enjoyable time there myself and can recommend it....


#72352 06/14/02 12:50 AM
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I'm not sure whether this is a complaint or a thank you... I've looked up the Boggle site mentioned long, long ago at the start of this thread, and it's pretty good. Thus my uncertainty over whether to complain or thank; I will be returning there, and it may be that I do so too much!


#72353 06/14/02 08:46 AM
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If it's the one I mentioned, I hope you have plenty of fun there.

My nick over there is "elbillaf" and hopefully we'll meet there in real time in the near future.

These are great games for expanding vocabulary - probably super boggle moreso than regular boggle, though I enjoy both games for sheer fun. I'm really surprised when I play with my kids to discover that they know words that I wasn't expecting them to know - like 'wary' and 'remit'. These two came up last night when I was doing crosswords with the kids. I wasn't so surprised that she had heard of them so much as that she read the definitions and immediately knew the words. (It's become our nightly passion instead of reading to each other to play games.) Okay, so crosswords are among the many word games I love and at which I suck, so maybe I'm overly impressed.

Still, I think the combination of activities: talking with the kids regularly, reading to them, playing various smart games with them, etc. has had a cumulative beneficial effect on their vocabularies. I'm kinda excited now about the prospect of teaching my oldest how to do cryptograms.

People set different standards as you'll discover (in scrabble as well as in boggle). For example, the words "em" and "en" mentioned in the subwords thread in the other group are very commonly played in scrabble, and "cwm" and "airn" and "airt" are often played in boggle - very, very often by people who don't know or care about the meanings. I think that the love of words and language is so deep among the better players, though, that most of them (the high red fellows) know most of the words they play. I note that the two dictionaries which the different programs resort do not always agree about what is a word.

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#72354 06/15/02 03:23 AM
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Okay, so crosswords are among the many word games I love and at which I suck

You mention cryptograms - doncha love those? I feel compelled to offer, here, the shortest clue in cryptogram history:

e (13 letters)

It was in The Times (of course!) - did anyone hear about this one, a few years ago?

any guesses?!


#72355 06/15/02 10:52 AM
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the words "em" and "en" mentioned in the subwords thread in the other group are very commonly played in scrabble

There is a recent book on "professional" Scrabble - I forget the author - in which it becomes clear that, at that level, it's more an exercise in symbol manipulation, and words are no longer important: what matters is has the better command of the finite list of data known as the Scrabble Dictionary. Some folk with no significant command of English do a well as any and better than most.

How disillusioning! What a sterile ending to the wonders of the language. (Anyway, whom are you going to believe, me or some strange dictionary?)


#72356 06/15/02 11:01 AM
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the shortest clue in cryptogram history:
e (13 letters)


I think you are referring to Cryptic Crosswords, full of all kinds of wordplay, rather than cryptograms, subtitution-coded phrases.

If that's your cup of tea, drop in on the NPL (National Puzzlers' League) site at http://www.puzzlers.org and sample what they have to offer.

They pride themselves in their cleverness and word-savvy, and perhaps justifiaby so. And they have come up with bunches of phrases that they have expressed cryptically as a single letter !

P.S. "senselessness" ? No, that would apply to any nonsense collection. I'll work on it some more.

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>There is a recent book on "professional" Scrabble

http://wordsmith.org/board/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=wordplay&Number=40383


#72358 06/16/02 04:58 PM
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the shortest clue in cryptogram history: e (13 letters)

I hate to disagree, but my favourite clue of all time is:

(4,4,1,4)

Any guesses? Answer available if anyone wants it? I have no idea about the e one.




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