I don't know who your PM buddies are (oh, glad to see you back! You had announced you were leaving?) but a lot of us do play bridge and discuss words and have fun in other venues.

happy that your baby has gotten over the virus,

Anna

Shooting the moon

The taking of all the hearts and the Queen of Spades in the game "Hearts". Instead of a large penalty you get a bonus of (I think) 26 points.

Now to the point of this reply. In my young days we called this game "Rickety Kate" (yes, my ultra-long-term memory still works reasonably well). This was a reference to the Queen of Spades, and I would love to know why.

lusy

So how's your baby? What was the diagnosis?

OK, who's the Joker?
Not playing with a full deck.
Ante up

Yes, ewein, how is your baby doing? And your father-in-law? Has his shortness of breath resolved itself?

Do we always have to have the same kind of trail mix?

I'm not a card player, but I'd guess that "it suits me" comes from cards, and not from The Emporer's New Clothes.

not from The Emporer's New Clothes.

Nice one, Geoff. Eloquent in its subtlety.

Post deleted by ewein

Oh, puh-leeze....

yes, ASp. I quite agree with your words immediately above.

and dr. bill's, preceding.

It might be nice if we all sent friendly PMs to ewein. I already have.

ok, i am a bit dense.. what happened? what did i miss?

It seems to me Ewein asked about bridge... we pretty much ignored her request (since this is not really a game board..) but no one flamed her.. we just took the thread off on a natural tangent.. talking about idioms that have arisen from cards and card games.. and then suddenly, ewein deleted her original and response posts..

I have posted publicly, i hate when post are deleted.(well 99% of the time!) i have edited post of mine that went beyond the pale... but not out and out deleted them.

i did rant a bit in the british slang thread (and sent a note to Dr bill, to make sure he realised, i love him dearly, and wasn't as mad as my rant sounded -- and that i really don't think he is chavanistic.. (but i can't be convince the AMA isn't!) and he wrote a PM to me, making sure i was okay, and made public post that we were ok..) but i don't see any reason for either of us to delete our posts.. we didn't desend to name calling or vulger terms.. but we do have very different outlooks on the point)

I don't even remember seeing anything as strongly worded here! i somehow missing what the issue was? (i am guessing there was an issue!)... Ewein (or someone!) explain!

Ewein asked about bridge

The way I remember it she asked about some card related terms. One-eyed Jacks sticks in my mind, but there was something about Queens in there, too. Seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to post on a word-related board, such as this one. Onliest thang she made some comment about folks here being too nerdy to stoop to playing cards, for which statement she was gently chided. Beyond that, I'm as baffled as you are.

especially after being told to take my discussion to a different venue.

Twisting words? Are you a lawyer, too?
Anyway, welcome back, even if I am a nerd, and I'm glad your baby and father-in-law apparently have recovered.

Twisting words? Are you a lawyer, too?

Enough.
Please.

I had a neighbor who got dealt thirteen Spades, got flustered and bid a no trump, and didn't take a trick. What is the name for that?

I had a neighbor who got dealt thirteen Spades ... What is the name for that?

"Urban legend"?

Dear AR: I am crying great big tears that you should suggest I would stoop so low as to as to pass off an urban legend as a genuine occurrence. On my scout's honor, she was my neighbor, and her husband told me about it. I never knew her well enough to judge her mental acuity, but her husband owned a couple automobile agencies, and was very,very sharp.

Dear ewein: Did you notice I got hypersensitive, and thought AR was razzing me?
A few moments after being indignant, it occurred to me that he was saying that the lady who had thirteen Spades and didn't take a trick became an Urban Legend. She may well have.

dr. bill: interestingly, the web sources differ on the probability of being dealt a single-suited bridge hand. One asserts the chance is one in 635 billion; another claims one in 6¼ billion.

http://www.csicop.org/si/9809/coincidence.html, a bit over half-way down
http://www.jwu.edu/artnsci/math/duston/stats/homewrk/shmwk3.html, questions 13 and 14

Calculating it, I get the former, one in 635,013,559,600.
[= (52 x 51 x 50 ... 40) ÷ (1 x 2 x 3 x ... 13)]

Dear SilkMuse: what a figure of speech: "a hotbed of vented spleen". Reminds me of ludicrous visual image conjured up by a pathology lecture long ago, about frequent occurrence of gangrene of the legs caused by a fungus infection of the spikes of wheat used to make bread - ergotism. The prof said "Europe was a hotbed of gangrenous legs". I had the visual image of a hot bed containing a couple dozen legs, blackened and enpurpled by the ergot poisoning having interrupted blood flow in arteries, but still writhing about obscenely.
Spleens can be ruptured by severe blow over the spleen. In South Asia when malaria there was untreated, many people had enlarged spleens, so fragile that a common method of murder was to hit victim over spleen with a club. I can't imagine what product would be of incubating spleens in a hotbed.
All said in jest, not to needle SilkMuse.

Dear ewein: Now AR is accusing me of having lied about the thirteen Spades. I am about to float down the hall on a torrent of bitter tears. AR says the chances of getting thirteen spades are so astronomical that I cannot be telling the truth. Should I delete all my posts. Like hell I will. And I ask you: can you imagine anybody being willing to expose themselves to such ridicule, as to fabricate that story?
Statistics has been defined as the science of lying with numbers. Take that, AR!

So, at the risk of subjecting myself to some ridicule, I ask the assembled wordies:

What is a "hotbed?"

AHD gives us:

1. An environment conducive to vigorous growth or development, especially of
something undesirable: a hotbed of intrigue. 2. A glass-covered bed of soil
heated with fermenting manure or by electricity, used for the germination of
seeds or for protecting tender plants.

But do any of us ever use this word in any way other than in the "a hotbed of..." construction?

Of course the odds in question are not the odds of a given hand being all spades but the odds of a hand of all spades being dealt ever. We need to know how many bridge hands have ever been dealt. I would guess that this is a highly probable event.

Case in point. The present list of birthdays has 61 people listed with definitive birthdays. Without looking, how many pairs do we have on that list? That is, how many birthdays are there that two people share?

No accusation of lying, dr. bill. Perhaps an accusation of in all likelihood having had your leg pulled!
(Immediate edit: But I would never recommmend foregoing a perfectly good story merely because it might be apocryphal!)

us gardeners do.
I have a hot bed. let's us please keep the snickering and laughter to dull roar, please!
it is on the south (ssw) side of my house. (actually built up against the foundation..) my house is build into a hill and the south/west side is on the down hill side.. there is a 2 foor high retaining wall, about 2 feet deep of dirts. the main floor joist on this side is about 4.5 feet above the ground. (on the opposite side, the main floor joist is only about 8 inches from ground level.)

the hot bed uses the foundation wall in back,(well actually the basement window.. a secondary function was to block the window as a means of egress a small wooded frame in front, and wooden frame sides. the cover is two window sashes (from double hung windows) each sash is about 30 inches square. It very effectively "blocks the window (the back support that holds the sash in place divides the window opening into two much smaller openings.. and the glass roof of the hot bed doesn't block the light.

i use my hot bed to start perennials from seed, that later get transplanted to the garden. (right now, a sick week hollyhock i missed last fall, has done well over the winter, and is now sending up a flower stalk!)

because of its orientation, and the warmth that leaks from throught the foundation, and window (not to mention the rich organic matter added to the soil from the compost heap) the hot bed never suffers from a hard freeze -- and its a great place to start seeds.

Without looking, how many pairs do we have on [our birthday] list?
A related question is graphed a short way into the same site cited above,
http://www.csicop.org/si/9809/coincidence.html

We need to know how many bridge hands have ever been dealt.
[picking a nit -e ] Perhaps we rather need to know how many bridge hands have ever been dealt to our board members or to people who subsequently had contact with our board members.

I personally was dealt thirteen spades in a bridge hand while in college. Though I did not shuffle the deck, I did cut the cards to the dealer, and while it's possible someone brought in a ringer I have always felt that it was unlikely.

Being a novice, I opened 7 spades and my left hand opponent overcalled seven NT. My partner doubled. I pitched the ace of spades on the first trick, the king on the second trick, etc. I still remember the look on my partner's face as she took the first eight tricks with her eight-card heart suit. Oh, did I tell you the opponents were vulnerable?

Dear TEd: I thought the British were less inflationary than US. My recollection is that for them a billion is a milion million, where to us it is a thousand million. Correct me if I am wrong. At the moment I can't think where to check it, but will now try.Here's what I found:

t's like a British billion being 1,000,000 x 1,000,000, but a US billion being
merely 1000 x 1,000,000. The US version is the most commonly used,
by a long chalk, so it's the de facto definition. And the one we use here
on The Reg.

I believe that we have changed fairly recently.

I suppose that years ago it was a figure that didn't get used too much. Now with inflation a multi million pound or dollar deal gets into the trillions and hence confusion much more quickly. No-one in the City of London would like to be out on a deal by a factor of 1000. I don't know if that was the impetus behind change but it wouldn't surprise me.

Case in point. The present list of birthdays has 61 people listed with definitive birthdays. Without looking, how many pairs do we have on that list? That is, how many birthdays are there that two people share? - Faldage

Let's see...back in my mind reading days the math woked out to about a 50% chance of a birthday pair in an audience of 25.
So my guess is - Two days pair Awad birthdays.

Post edit: I peeked. Oops! Maybe it's the new math. Or maybe Awadians are abnormally, incestuously dated.