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Joined: Jul 2000
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Here, just as I received them, are the definitions I received. I also added somewhere in the list the real definition and a couple I added just to spice things up. I'm going to be away from 12/28 through 1/11, so I am giving the whole three weeks for voting. I am absolutely amazed at the inventiveness of the people who put in entries. I know which one is correct, and a couple of the bluff definitions are so good they even fooled me!!!

1. sedgwick n. a remorphemization of sedgewidgeon (Anas acicularis), a common surface feeding duck that nests in the region of the lower Danube.

2. A certain type of golf club.

3. [obs] a derisory term which was applied to a district over which a petty official's jurisdiction extended that to all appearances was merely swampland.

4. A small wooden bolt, usually with right-hand threads, commonly used to fasten a knob to a drawer front. Most often found with a slotted head that accepts a regular screwdriver, though occasionally found with slots for a Phillips screwdriver.

5. The one atom that is the exact center of the earth's core.

6. This is not a "real" word, but a made up one, taken from a manufacturer's catalogue. w-i-k (most certainly without a "c") stands for "water injection kit" and the Sedgwik ™™is a well-known (within the trade, that is) device for promoting the growth of sedge reeds in and around ponds where sewage is recycled. In wet areas, such a device is unnecessary, of course, but the process of natural, environmentally sound purification of water is now being extended to places with low rainfall - in particular, some of the areas of Scandinavia where the majority of water falls as snow. It is in these (and parts of Turkey, I believe) that the Sedgewik ™™ is in use.

7. A small African antelope, named for the Dutch naturalist who first described it, Jan Sedgwik (1820-1892).

8. Sedgwik: a moss which grows chiefly on rocky or barren spots.

9. a new born, often translucent, tadpole

10. The only hybrid crop hardy enough to survive cultivation in the Earth's depleted soil supply; from the Samuel Butler's classic 1872 social satire, Erewhon.

11. Sedgwik: A mocking reference in CIA circles to the heavy handed and clumsy bulgarian spies planted in the states during the cold war. The Bulgarian spies were all identified and bugged but the CIA couldn't decipher their continual use of the phrase "I must call Sedgwik". Finally an agent dialed SEDGWIK,(733-4945)on his touch tone phone and reached the Bulgarian Embassy in Washington DC. Tom Clancy used the phrase in his book "The Hunt For Red October"

12. A specific computer error from the early days of computing, created when one end of a wire on a breadboard was erroneously plugged into a socket too close to the other end, resulting in garbled information that one IBM engineer said reminded him of the maunderings of his mother-in-law, Irenia Sedgwik.

13. A plumbing device that limits the amount of water consumed during a flushing of a toilet or urinal; not commonly used in the home, but most commonly found in commercial use in areas where water is so expensive that the use of the Sedgwik is cost-effective.



TEd
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Wow, 4 days an ain't no one voted yet.

I think I'll go with number 9, 'caus it looks fine.

And TEd, are you sure the rules allow you to add more than one misleading definition of your own? tsuwm?


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Rules? pffffft! Don' make me say "We don' need no steenkin' rules!

I think the correct extension could well be 11

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I'm not sayin' whether or not I read the book, but why waste a vote? Number 10.


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I got it. Why, other people might ask, did TEd list the answers by numerals rather than letters as has always been done? The answer is; this is a quiz of math, not of letters. TEd said he will be gone thirteen days, leaving us with thirteen answers to ponder. Coincidence? Sum the numbers 1 through 13, you get 91. divide 91 by thirteen and you get seven. And so the correct answer is seven, (the one about the african antelope).

Need further proof? How many letters are in seven? Five. Answer number five refers to the atom at the middle of the earth. The word sedgwik has seven letters and at the exact middle of the word is the letter G, which is the seventh letter of the alphabet. The seventh position of G is six letters below and six letters above the middle position of Remington's list.
I'm overcome. This is so... so.. eloquent.
The answer is seven.
Milum.


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I like Milum's logic, therefore I vote for 13.


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I think teD put in *more than two -- well, as a paid-up member of the rules committee, I'd say that we'll just have to devide his multitudinous points by the number of bogus entries he put in.

oh, by the way, I vote for bogus entry #3 (three).




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I think they should all be correct! And I want to vote for mine so I'll get a credit, but that's not sporting.

So (unless I'm cheating), I vote for #9, #9, #9. I hope that's the right one 'cause I like thinking about little floating transparent tadpoles, little navicular groups of sedgwiks dreaming of the day of the Great Leap!

Dub


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I agree they should all win,but given that I know that a "sedge" is a waterside or marsh plant I Have got to go for No.9 too

the Duncster


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7. The rest are either not enough like actual definitions, or I know that they're wrong.


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