Here are the definitions for desman as submitted (with light editing) by our intrepid crew. Place your bets, remembering, of course, that looking it up before you place your wager is uncouth:
a. The area surrounding an ancestral manor occupied by those who rent cottages and land from the familial owner
b. special gouge used for faceplate turning on a wood lathe
c. European aquatic mole, found in Pyrenees and in Russia
d. an acronym for "DE406; Earth's Special Mars August Nexus" used by astronomers to refer to the August 27th opposition of Mars with Earth - the closest that Mars will approach Earth in about 60,000 years
e. (sl.)A blue collar worker from the steel industry, specifically from Pennsylvania, USA
f. a blithering idiot [after P. G. Wodehouse character Malcolm Desman]
g. industrial pressure roller to apply printed images to heavy backing in the manufacture of jigsaw puzzles. After Robert Desman, inventor
h. A litter used for local transport by important personages in the Ottoman empire
i. The bar connecting the treadle and crank of a spinning wheel
j. Canadian sagebrush
k. soft-soled slipper typically worn indoors
