These words should never be spoken

[venta]

Right, then, Boggle fans. Despite the blandishments of Perl and Excel, I have buggered around with bits of paper and Emacs keyboard macros to calculate the scores.

Any word which was listed by more than one person doesn't count - there were a lot of very suspicious looking words listed by two or more people, but we'll just sweep them quietly under the carpet.

Any word listed by one person only has been hunted thoroughly in my OED. My OED is a wonderful book, by the way - it's the "compact" edition, which means it's the complete thing "reproduced micrographically" in one volume, and is chuffing massive. It's the second edition, for people who care about such things. Words which weren't in the OED I checked against dictionary.com to be sure.

The (existent) words guessed by only one person:

zotz: ert. It's in the OED. Yes, it's the opposite of inert. It's also a verb meaning to irritate. Believe it or not (though it wasn't relevant to this game), erter is also a word meaning "one who erts" :)

lanfykins: reyes. Ive just checked the Boggle rules, and nowhere does it say you have to know what your word means. Lanfykins commented that Reyes, as in syndrome, was probably a proper noun, in which she's correct. However, the OED says reyes is also an obsolete word for an antiquated Portugese coin.

dr_bob: teet, teets. Yup, OED lets you have it as a(n obsolete) variant of teat.

addedentry: eyen is an acceptable plural according to the OED. Though in fairness, it says it is rare, of doubtfule meaning and "perh. some error". nebs is the plural of neb, which several people listed, meaning nose or snout (or mouth or face). Interestingly, the OED doesn't list the verb as I'd use it, ie to neb into something, meaning be nosey. reb, rebs - I thought I'd got Addedentry on this one, as the OED lists two senses - one an abbreviation and one foreign. Then I found a third, which is an obsolete variant of rib, so have to give it to him. renet is an acceptable variant of rennet.

cuthbertcross: oxy means, if you please, of or like an ox. Yes, really.Just be glad she didn't put down treey as well, because that also exists. yer exists as various forms of you/your/their. treet is an obsolete form of treat, and ernest of earnest.

j4: ernes yada, yada, obsolete, earns. perne, pernes (also spelled pirn) is a kind of bobbin. pree, prees is a Scots word meaning "to make proof or trial of". stipe means a log, post or treetrunk. tyer is an obsolete form of tear.

metame: oxeye, oxeyes is, no surprises, the eye(s) of an ox. wees is an acceptable form of the verb - lots of people put wee on their lists, but no wees.

shyrdar: pene, obsolete form of pain. Damn this obsolescent nonsense :(

pm215: weepie, a film which makes you cry.

pseudomonas: stept is as valid as stepped. ret means to soak in water, especially something like flax. More impressively, Pseudomonas knew this. penes is the correct plural of penis and Psedomonas knew this too. (See me avoid using the correct pronoun because I don't actually know if Pseudomonas is a he or a she :) yeo is a stream or a drain in mining. Pseudomonas also knew that zyxt is the last word in the dictionary - it's the "2nd singular indicative present of SEE" if you're Kentish. Which is clearly rubbish because a word like that must have been made up by a Scrabble fan.


Scores on the doors:
J4: 13
Pseudomonas: 7
Cuthbertcross: 7
Metame: 6
Addedentry: 6
Dr_Bob: 3
Pm215: 3
Lanfykins: 2
Shrydar: 1
Zotz: 1

Which shows J4 as something of a runaway winner. Remind me never to play Scrabble (or Boggle) against her :)

I've come to the conclusion that, for the purpose of word games, it's just too damn difficult to decide what is or is not a word.

For example, Pseudomonas' suggestions of beepier and seepier weren't in the dictionary. I could imagine using either of those in the unlikely event of talking about two particularly beepy or seepy things. But my rule was "in the OED". On the other hand, the word darker doesn't explicitly have its own entry either - presumably because its a comparative formed in an obvious way - and I don't know that anyone would debate the existence of that.

Similarly, a number of people went for the Scrabble approach that, if x is a verb, then doing it again must be to re-x. Words like renest weren't in the OED, but might well be in the Scrabble official word list book. An honourable mention, incidentally, to Pm215 for the only unique seven letter word: resteep. He defined it as "to put the teabag in a second time" which seems perfectly reaosonable to me. (The only other seven letter word was "weepier", which was listed by three people).

There is of course, always the debate about what constitutes a foreign word, too. English is a mongrel language at the best of times, it just depends how recently we stole the word in question.

As someone pointed out to me the other day, the best way to play this particular Boggle variant would be to list all possible 3-16 letter combinations which, for an online game, is entirely too feasible. Even if taking a less extreme view, the lesson from this game seems to be that listing slightly bad spellings of existing words will probably stand you in good stead.

See next entry for an attempt to avoid the above problems :)

Thanks all.

Comments

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

Pseudomonas is a he.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

Oh, and thanks for administering it all!

[venta.livejournal.com]

Good lord, I've also been persistently misreading (and hence misspelling) your LJ tag, too. I do apologise.

Above entry now edited to, er, cover up my complete incompetence and remove references to someone who does not, in fact, exist.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

'sOK - I'm used to being pseudonomas quite a lot, too.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yes, you do seem peculiarly difficult to type. I actually had to edit the above entry twice, as some chap pseudomoans had crept in as well.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

I rather like that one, I shall have to remember it for my online whinging.

[beckyl.livejournal.com]

Well, I scored zero, but it was a briefly entertaining diversion, so I think well worth my effort. I'll leave it up to you to decide if diverting me was a worthwhile use of your time ;o)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yup, sadly a number of people submitted impressive lists, but which contained all words other people had. I guess this isn't an issue if you only have three or four people playing (as you normally would).

Come and play it for real with the exciting dice box some time :)

[chrisvenus]

I did as well because I looked at it for a minute and couldn't come up with any words. :) My brain wasn't working very well at the time though is my excuse for missing anything obvious. :)

[shrydar.livejournal.com]

Thanks for running the game. I fear I will do as poorly in the next :)

As for Perl, Emacs etc, I considered proffering you 14 lines of Python, but suspected your allegiances lay sufficiently elsewhere as for that to be considered anathema. Besides, you're a programmer and can Code If You Want To.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I considered proffering you 14 lines of Python, but suspected your allegiances lay sufficiently elsewhere as for that to be considered anathema.

Nope, I have no fixed allegiance in these things. I don't really know any scripting languages (thought could presumably learn if I wanted to :), and I'm very tolerant of other people using whatever language they damn well like. no anathemae will be declared.

Hell, I'll even allow that it's ok for people to use Vi(m) if for some reason they feel the need ;)

[shrydar.livejournal.com]

no anathemae will be declared

Hoorah :)
Um, did you want anything for scoring tomorrow's entries?

I'll even allow that it's ok for people to use Vi(m)

Thankyou. It is indeed a thing of wonder.

[venta.livejournal.com]

did you want anything for scoring tomorrow's entries?

Nah, it's ok, thanks, I think I'm ok with my emacs solution. Partly because I'm predicting a much smaller number of players for this game, which will make it much easier :)

[shrydar.livejournal.com]

Probably strategically shorter word lists, too...

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

yikes! -- what a lot of new words I've learnt today!

One thing I like about FTF Boggle is the time limit, but tricky to have that in an online version I suppose (unless you want to write a little Java app to manage it...)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

(Aha, I should have read your next entry first ;-)

[addedentry.livejournal.com]

Thank you for an idea which made me grin and thank you much more for collating those lists. I don't envy you.

rare, of doubtfule meaning and "perh. some error".

I learnt eyen off j4 but the OED makes it sound like a speling from molesworth (-:

Hello sky, hello trees

[venta.livejournal.com]

Actually, the stray e is a typo on my part. Rather disappointingly :(

[j4.livejournal.com]

Crikey, I really didn't expect to win with addedentry in the game-pool! I apologise for all the wordgame-only words, though. They do look kind of like cheating when you write them all down like that...

I've come to the conclusion that, for the purpose of word games, it's just too damn difficult to decide what is or is not a word.

I think you really just have to decide on a standard dictionary and then the dictionary's decision is final, no whinging shall be entered into, etc. The Collins Scrabble wordchecker is pretty handy.

Now on to the next game... 8-)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Collins Scrabble wordchecker

Oooh, thank you. I figured there had to be one of those online somewhere, but couldn't find it in my somewhat desultory checking last night.

I didn't think to look for Collins directly because I'd forgotten it wasn't Chambers any more. If you see what I mean.