response 1 of 1034:

Aug 28 06:10 UTC 1994

I'm thinking of a five-letter word.

response 3 of 1034:

Aug 28 15:17 UTC 1994

I think this is an excellent idea - I was even thinking of posting this
myself, although I would have stuck to the 6 letter format.
I think what brighn is trying to do is reduce that feeling you get that
no matter how hard you work the letters out from the clues, you aren't going
to recognize the word when you're done. This feeling is very frustrtating,
and I think it is keeping would-be players away.

I'm not sure that a high school dictionary is the best way to 
specify what kind of words would be legal. Perhaps we could leave it up
to the individual running the game with the understanding that the word
should be one that most people will recognize when they see it.
How much does the legitimacy of the word choice need to be formalized?

If you aren't happy with the idea of limiting word choices brighn's way,
then you can still play the other game.

rcurl might want to conmsider linking this to lang.

"outby" (to exercise the obscure guess rule early in the game while it doesn't
         penalize me)

response 5 of 1034:

Aug 29 04:21 UTC 1994

Good idea.  Thanks!

money

response 7 of 1034:

Aug 29 05:53 UTC 1994

I have an awk program for doing the matching, you have to type
awk -f /u/srw/match.awk
to start it up, or else define an alias to do it.
This is strongly recommended to avoid counting errors which
lead to hard feelings.

It prompts you for your word and then repeatedly prompts for
user and test word, until you feed it a ".".
Then I copy/paste into the file and responses.
I think kentn has a more automated method.

"tests"

response 9 of 1034:

Aug 29 13:25 UTC 1994

sucks

response 11 of 1034:

Aug 29 23:27 UTC 1994

I've updated/changed do.lm to use different names for its files. It's
called "do.lm5" and all the names now have a 5 after the "match" part of
their name (so letter.match5, lm5.bak, and mat5).  I don't know if
that's going to be confusing; either script (do.lm or do.lm5) will work
for the 5 letter game.
   I did this because a potential problem comes in if someone is "it" in
both the 5 and 6 letter games and uses the do.lm script for both (which
is possible, though probably a rare occurrence): the awk output for the
two games would be intermingled.  Another problem is in identifying the
summary output, even if the same person isn't *it* in each game:  There
will be two letter.match files with the same name and different contents
(not what you expected to find, maybe, if you only play one or the other
of the two games).  This isn't a major problem as I'm sure the people
who've been "it" keep their summary files around for a while after their
word has been guessed (there are multiple letter.match files out there
now).
   In making these changes I've made letter.match5 be the summary file,
which may be a name people won't like, so I'm willing to change it to
whatever most people find resonable and can agree on.  The other files
are basically scratch files so I don't think it will bother people what
they are called as long as the name makes a kind of sense (lm5.bak =
backup letter match summary file for 5 letter game; mat5 = current
matches for 5 letter game).  
   I'm also willing, to say, heck, use do.lm for both games and if
there's a potential conflict, it's up to the person who's "it" to use a
temporary new name for the summary for one of the games (although you'd
have to be careful about renaming letter.match before and after each
run).  For that matter, heck, you can do it all by hand in your editor
if you want ;)  I just find having the process a bit more automated
reduces the time I spend mv'ing, rm'ing, editing, etc.

What's the consensus here (even if there isn't a script involved there
is a potential conflict in the file names used for summaries; this game
should probably start its own traditions as far as naming, anyway)?

response 13 of 1034:

Aug 30 04:37 UTC 1994

brighn, just enter    !pico letter.match         This will enter
an editor, and you can write (or copy and paste) the guesses, counts
and guessors, on separate lines. The editor is menued, and easy to
use. You don't have to use the file name "letter.match" - you can
use anything you like (but be sure to tell everyone!). When the game
is over, you can remove the file with     rm letter.match.  "Letter.match"
has become the standard list file for the 6-letter-obscure-word game, so
take one of the suggestions above.

I will say that I have never heard many of the words that have been used
in the 6-letter game. Anyone with a reasonable dictionary can join the
hunt for letter combinations that fit the clues, until the word is
found. It does not take more than knowing the alphabet. And think of all
the new, weird, words you can learn!

That said, I will observe that this "Five-letter COMMON word game" is
*exactly* that which I had originally known as a car game, to be played
totally in the mind (no writing anything down - no dictionary, in fact),
on long trips (it really helps keep the driver awake!). We played it
a couple of weeks ago on a trip to Muskegon, and our 11 year old 
daughter got as good at it as we. 

response 15 of 1034:

Aug 31 16:03 UTC 1994

track

response 17 of 1034:

Sep 1 03:33 UTC 1994

ahead

response 19 of 1034:

Sep 1 05:37 UTC 1994

wrath

response 21 of 1034:

Sep 1 20:31 UTC 1994

This is the 5-letter g ame, kami.

response 23 of 1034:

Sep 1 20:49 UTC 1994

I wouldn't do that - lets let some others get a chance 8=).