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Grex > Language > #136: The Five Letter Word Game, Fourth Edition |  |
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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 1578 responses total. |
gelinas
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response 272 of 1578:
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Jan 7 16:18 UTC 2003 |
Jan, it may be they are playing a different game. For instance, I don't want
to be "it", but I enjoy playing. I am fairly certain I know which three
letters are right, so the game now is to be first to the other two. :)
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bhelliom
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response 273 of 1578:
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Jan 7 16:24 UTC 2003 |
I never seem to get to this item at the beginning of a round. :p
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janc
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response 274 of 1578:
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Jan 7 16:28 UTC 2003 |
servo 0 lastword
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awful 0 russ
crest 0 remmers
freak 1 jep
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blank 2 jep
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skink 0 gelinas
think 0 russ
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flash 3 jep
flare 3 aruba
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crumb 0 gelinas
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scrip 0 other
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flair 3 jep
(Why do you want to be there at the beginning of a round? The time to
be here is near the end of a round, when the odds of hitting the word
are good. IE, right now.
Yup, I'd guessed that some people were trying to avoid winning. I only
do that before going on vacations. My instinct is to play all games to
win.
"flair" is the word "scrip" eliminated.
In early game play I guess words likely to give information - mostly
words using a lot of unused letters. Mark is usually trying to locate
all the vowels, so sometimes I collaborate. Once there are a few hits,
I get a scrap of paper, usually an envelope and do a combinatorial
analysis. This results in a set of possible patterns like ?er?? that
cover all possible solutions. (The question marks can be filled with
any letter that has not been guessed for that position). I then
manually try to come up with words that fit the patterns. All this is
done by hand, sometimes with many distractions and in a rush (since if
there are few remaining possibilities, I have to guess fast), so I screw
it up sometimes. When I was playing more aggressively, and we'd have
games with lots of negative information (lots of zeros) then I'd
sometimes use the computer to do a word list search, because otherwise
Eric would pick off all of those, and I was trying to win everything
that I wasn't scoring. I've relaxed a bit now, and don't do that much.
The analysis is fun. Searching word lists isn't so much.)
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gelinas
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response 275 of 1578:
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Jan 7 16:42 UTC 2003 |
Oh, I'm still palying to win; I just have different vicotry conditions. :)
spits
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ea
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response 276 of 1578:
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Jan 7 16:45 UTC 2003 |
flyer
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bhelliom
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response 277 of 1578:
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Jan 7 17:00 UTC 2003 |
I'm still trying to figure out if I've got the way the game works right.
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janc
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response 278 of 1578:
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Jan 7 17:05 UTC 2003 |
servo 0 lastword
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awful 0 russ
crest 0 remmers
freak 1 jep
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blank 2 jep
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skink 0 gelinas
think 0 russ
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flash 3 jep
flare 3 aruba
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crumb 0 gelinas
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scrip 0 other
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flair 3 jep
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spits 0 gelinas
flyer 2 ea
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gelinas
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response 279 of 1578:
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Jan 7 18:14 UTC 2003 |
brown
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slynne
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response 280 of 1578:
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Jan 7 19:27 UTC 2003 |
flags
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jep
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response 281 of 1578:
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Jan 7 20:57 UTC 2003 |
flawy
Looking through a grep of "/usr/local/share/ispell/english.dict" on M-
Net, I don't see any words which I know and which are still
possibilities. I would never use "flawy" but I imagine I know what it
means.
I gave up on the 6 and 7 letter contests because many of the words
seemed to be stretches, with regard to fitting into English. I don't
get that much pleasure from searching through word lists to see if some
weird string of characters is really a word. One 7 letter winner
was "zydecos", the next was "assumpt", and I realized the others
playing weren't users of the same language I call English. The last 6
letter winner I saw was "biffin"... it seemed the word choices were
designed to make sure no one would guess them. Why not use random
strings of characters, if obscurity is the purpose? I hope that's not
about to happen to this contest as well.
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rcurl
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response 282 of 1578:
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Jan 7 21:11 UTC 2003 |
I have the opposite viewpoint. I found the original five letter game
(started before the 6 and 7 letter games) was too tame in this format (it
is the ideal letter length for the origin of the game, which was for
passing the time on long car trips, where it is played "round robin" among
the passengers, and no notes can be taken - an entirely cerebral game).
This led to the 6, 7, and eventually 17 letter games. After everyone got
tired of playing games with the game, it settled back to 6 letters.
Seven-letter LetterMatch subsequently found favor. In all of those,
finding obscure words was part of the fun, although *winning* didn't hang
so much upon having a large vocabulary as being able to generate and
interpret useful guesses. Of course, having access to an online dictionary
greatly empowered the game, for both word choices and guesses.
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russ
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response 283 of 1578:
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Jan 7 22:41 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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aruba
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response 284 of 1578:
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Jan 7 23:23 UTC 2003 |
flaky
I think kentn is the greatest master of lettermatch on Grex. He led the
charge to obscure words in the 6- and 7- letter games, to the point where
brighn restarted the 5-letter game with the expressed rule that words be
common.
Kent's point is that it's interesting to learn new words. Which is true, to
a point. I just don't like the words that turn out to mean "a pecies of
slime mold found in Madagascar", because there's very little liklihood I'll
ever get to use that word in conversation.
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russ
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response 285 of 1578:
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Jan 8 00:20 UTC 2003 |
flaxy
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janc
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response 286 of 1578:
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Jan 8 01:26 UTC 2003 |
servo 0 lastword
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awful 0 russ
crest 0 remmers
freak 1 jep
-----
blank 2 jep
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skink 0 gelinas
think 0 russ
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flash 3 jep
flare 3 aruba
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crumb 0 gelinas
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scrip 0 other
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flair 3 jep
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spits 0 gelinas
flyer 2 ea
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brown 0 gelinas
flags 3 slynne
flawy 4 jep
flaky 5 aruba <===== WINNER!
flaxy 4 russ
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janc
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response 287 of 1578:
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Jan 8 01:40 UTC 2003 |
Since this game is linked to the general conference as well as the
puzzle conference, I think playing a bit of a more accessible version of
the game is a good choice. Using common words means that people who
play without doing word list searchs aren't at a serious disadvantage.
I think having different games going by different rules is a good choice
- lets people with different tastes choose their poison.
In this case, I deliberately chose a word not in /usr/dict/words, but
nevertheless quite common. Good word lists are surprisingly hard to find.
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other
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response 288 of 1578:
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Jan 8 01:57 UTC 2003 |
My guessing strategy varies widely depending on what else I'm doing and
whether I'm paying much attention. Inconsistency is my standard MO when
it comes to games.
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aruba
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response 289 of 1578:
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Jan 8 02:34 UTC 2003 |
OK, I'm thinking of a 5-letter word.
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flaky 0 (lastword)
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gelinas
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response 290 of 1578:
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Jan 8 02:41 UTC 2003 |
Well, my last guess was intended to test
flawn
so let's start there. :)
(Has this item been linked to puzzles? What about language?)
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janc
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response 291 of 1578:
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Jan 8 02:44 UTC 2003 |
Hmmm...Just found a pretty good source for word lists:
http://wordlist.sourceforge.net/
Some work is required to massage this into a useful form.
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janc
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response 292 of 1578:
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Jan 8 02:44 UTC 2003 |
sales
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jep
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response 293 of 1578:
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Jan 8 02:49 UTC 2003 |
trout
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remmers
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response 294 of 1578:
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Jan 8 03:07 UTC 2003 |
begin
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russ
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response 295 of 1578:
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Jan 8 04:40 UTC 2003 |
mixer
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aruba
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response 296 of 1578:
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Jan 8 05:04 UTC 2003 |
Flawn (Page: 568)
Flawn (?), n. [OF. flaon, F. flan, LL. flado, fr. OHG. flado, G. fladen, a
sort of pancake; cf. Gr. broad. See Place.] A sort of flat custard or pie.
[Obs.] Tusser.
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flaky 0 (lastword)
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flawn 0 (gelinas)
sales 0 (janc)
trout 1 (jep)
begin 0 (remmers)
mixer 0 (russ)
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