This is the 7-letter word game.  It works like this:  One person is "it".
That person thinks of a seven-letter word.  It must be a real, English word,
which can be found in some dictionary.

Other players try to guess the word, and their guesses must also be real,
English words.  The person who is "it" scores the guesses according to how
many letters in the guess match those in the word he's thinking of.  So for
instance, if the word is "privacy", then the scoring might go like this:

        waffles  0  (no letters in common with privacy)
        splashy  1  (both splashy and privacy have y as the 7th letter)
        spinach  3  (spinach and privacy match in 3 places)
  
etc.  The game continues until someone guesses a word, and then that person
becomes "it", and the whole thing starts over again.

Complete rules are in ~rcurl/letter.match .  They were written for the 5-
letter version of the game, but you can figure it out.  It's customary for
the person who's "it" to store a list of all the current guesses in a file
called letter.match7 in his or her home directory.  So for instance if kentn
is "it", the guesses so far will be in ~kentn/letter.match7 .  Some people
also display all guesses so far when they score a new guess.

860 responses total.

A new item, and I'm thinking of a new word, a seven-letter word that is not

  disship  0  (lastword)

The State of the Guess is in ~gelnas/letter.match7

referee

parties

  referee  0  (aruba)
  parties  0  (kentn)

girlier

element

  girlier  0  (albaugh)
  element  0  (aruba)

antonym

nemisis

If I'm allowed to help, you might need an "e" there instead of the first "i",
Kevin.

Yes, thanks.  I typed the word into MS-Word to see if it would "bark" with
the red squiggly underline indicating "misspelled", and when it didn't, I just
typed in the misspelling (how lazy).  I now see that the reason that MS-Word
didn't bark is because it auto-corrected my entry, and so fast and subtley
that I didn't even notice.

nemesis

  antonym  1  (kentn)
  nemesis  0  (albaugh)

quahaug

joe, you might want to have a look at whatever code generates your
summary file:
wc ~gelinas/letter.match7
  259522  778566 6488050 /a/g/e/gelinas/letter.match7

and every one is the same:
  disship  0  (lastword)

Joe - your letter.match7 file is severely whacked (it's over 6 megabytes).

Thanks, folks.  I don't know what happened, but it's fixed now.

  disship  0  (lastword)
  referee  0  (aruba)
  parties  0  (kentn)
  girlier  0  (albaugh)
  element  0  (aruba)
  antonym  1  (kentn)
  nemesis  0  (albaugh)
  quahaug  4  (juicy)

outhaul

hauling

> I don't know what happened, but it's fixed now.

You must be in software development/support...  ;-)

quaffed

That large file result looks like what happens when you get into a
loop with 'cat'.  Not all 'cat's are created equal.  Or maybe it was
something else (if so, I'd be curious to know what).

Yeah, I've done software development support. :(

I didn't change the program, before or after.  However, I just reproduced the
problem, I think: I exceeded my disk quota.  It occurs to me, though, that
I don't know if that excess was cause or effect.

  outhaul  2  (kentn)
  hauling  0  (albaugh)
  quaffed  3  (aruba)

Effect.  It happened again. :(

affects

Yes, it was a bug in cat and shell redirection.  I fixed it.

  affects  0  (albaugh)

quantum

  quantum  7  (aruba)

BTW, you're up, Mark. :)

QANTAS

Sorry for the delay.  I'm thinking of a 7-letter word that's not

quantum  0  (lastword)

referee

umpires

parties

Sorry again for the delay - I'm travelling.

quantum  0  (lastword)
referee  0  (gelinas)
umpires  0  (albaugh)
parties  0  (kentn)

Please link this to the IQ conference...

catalog

ordered

adjunct

This response has been erased.

quantum  0  (lastword)
referee  0  (gelinas)
umpires  0  (albaugh)
parties  0  (kentn)
catalog  0  (blaise)
ordered  0  (albaugh)
adjunct  0  (kentn)

jointed

angelic

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