This item is for those of us who like the letter word game, but don't
like the obscurity of the words.  Two rules are different, then:  
words are five letters long, not six; the target words must be 
common enough that most people could be expected to know them, 
and they should appear in the standard student (high school, not
graduate) desk dictionary.  The old rules apply to guesses:  they
can be obscure or as common as desired, as long as they are words.

1034 responses total.

I'm thinking of a five-letter word.

What, pray tell, is "the standard student (high school, not graduate)
desk dictionary"?  Do we all have to run out and buy one (aruba should
appreciate that comment :^) ?  Maybe you should just post a word list
of acceptable words; then we'd all be playing with the same deck.  There
shouldn't be more than about 14,000 5-letter words in common usage,
probably much less.
 
inane

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)

I think players can be depended on not to pick obscure words, if that's
the mission of the game; I don't think a single dictionary has to be
specified.  Now players have two options, which can't be bad.  Good idea
brighn (and srw)!

eagle

Good idea.  Thanks!

money

I meant the part about the dictionary to merely indicate the tenor of the game;
pardons if it was taken seriously.  Yes, the honor system (and reprimands, if
neceaary, from me) should work fine.  Despite what was said in the six-letter 
item, The American Heritage Desk Dictionary (which I consider to be typical
of high school-level dictionaries) does NOT list outby(e).
That said...
inane (1) (kentn)
outby (0) (srw)
eagle 0 (aruba)
money 0 (swa)
(Could someone tell me how to create a file for the old guesses?  I'm not 
so good at that stuff yet.  Thanks.

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"

My method is to use srw's wonderful awk script to process the guesses
and a shell script I wrote that automates the creation and maintenance
of the summary file ("letter.match"), and saves the current processed
guesses in a file ("mat") that you can then copy directly into your
cf response (via the command :r mat in the text collector--the "editor"
with the > prompt--or whatever command works for importing files into
your favorite editor).  The script is /u/kentn/do.lm; however, if we
are to have two letter match games running, I should probably create
another script (do5.lm?) that has different filenames, just on the off
chance that the same person might be "it" in both games.  I imagine
srw's awk script would need to be altered a bit to cope with words of
length five.  I think altering either script would be rather trivial
and probably worth it.  What do you think?
 
"staff"

sucks

"My" awk script was in fact written by another (davel, I believe).
It is wonderful though, and will work an any length word without modification.

(no guess this time)

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)?

tests 1 (srw)
staff (kentn)
ack... 
staff 1 (kentn)
sucks 0 (ryan1)

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. 

I'm taking Steve's suggestion, and linking "Five-letter COMMON word game"
to language.

track

unman

ahead

track 2 (rcurl)
unman 0 (kentn)
ahead 0 (srw)

wrath

grapes

This is the 5-letter g ame, kami.

wrath 2 (rcurl)
grape 1 (kami)  (taking the liberty so Rane can guess agiain)

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

sorry

kami went twice in a row. Are you using the not-twice-in -a-row rule,
brighn?

actually 'grapes' was her guess, and Paul took the liberty.

"beach"

flash

Besides, nobody had answered for a while...
sorry 0 kami
beach 4 srw (the end is near...)
flash 2 rcurl

teach

peach

reach

leach!

Leach?  What sort of word is that?  Leech, I know.
teach 4
peach 5 rcurl <-----
reach 4

To leach is to extract. 
I am thinking of a five (5) letter word. Yes, on *ordinary* word. ;-).

goofy

My mistake.  I'd thought that was spelled the same as the little blood-
sucking thingie (my reference tells me they don't even have the same etymology)

piper

goofy   2       kentn   (talk about hitting pay dirt....)
piper   0       brighn

gaily

gaily   1       kentn   (hey! where are all those other players?)

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss