This is the 6-letter word game.  It works like this:  One person is "it".
That person thinks of a six-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 "spring", then the scoring might go like this:

waffle  0  (no letters in common with spring)
cranny  1  (both cranny and spring have n as the 5th letter)
apples  1  (both apples and spring have p as the 2nd letter)
string  5  (string and spring match in 5 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 .  A list of all words used
throughout the history of the game is in ~rcurl/l.m.words .  It's customary
for the person who's "it" to store a list of all the current guesses in a file
called letter.match in his or her home directory.  So for instance if kentn
is "it", the guesses so far will be in ~kentn/letter.match .

1055 responses total.

OK, I am "it" since I guessed the last word, which was

karate  0  (lastword)

BTW if this item has a lot of responses by the time you get here, you may want
to skip to the bottom and only read the last 20 or so.  To do that in
Picospan, hit 'q' at the "More" prompt, then enter "last" followed by "-20"
at the "Respond or Pass" prompt.

streak

zealot

uneasy

streak  0  (albaugh)
zealot  1  (larsn)
uneasy  1  (kentn)

Whoa - Kent tries something new!

teepee

tremor

boring

banana

teepee  0  (albaugh)
tremor  2  (larsn)
boring  0  (bikeman)
banana  0  (carson)

filter

author

indoor

filter  0  (kami)
author  1  (larsn)
indoor  2  (albaugh)

potion

potion  2  (kami)

gnomon  Function: noun
Etymology: Latin, from Greek gnOmOn interpreter, pointer on a sundial, 
from gignOskein  Date: 1546
1 : an object that by the position or length of its shadow serves as an 
    indicator especially of the hour of the day: as a : the pin of a sundial
    b : a column or shaft erected perpendicular to the horizon
2 : the remainder of a parallelogram after the removal of a similar
    parallelogram containing one of its corners

gnomon  6  (albaugh)

Kevin's up!

unease

icicle

OK, I'm thinking of a new 6-letter word...

  gnomon  0  (lastword)
  unease  0  (kentn)
  icicle  0  (carson)

banana

boring

appear

warped

  banana  2  (aruba)
  boring  1  (bikeman)
  appear  0  (aruba)
  warped  0  (larsn)

(even if it ain't technically against the rules, please refrain from 
 guessing more than once before scoring)

banish

  banish  2  (aruba)

basket

bunkum

minima

  basket  2  (kami)
  minima  1  (kentn)
  bunkum  6  (aruba)

bunkum   Variant(s): or buncombe   Function: noun
Etymology: Buncombe county, N.C.; from a remark made by its congressman, who
defended an irrelevant speech by claiming that he was speaking to Buncombe
Date: 1845 : insincere or foolish talk : NONSENSE 

(aka "bunk";
 may have lead to "debunk" : to expose the sham or falseness of
 <debunk a legend>)

Interesting derivation.  OK, I'll be thinking of a word the next time I'm on.

OK, I'm thinking of a 6-letter word that's not

bunkum  0  (lastword)

losses

losses  0  (orinoco)

trauma

streak

trauma  0  (larsn)
streak  2  (albaugh)

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