Chikuru

I flew to Portland this morning, sleeping from Austin to SLC, breakfasting at the American Bandstand restaurant, and doing crossword puzzles from SLC to PDX. I had purchased a copy of Will Shortz's Greatest Hits: 150 Crossword Puzzles Personally Picked by the Puzzlemaster yesterday for the trip. I started with the first crossword in the book, a Monday puzzle, and am still stuck on part of it. I thought, "Wow, these are much harder than the ones in the Statesman." But then I did a few other Monday puzzles and they've all proved to be easy peasy. When I finish the Mondays, I go on to the Tuesdays. I've only started doing crosswords recently have have some catching up to do.

This evening I discovered that doing a crossword puzzle with family can be a lot of fun and a good way to remind people of stories. I did two puzzles this evening with Mom, Dad, Joy, and Bill A. I'd read out a clue and we'd work on the answer together.

Do try this at home.

This evening I heard a story I'd never heard before. Once, during the depression, 1934 I think it was, Uncle Bud killed a bear in the woods. From the experience my dad learned two things. 1) Bear meat tastes good. 2) Bear fat makes great doughnuts.

A final foodnote: Supper was tilapia ("samaki" in Swahili), potato salad, canteloupe, watermelon, banana bread with cream cheese, and tomatoes.

Every year we go to the Adult Spelling Bee (thanks fraeuleinchen for keeping us apprised of the schedule) and every year I learn a new word whose spelling will be forever etched in my brain. Words like feuilleton and syllepsis.

In the first-round written test I made 19 out of 20 (having been inoculated as many times as I have, you'd think I'd know how to spell "inoculate" by now). This was enough to advance to the second round. In the second-round written test, I also made 19 out of 20 (misspelling "scleroderma"). This was enough to make it onto the stage with 22 others, including Lyn.

In the on-stage competition, unless you know most of the words in the dictionary (as perennial winner Geoff seems to), there is a lot of luck involved. If I'd been given "aficionado", I'm sorry to admit that I would have overdone it with the effs. My first word was "spongiform" (as in "bovine spongiform encephalopathy") and I doubt there was anyone on the stage who would have missed it. My next word was "zori". Having grown up in a house where we called sandals zoris, this was another gimme.

On my next round, the word was the name of a type of music indigenous to Congo (sounds like "Sue coose"). Of all the people at Threadgill's that night, it seems like more than concidence that this word should have gone to probably the only person there born in the Congo. Another gimme, right? Alas, while I had heard the word many times, I hadn't seen it spelled out (at least not often enough). My answer was close, but wrong.

I was happy to take fifth place--that's the best I've done at these things. (raaga123 has placed 4th and 3rd in past competitions.)

This week's puzzler from Will Shortz on NPR (Sunday morning at 7:40 on KUT in these parts) was, "Rearrange the letters in MORE CORRUPTNESS to produce the name of a popular magazine".

This puzzle has proven to be remarkably viral at work and I've been impressed at how much harder it can be to unscramble 15 letters than the 5 or 6 you get in the daily jumble. I did figure out the answer today (finally!) while staring at the fifteen Scrabble tiles I'd taken in to work. The answer jumped out at me while I was on a teleconference call. (raaga123, by the way, figured this one out in ten minutes.)

Anyway, the answer is...

(drum roll, please)

...not as interesting as the following non-answers:

Computer Snorers
Errs on Computers
Mo's Current Prose
Corner Post Muser
Me Proust Scorner
No R.E.M. Procrustes

and my personal favorite:

U R Corpse Monster

This morning on NPR's Morning Edition I heard an interview with Geraldo Rivera on the topic of the border fence between the US and Mexico. What I found most interesting was not his opinion on the fence, but his take on the importance of learning a second language (he is trying to get his kids to learn Spanish, which is an uphill battle). He gave us a quote from his dad that I just love: "Si tiene dos lenguas, tiene dos almas." We can argue about whether this is an exaggeration (and whether it overstates the case by one or two), but I think there is a beautiful truth to it.

Concerning my previous post, I did a little research and discovered that Buffy is a nickname for Elizabeth and Daisy is a nickname for Margaret. And of course there are many others. So if you're trying to come up with a name for your baby girl and don't like commitment, either of these names would be a fine choice.

This morning, while enjoying a day with a slow start to it, Lyn and I debated which name has more nicknames: Elizabeth or Margaret. Which do you think does? The debate went something like this:

Dave:	Elizabeth		Lyn:	Margaret
	Eliza			Marge
	Beth			Margie
	Liza			Meg
	Lizzie			Maggie
	Lizbeth			Peg
	Lisa			Peggy
	Betsy			Madge
	Bette			Margo?
	Bess			Megalicious?
	Betty

Have we missed any?

Extra credit: without using a search engine, can you tell me where the quote in this entry's title comes from?

I've been having fun tormenting people with this puzzler (from NPR's Sunday Morning Weekend Edition, 7:40 on KUT): What common, English, six-letter word has silent consonants in the third and fourth positions followed by a T that is pronounced twice?

Today, raaga123 and I went to the Texas Book Festival where we met fraeuleinchen for the Define-a-Thon, which is like a spelling bee except that it's about words' definitions rather than spellings. Lyn and I arrived an hour and a half early because she didn't want to risk not getting to sign up. Turns out we needn't have worried--fraeuleinchen, who had intended only to watch, was able to get on the list at about 12:25. This is in contrast to the Define-a-Thon in Cambridge where people fought to get on the list and they had to open it up to 40 contestants rather than 20 in order to keep the peace.

This is how it worked: the contestants sat on the stage and went to the microphone one at a time. The moderator read a definition and then four words. The contestant then selected the word he or she thought best matched the definition. Later the clue would sometimes be a synonym or antonym of the word.

Fraeuleinchen kept a list of the correct words. Perhaps she can be talked into posting them.

The first round had easy words and only one person succumbed. The second and third rounds had more difficult words and subsequent rounds had words described as "impossible" by the moderator.

My first impossible-word definition was

a serpentine ridge of gravelly and sandy drift, believed to have been formed by streams under or in glacial ice

and my choices of words were "erskel", "rathskeller", "triskelion, and one I've forgotten. I took a guess on "erskel" and lived to see another round.

On my final round (I believe there were just four others on the stage at that point), the definition was

a slender, long-tailed mongoose inhabiting parts of Africa

or something like that and my choices were

cormorant
ichneumon
ophidian
pheasant

Now, given that we own a snake, you'd think I would know the meaning of "ophidian", but I didn't or had forgotten and so guessed "ophidian" since "ichneumon" sounded too fishy. Lyn found it ironic that, having grown up in Africa, I was defeated by an African critter.

By the way, I had recently seen at least one of the words that defeated a contestant, "flense", on freerice.com.

I did a little experimenting with freerice.com to better understand how it works. raaga123 had figured it just had this crazy scale that went between 41 and 50 and wondered why they didn't make it 1 to 10. Turns out 50 is indeed as high as it goes but you can go below 40--it's just that she's not very good at it. I convinced myself that 50 was the limit with the aid of a dictionary and then confirmed this by reading the FAQ.

To get a score of one, start the game from scratch by going to their home page. Click on "HOME" if you've already been playing. Then, instead of giving the correct answer, give the funniest answer. For example, I made the following choices:

location means liberty
rock means puppy
beautiful means unhappy
variety means small horse

and got a score of one.

To raise your score, you have to answer three in a row correctly. Whenever you answer incorrectly, your score goes down by one with a minimum score of one.

Starting from one and working your way up is a better way to donate rice because you can answer more quickly.

raaga123 turned me onto this site--a fun way to learn new words while simultaneously sending tiny amounts of rice to people who need it. I've already seen a few words that were at the recent Austin Chronicle Adult Spelling Bee.

The highest "VOCAB LEVEL" score I've gotten with it so far is 49. More often my score hovers around 46 or 47.

This evening's entertainment was the yearly Adult Spelling Bee at Fadó Irish Pub and Restaurant. Every year we go (except for last year when Lyn was in Requiem and I was in Mali) and every year we see some of the same people. It's a fine Austin Tradition. Look for a list of the words that needed spelling in an upcoming entry from fraeuleinchen. (Thanks to her for keeping this on her calendar and reminding us about it.)

Lyn and I made it past the two quizzes which gave us the right to compete on stage. I clutched on my first word. I heard /suh*LEPP*suss/ though it sounded like it might have been /sih*LEPP*suss/ and guessed wrong, even after hearing the definition. The correct answer was a very fine word which I'll bet grieve knows because it's exactly the sort of word he would like, a word about words. Here's a definition:

the use of a word or expression to perform two syntactic functions, esp. to modify two or more words of which at least one does not agree in number, case, or gender, as the use of are in Neither he nor we are willing.

And another definition:

A construction in which a word governs two or more other words but agrees in number, gender, or case with only one, or has a different meaning when applied to each of the words, as in He lost his coat and his temper.

Really, a very fine word and I should have known it. How would you spell it?

Lyn did much better, ending up in fourth place. The winner was Geoff, who has now won three times. For making it to the on-stage portion, we both won some fine swag: T-shirts, koozies, glasses, hats, coupons, word-puzzle book, thesaurus, stuffed bees, etc. Lyn also won a Scrabble game, a free yoga class, and admission to an art museum.