Every day when I look at the glowing red sign at the front of the bus I think, “If there was an extra ‘e’ on that sign, that would anagram to ‘Sequestered Pot.'”
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April 16, 2010Words & Origins
I’ve been going to Spelling Bee every week but 2 since the beginning of the year. Robert has won twice. I won 2nd place a few weeks ago.
Tonight was my night.
1st: can’t remember
2nd: duplicate
3rd: adventitious
4th: cromlech (I spelled it wrong but everyone also got out)
5th: ginkgo
6th: diptych
A diptych is like a triptych, but with 2 instead of 3. DUH.
Results: I AM AWESOME
Prizes:
-$10 gift certificate
-picture of me on the wall
-shirt that says I am champion (picture to come at later date, the only had xxlarges)
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March 30, 2010Free Rice is a great site where you can take endless vocabulary tests!
If you don’t like vocabulary, you can take everlasting multiple choice tests on Art, Chemistry, Geography, Language Learning, and Math. Every time you get an answer right, the site donates 10 grains of rice to the World Food Programme. It is so good.
The other day, a certain person I was speaking with asked me what my highest level was, and I said 48 out of 60, which I was not sure was true. It lead to terrible confessions about me being a liar all the time, which is a fact. So I played on Free Rice this evening until it was true. This is my screenshoot proof.
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March 17, 2010You’ll get your comics in a bit, nerdlies.
This is a story about spelling bees. Story about good, story about bad.
In 8th grade I got out in on ‘camouflage’ but I didn’t feel so bad because the 7th graders got the word list but we didn’t but I was still a threat and I ended in 2nd place.
In college, I got out on ‘dilapidated’ and ended in 3rd place, and I got a UP license plate. (I would have won if I had gotten it right, because my next word was ‘bauxite’ and his next word was ‘accouchement’ and the 3rd guy was not a threat.)
Two weeks ago, I got out on the first round word ‘dairy.’ SHHHHHHHH.
THIS WEEK
This week I had fanbase and housemates and friends and my goodness my Guinness I was sure I would get out soon if not immediately. But then!
Round One: foreign
Round Two: lozenge
Round Three: umpirage
Round Four: emanometer (I got out on it. BUT SO DID EVERYONE ELSE. The entire 10+ people all got their words wrong, so we all came back.)
Round Four: quagga
Round Five: crwth (this round narrows it down to two)
Round Six: kakorrhaphiophobia (I got that one wrong but she was wrong too)
Round Six: prosopagnosia (I got that one wrong but she was wrong too)
Round Five: teosinte (I got it wrong, she got gentileness right, she wins)
FINAL RESULTS:
(2nd place prize is a $5 gift certificate to Mississippi Pizza)
(3rd place prize is you’re fired)
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March 16, 2010
The other day the word ‘quizás’ came up at my office. It means ‘maybe’ in Spanish. The ‘z’ is pronounced lightly, like an ‘s’ in Spanish. I tricked someone into letting me think aloud about where the word might come from. This is that story.
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March 11, 2010(That is a terrible name for this game. I’ve been trying to think of a more graceful one for weeks.)
There is a game I have created that I often play as a passenger on the roads of life. The game involves license plates and spelling but not anagrams. (It doesn’t work with vanity plates like the one above that I came up with and I thought was hilarious when I was younger.) (It is also hilarious now.) [and then suddenly…]
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March 6, 2010
I’m still missing a B, V and a Y. Can’t even spell my own name yet. 🙁
A to L:
[and then suddenly…]
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January 17, 2010Oh hello. I’ve been up to no good, spending my time watching internet television and flipping around wordnik pages as I please.
First of all, I continue tagging more things in im-pure non-linguist approved format…. like vcvccv.
CH SOUNDS LIKE K
On my birthday, a great new game was invented because of conflicting pronunciation of the word chimera. Thus began a weeklong game of one-upmanship, trying to think of more new words that use ch in a word with a k sound. Most are Greek. In our game we could only use a root word once, so variations on ‘chronology’ did not count as new additions, unless they were really awesome. Loch is technically a different guttural sound, but for the purposes of a light-hearted list-based game, I hope I can be forgiven. Please add as you like. I tried to remember all the ones I could, but there were a lot. The list so far is HERE.
RH
When I ran out of “ch with a k sound” words, my mind looked for more fun letter combinations to play with, and I soon realized that there are not many words that have R and H next to each other. Rhino, rhythm, rhombus, rheumatoid, the list does not go on for very long. But then! An extension was made, realizing that R and H are often in the middle of words, at the junction between the two parts of a compound word. neighboRHood. supeRHero. waRHorse. Fun times, the list I started is HERE. You may notice Spiderham on the list, which was a children’s comic book series that my family owns and I read as a child. You can find him immediately on Google Images, so I think it’s pretty legit.
ONE-DOLLAR WORDS
Once upon a time in elementary school, I hated math. I still hate math. My math teacher said we could get a free pass on doing homework if we could bring in an example of a $1.00 word. The system is based off of A=1, B=2, J=10, T=20, Z=26. You add all the letters up and if they equal 100, that’s a dollar word. I super-sponge absorbed that system into my brain, and spent the next month of my life with a calculator at the ready, plugging in any and all words i could think of that might work. Pumpkin, elephant, wizards, hamburger, excellent. I loved them. It turns out the internet has taken the thinking out of the list, and you can find them all in one nice place called Math Lair. It lists 660 words, I entered in about a third of them while I was watching internet television this evening. It made me happy. Here’s the list so far.
BH
BH are my initials, and B next to an H is not common. And it looks weird, and so far I just have Clubhouse. There must be others. I found a lot of -house words by looking through the font catalog at House Industries. I got a catalog from them in the mail once, very well designed. I believe I had them address it to bOb fencepost, which was my nom de internet at the time. Brilliant.
DH
Another uncommon and strange looking letter order. This one I also found through hunting House’s fonts, but with a little more success. DHarma, maDHouse, roaDHouse, birDHouse.
Happy tagging, everybody. Please join in and play.
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January 15, 2010
Find the revised list HERE or on the righthand column.
One time in high school, Mr. Fagiano had the whole class push all the desks to the side of the room, turned off the lights, and told us all to take a nap. He was my first philosophy teacher, and some philosopher (sorry un-named philosopher) said that he got his best ideas in the space between sleeping and waking. In our class, we laid on the ground for about 10 minutes, and then he woke us all up (I never slept) and told us to write down whatever we had just been thinking about. My mind had been wandering so I had something to write, but I always thought it was silly. BUT NOW. This new idea comes from that place. [and then suddenly…]
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January 10, 2010