Archive for Games
This started out to be a post about writing a computer version of a word game, but ended up focusing mostly on computerized word lists. Wordle got me thinking about a vaguely related (but not the same) word game called Fives that I learned as a kid. I wrote about Fives in a 1997 Words […]
A word-related fad!
Dramatic and evocative nouns are often used in common phrases, and in titles of works of fiction. And they apparently become even more dramatic and evocative when paired with other such nouns and linked using and. For example: Blood and fire Thunder and roses Lace and steel Sword and sorcery So I’m amusing myself with […]
Aldiborontiphoskyphorniostikos is a book, published around 1825, containing a paragraph for each letter of the alphabet; each entry adds something new at the start and then repeats everything that came before. The book described itself as a game, in which players were to quickly read entries aloud, without stumbling. Some of the entries included long […]
I was playing a word game (Capitals, an iOS app that’s apparently no longer available), and I got to wondering how one would go about using a computer to find all the words that you can make with a given set of letters. I wouldn’t use such a program for playing a game. But I […]
Facebook notifications often show an abbreviated version of some of the text that they’re about. In particular, notifications about shared links show an abbreviated version of the linked-to piece’s headline/title, with an ellipsis at the end. Which sometimes makes me want to complete the truncated title. Which can have entertaining results. I’ve been meaning for […]
I just accidentally turned two pages at once in a book, and read what appeared to be the following line: …swindle a Texan balcony of her mansion… (Hustlers & Con Men, by Jay Robert Nash, pages 311 and 314. The page break is after the word Texan.) I was going to call this accidentally-turn-an-extra-page-but-it-still-sorta-makes-sense phenomenon […]
Looking for some advice on an internet word game.
Mousing over the links reveals answers; mousing over the images should not.
I recently read Tom Holt’s 1987 fantasy novel Expecting Someone Taller. On the front cover is this blurb: “RECALLS BOTH TOLKIEN’S LORD OF THE RINGS AND TWAIN’S CONNECTICUT YANKEE … AN ENTERTAINING ROMP!” —Publisher’s Weekly I’ve never been terribly fond of the style of review where you describe a work as a cross between two […]