Eccentric Flower talk:201004/Igry

DanLyke:

I think by now we can agree that "-gry" has entered the language as its own word, the meaning of which is "the third most used word in English that ends in 'gry' because of that stupid puzzle question. And, yes, there are more than three. STFU already."

I'm all for brain stretching, and I'm not entirely opposed to puzzles as my fondness for the occasional Scrabble game shows (though I'm careful to distinguish myself from real Scrabble players because I can't reel off all the 2 and 3 letter words from memory), but when puzzles become a public sport they fall into the same category as body building:

Such things are fine if that's your hobby, and it's great when they trigger some inquisitiveness in a child that leads to more broadly applicable knowledge, but if you use 'em to start judging and sizing up other people then... well... we all know people who are buff, or beyond buff, who are fun to hang out with, and we've definitely seen the obnoxious testosterone crazed gym rats.

Nerds who get off on trivia without realizing that we are a tool-using species feel like the latter to me.

Which, I suppose, is why I've never bothered to join Mensa.

-- 20:42, 30 April 2010 (BST)

Mrissa:

Onomatopoeia is too a common word! My 7-year-old godson knows it, and he's hardly had a chance to read anything yet.

-- 22:00, 30 April 2010 (BST)

Columbina:

I think it is not too early, based on the weight of accumulated evidence to date, to presume that your godson is One Of Us.

-- 22:31, 30 April 2010 (BST)

Bunny42:

So, you're saying alfalfa is a common word to your entourage? I don't think I ever would have come up with it. I really don't use it much...

I knew #1, of course. Item #2 I figured would end in tious, but didn't spend much time on it before moving on. Same with #3 and #4. Awkward made me slap my forehead. My answer for #5 was august.

Alfalfa. Really.

I found many of the Unusual Artifacts very interesting. Medial capitals, f'rinstance. And I don't know that I ever would have wondered about the opposite of uxorious. But that's just me. If I'd absolutely had to find a term, it might have been co-dependent. (Eeeep!)

I envy those who are creative and witty, of whom I don't consider myself to be one. But I don't have to be able to create a masterpiece in order to appreciate one. I sit in awe of a clever turn of phrase or an unusual, yet exact, description. (Tom Robbins comes to mind.)

Which is why I follow this journal. A cat can look at a king, I say.

-- 23:29, 30 April 2010 (BST)

Spc476:

When it comes to these type of puzzles, I tend to cheat, and for word related puzzles, I don't necessarily have to use the Internet.

1---this be a bit tedious to check for, but not horribly so. I might have to think about how to best find the answer using a program (my thought: scan through /usr/share/dict/words, sorting the letters in each word and looking for pairs of letters)

2---a long but easy regular expression through /usr/share/dict/words will do for this one. Heck, this technique can be used for quite a few in this list. One word I found not mentioned here: bacterious.

3---same approach as above. I got "sequoia" as one result (and lots of -oeia results).

4---"Awkward" popped right out, but so did "hawkweed" (grep is your friend).

5---I knew this one immediately, but this is the only one that can't be easily cheated by a computer.

6---Not as easy as just using grep, but grep (to pull out all seven letter words) and a simple program to compare the proper letters would work and be a few seconds to write. In doing so, I found "alfalfa", "entente", "sarsars" and "tzitzit".

Bunny is sitting next to me, rolling her eyes and proclaiming I'm cheating, but what does this prove? Most of these puzzles here are of the "let me go through my vocabulary looking for matches" type and the computer can do this faster than I can.

I don't think I'm less intelligent than others here, but language puzzles aren't my thing---I enjoy actual physical puzzles ("these four pieces form a pyramid---put them together to do so" and that ilk); I also like writing programs.

-- 02:22, 1 May 2010 (BST)

Spc476:

"this be a bit tedious"?

Sheesh! I really need a editor.

-- 02:23, 1 May 2010 (BST)

Mmancuso:

It might be tricky to associate a quick correct answer to these sorts of questions with intelligence, whatever intelligence is. Instead, I liken the ease or difficulty of these particular question/answer games to the liklihood of being exposed to a particular bacteria or something. Depending on whether the factoid/joke/virus/habit already in your environment, you could know it before you can walk, or you might never come across it. I'm sure there's a 5 year-old-child around who can spout off the titles of the Apocrypha because that's what's in her environment.

For the uninitiated, the wordsmith questions themselves are hardly ones you'd think of in normal usage, and the answers are of the "aha"-type which might only indicate the presence or absence of non-critical "wiring" in the brain. The person who happens to be a wordsmith might notice patterns like this unprompted, anyway.

If such questions offer you good nonthugbait, then good luck to ya.

Having a brain that acts like a lint trap is hardly an indicator for intelligence, however corelative it might be, however useful it might be. Even If there were a litmus test for intelligence, I don't think that giving correct answers the "aha"-type questions is useful in any way. Wordsmithing questions might very well be a litmus-test for people you'd enjoy talking with, however.

-- 08:08, 1 May 2010 (BST)

ProfRobert:

Igry made me think of the movie "Igby Goes Down." The plot summary on IMDb, which I submit without comment, is "A young man's peculiar upbringing renders him unable to competently cope with the struggle of growing up."

-- 19:19, 1 May 2010 (BST)