The strange, the bizarre and the unexpected

[floppers]

guys, really??? needed some" just made it through stage four covid lockdown" recognition for the "slide/trombone" reference. ....needy much? But yeah, Indian food is very standard fare here, and (unlike the French), we have no need to "translate" anything...so the word for raita is...raita....likewise papadum....we don't eat much in the way of Japanese, except Bento Boxes (great, but have no idea what we are eating...). My surrogate German Uncle once said,..."I was perfectly alright until "they" invented....I don't know what you call it in English (or Australian), but in Germany they call it "cholestorol"....

[mdyak]

Indian names for foods such as raita and papadum always are accepted, I think because English is the main unifying language in India. Exactly why natto and other Japanese foods hardly ever count.

[DrPlacebo]

sometimes, I see and try things that are very definitely Australian slang terms, and they work too. I'm thinking because English is such a derivative language, maybe some thing just slide in there?

Yeah, I'm often surprised by what loanwords do and don't count.

I keep trying NATTO (fermented soybeans) and not getting points for it. On the other hand, SAIMIN (Hawaiian noodle soup) does count, and so do a whole bunch of Indian military ranks that are used in no other country (I've gotten points for SOWAR, NAIK, and SUBEDAR).

[floppers]

sometimes, I see and try things that are very definitely Australian slang terms, and they work too. I'm thinking because English is such a derivative language, maybe some thing just slide in there?

[DrPlacebo]

I saw POSAUNE and tried it -- it's a word I've seen often in orchestral scores, because it's German for trombone. I didn't expect it to score points at all, not as an English word. It not only counted, but got a best scoring word record on the board.

[RussDNails]

I've gotten as far as downloading Open Office, Chromium and Firefox on Linux Lite. Wordtwist works on Chromium and Firefox but this computer is an old brick so it's a little slow switching between games but not too bad. LL runs better than Win 10 did. I should never have put Win 10 on there in the first place as it was running Win 7 pretty well. Win 10 ran ok but very slow so I wiped it and decided to try installing a simple Linux version. Tried several installs including Ubuntu and Peppermint and none ran very well, just not enough horsepower left on this laptop. Linux Lite is actually quite nice and somewhat similar to Windows.

Wishing you many more years of Wordtwisting

[bwt1213]

I've run Ubuntu and it's pretty good. You can run Firefox and get into wordtwist; I ran that a lot of times, so I know it works. Please download the Open Office suite; I used to use that a lot when I was a quant (for those who don't know, that's short for "quantitative analyst", a term used to describe mathematicians/wizards who predict the stock market in real time, sometimes at nanosecond scales). Once you have a word processor and spreadsheet, all you need is a language. I recommend Python, which I used with R to do statistical analysis and modeling. Python can be used for almost anything. As far as "long in the tooth" is concerned, you're not there until you're facing the grim reaper, IMHO. I've done that. He doesn't scare me any more. If you see I haven't been here for a really long time, you can assume that I'm gone. Raise a glass -- not to me, to life -- and play some of my favorite songs. I'll let you guess which ones, since it won't matter a whit to me any more!

[RussDNails]

40 is definitely not what I would consider long in the tooth! I'm happy your daughter has made you proud and thanks for the words of encouragement.

I've been dabbling with Linux lately and it's making me nuts. I just wiped a perfectly good Win 10 laptop and installed Ubuntu and then Linux Lite--now the laptop is pretty much useless until I figure out some of the basics.

Ironically my work laptop is my favorite for Wordtwist and I've now been blocked by an admin from playing games on it, even at home. Now I'm plunking away on another old Win 7 laptop that was collecting dust in my closet. My typing speed is definitely taking a hit since the keyboard on this thing is the older "island" style that requires a lot more force than my newer laptop with "chicklet" keys.

Anyhow, back to plunking away before it gets too late.........nice chatting with you.......

[bwt1213]

When my daughter made the move, she was 40. Maybe that's not "long in the tooth" and maybe it is, but I had my own doubts about whether that was a good move. But she is my daughter, and she can do anything so I told her to go for it and crossed my fingers. And she was as good as she thought she was, as good as I hoped she was, and in the end she was better than either of us thought. I take no credit for her accomplishments but you can bet I am proud of her. Perhaps you can surprise yourself and make yourself and some other people proud, too. "Long in the tooth" is just a state of mind. It's not a sentence.

[RussDNails]

Definitely a smart move, more money and opportunity in computer science.............I've made some good friends in the IT department at my hospital and have enough experience with software and operating systems that I could probably find something in this area but I'm getting a little long in the tooth now and change doesn't come as easy as it used to

[bwt1213]

I talk to my daughters almost every day. My younger one gets the vocabulary lesson most of the time, and I don't know why. The most recent "odd" word was desquamation, which came up when we were discussing world record attempts that Guinness would no longer sanction. I like taking long showers, and I said there would not be a record for that because of (cue the trumpets) desquamation. So she looked it up on her smartphone and told me the definition was in French, which she had had one year of in high school (she's nearly 50) so she had a little trouble with it. I looked it up on my computer, and it meant what I thought it meant and what I'd earlier told her -- and my definition came up first in French, too. But it's such a PERFECT word! It's basically "the removal of the top layer of skin" and it can come mechanically by abrasion or by exposure to harsh chemicals or prolonged exposure to water. Here's the thing: English is great at borrowing words from other languages, and evidently "desquamation" is one such word. But I have NEVER had a word where the primary definition was given in French. I'd thought it was entirely an English word. Are there any other such? BTW, RussDNails, her degree is in laboratory science and she began her career as a lab tech, later moving more into the programming/CS end of things but staying entirely within hospitals and health care.

[Naboka]

Screen Shot 2020-09-21 at 9.08.04 AM.png

The difference between learning a lot of weird new words worth more points: 88 more points despite one less word.

I imagine the really good players would easily have scored well over 750 on this.

Looking at the board, I should have scored 500 with a couple dozen words I'd normally see, but I just woke up and...

[leabhar]

I knew the rhino- had a use! Screenshot 2020-07-25 at 11.56.58 AM.png
I like how it simply means "ear, nose and throat doctor."

Where do you get those boards? I never see one like that. I already have to click over 10 times to get a playable one, let alone a dream board like that

[rosedraws]

Rollerbladings!

[flops]

there's no need for the jury to retire.