Well...actually the guess I gave by private message isn't one of the choices. I think I will have to disqualify myself from guessing publicly then. Obviously, one of these is an alternate definition from Cavfancier's devious puzzle-crafting mind. And I think I know which one.
(ouch, this doesn't look good. We've gone through this kind of ordeal before.)
Bah on ordeals....if Equus's original guess is not there, I say by all means hazard another in public
My public guess would be based on something you mentioned to me in your reply to my pm, Cav. Which wouldn't be fair, so I'm not going to guess this round.
Cav...um, isn't it about time for you to wrap up this round?
Yep, tomorrow, working today.....
Well Cav, I don't see my definition or Felix Noir's (or else I have forgotten what they were. However, I will vote for #7 and Felix votes for #9.
Iainanowudbucha! Love it!
Some random musings while waiting for Cav.
The correct title for a cabinetmaker is a joiner.
Tony and I were never friends while we were housemates in Capetown. His girlfriend and I developed an almost instant animosity. My lady didn't particularly like either of them.
A couple of months before I left SA, after we had each moved on to different houses and different girlfriends, we met again and became pretty good friends.
Tony had started building a catamaran. An ocean going cat that could take him home. He bought the plans and he bought all of the right materials. And the quality of construction was superb, because Tony, in his words said: "Iainanowudbucha."
When I left SA to come home, Tony had finished both hulls, We promised to keep in touch but, of course, we never did.
I'm left wondering, 30 years later, if "Welsh Tony" ever finished his project. -rjb-
ETAOIN SHRDLU
A nonsense phrase; an absurd or unintelligible utterance.
With the idea of speeding up the setting of type, the old Linotype keyboards had their letters arranged in decreasing order of the frequency with which they appear in the language, making the first two rows ETAOIN SHRDLU. This curious phrase is recorded both in the Oxford English Dictionary and also in the Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary. Linotype operators who made a typing error would often run their fingers down the keyboard to cast nonsense to fill out the line. The resulting cast slug was usually put back in the pot to be melted down and reused, but sometimes, in the heat of composition, the mistake was missed and ended up being printed.
Each half, and the complete phrase, has occasionally been borrowed to mean something that is nonsense or absurd; the first part is recorded in a story by James Thurber from 1931, and the whole thing appeared in 1942 as the title of a short story by Fredric Brown about a sentient Linotype machine. Jake Loddington has told me about The Naughty Princess by Anthony Armstrong, written in 1945, in which there is a whimsical short story called Etaoin and Shrdlu which ends "And Sir Etaoin and Shrdlu married and lived so happily ever after that whenever you come across Etaoin's name even today it's generally followed by Shrdlu's". Andrew Stiller mentioned a once-famous play, The Adding Machine, in which Etaoin Shrdlu was a character. The second half of the phrase was used in 1972 by Terry Winograd as the name for an early artificial-intelligence system.
With computerised typesetting the machines have gone and the associations are almost lost, but the phrase remains a useful mnemonic for the most-used letters in English.
Sorry folks, my modem has been having brain farts the last few days. The definition is stated above. The correct answer was "some of the above", but that is unfair, so full points will be given to numbers 4, 11, 12, and 15, which makes firstthought and hiama the winners in this round. I will work out the bluff points later, as it looks like Mr. modem is gonna crap out again....
<plays taps for Mr. modem>
Suddenly there was a tap on my door-funny sense of humour my plumber
Once upon a midnight dreary
while I pondered, weak and weary
something something something (dearie?)
rap rap rapping on my chamber door*
* Craven will be distressed that I've mangled Poe
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore---
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door---
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door---
Only this and nothing more."
Hey, answer the door, willya?!
Drat, I was hoping it was a Welsh couple from an old, romantic myth. The Industrial Revolution really made a mess of romance.
"...Tis some visitor, I muttered, rapping at my chamber door..."
"Hello, friend. I'm a Jehovah's Witness. May I have a few moments of your time to tell you about God's plan...?"
"Be that our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting--
"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul has spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken!--quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!"
Quoth the Witness, "Nevermore."
And the Witness, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadows on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted--nevermore!
Okay, may I offer the next word:
PILGARLIC
Hey, where is ev'body? (maybe I took too many of them garlic pills?) Six days and only ONE bluff has been received. Is this a word that everyone already knows except me?
PILGARLIC
We're back on topic...let's not let this fun game die...or I'll take my bluff and jump off it!
