English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

jlliagre

00:03

@Cerberus Last description

Robusto

@Cerberus But that ignores the subtly misleading relationships that make the NYT puzzle so maddeningly hard.

Cerberus

@jlliagre That is correct! So which words do you have left?

@Robusto Yes, I slapped it together in 15 minutes, made it easier.

Did add misleading stuff, though.

But do you really think it is that hard to make such a puzzle a bit harder?

Robusto

It's not enough to make things hard, you have to add those subtle misdirections.

Cerberus

Why don't you try it yourself?

Robusto

Because I'm not getting paid to attempt that.

Cerberus

00:06

@Robusto Yes, I know that, I said it would be easy when I posted it, didn't I.

jlliagre

@Cerberus last words

Cerberus

@jlliagre Yes.

So that last category of mine is perhaps not tight enough: I replaced a few words and now it's meh.

alphabet

here's mine:
brew pop brick plaster
glass back metal spirits
around knock smack rocks
tea out tap rap

No clue how easy/hard this is

jlliagre

One difficulty for me is even if I recognize many words, sometimes I don't know a specific meaning used in the game but only the most common one. For example gore was misleading because I only knew it as a movie/story genre.

alphabet

solutions, encoded as above (yes, this gives away the lengths of words in each category):
cbc oerj fcvevgf grn = orirentrf / enc xabpx gnc fznpx = jbeqf sbe uvggvat guvatf / zrgny tynff oevpx cynfgre = ohvyqvat zngrevnyf / ebpxf bhg onpx nebhaq = vqvbzf cerprqrq ol gur jbeq xvpx

Probably too easy.

Cerberus

00:14

@jlliagre Right, that can be an issue.

@alphabet Ok cool!

jlliagre

First

Cerberus

Are any of your categories like "related to x"?

alphabet

@Cerberus now why would I answer that?

jlliagre

Second

alphabet

I did try to follow the usual Connections trick of making some groups that almost work.

jlliagre

00:21

Third

alphabet

Ok, yes, too easy.

Cerberus

Well, I can get three but the fourth I can't get!

Spoiler: i.imgur.com/xixnbWx.jpeg

Are the first three correct at all?

@alphabet Yeah, I tried that too.

alphabet

You can decode the answers above if you'd like.

Cerberus

@alphabet But still fun!

jlliagre

Fourth

Cerberus

00:26

@alphabet Ah, the fourth one is indeed of the kind that Connections might use.

jlliagre

Yes, that's the unguessable kind for me.

Cerberus

One word from the fourth one is probably an Americanism or pop culture? I didn't know it.

At any rate, well done!

Robusto

00:45

See how meanings commingle in the NYT puzzle?

That one is from a year ago.

Cerberus

Of course it more time to create more associations and fit everything together.

Nobody is disputing that.

Robusto

But that's what makes the puzzle interesting.

That's what I'm sayhing.

Cerberus

What I am saying is that you don't need a big company to make such a puzzle.

Robusto

But you do need someone who is good at this and dedicated to it, with enough time to deliver those on a deadline.

Cerberus

Sure.

3 hours ago, by Robusto

@Cerberus Except it takes an entity like the New York Times to pull that off.

This I still cannot follow.

Robusto

00:54

They're the ones who find the people who create the puzzles and pay them to do it.

Cerberus

01:04

Well, I don't agree with your original comment, as I interpret it.

To create such a puzzle, you just need one person who is good at it and has some time to spare.

To have such puzzles daily, you either need several people or one person with enough time consistently.

You don't need a newspaper or a billion-euro company.

Robusto

@Cerberus Sure. I agree with that. But that's like saying to play Bach on a keyboard you need just one person who is good at it and has some time to spare. Sooner or later you're going to have to fork over some money, or else you'll have to go to a concert where you pay money.

Cerberus

I'm not sure how that means you need something like the New York Times.

Robusto

Concert Hall = NYT

Cerberus

I think someone else could make such puzzles in a slightly different way and post them online.

Robusto

Good luck with that.

Cerberus

01:09

Without the regional/poppy references.

Robusto

What you're asking for is actually harder. The language matrix in English is much more complex.

Cerberus

Imagine if all of us together spent an hour in this room to make a puzzle instead of random chatting.

Robusto

I'd still want to get paid.

Cerberus

Maybe if you liked it enough, you didn't need payment.

Or if your site got enough visitors, you could live off advertisements.

Robusto

That's a big if. I'm retired and I enjoy my life. To chain myself to a schedule and a task would take more persuasion than I'm hearing so far. What's the win, for me?

jlliagre

01:16

@Cerberus But if you really make money, NYT will sue you for copyright infringement.

Cerberus

@Robusto Perhaps not for you.

But there could be 10 people around the world who might make a puzzle occasionally.

@jlliagre I don't think that is possible.

Robusto

@Cerberus You said "Imagine if all of us together .." So I presumed that would include me, since I am part of this chat.

Cerberus

Yes.

jlliagre

> 2.2 The Services and Content are protected by copyrights, trademarks, patents, trade secrets, database rights, sui generis rights and other intellectual or proprietary rights in or to the Services and Content pursuant to U.S. and international laws.
You may not modify, publish, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, reproduce (except as provided in Section 2.3 of these Terms of Service), create new works from, distribute, perform, display (including framing and inline linking), communicate to the public or in any way exploit, any of the Content (or its Arrangement) or the Servi…

Cerberus

But imagine.

@jlliagre Irrelevant.

jlliagre

01:19

You need a good lawyer.

Michael Rybkin

youtube.com/watch?v=JIsaTBGKm3k#t=1m56s and a thriving ART SCENE (is that what he's saying?)

Cerberus

@jlliagre Nope.

alphabet

@Cerberus I think Wordle just started as one person's side project until the NYT bought it.

@MichaelRybkin Yes.

Cerberus

@jlliagre You could publish the site outside American jurisdiction. Or simply just not use the trademark Connections (if that it is).

Michael Rybkin

@alphabet Thank you

Cerberus

01:20

@alphabet Right. Though Wordle doesn't really require thinking to make a new puzzle, does it?

alphabet

@Cerberus I believe that, after that incident where the word of the day seemed to be related to a new item, they stated that the words were chosen randomly.

Cerberus

Right.

@Robusto By the way, how do you feel about the kind where they e.g. change a letter in each word?

Robusto

Example?

Cerberus

There was one where they had four words, and when you removed a letter in each word, it became the name of an inhabitant of a country, or something.

So FINS => FIN.

Robusto

You mean FINN?

Cerberus

01:28

That could be it.

That type of thing.

Robusto

Sounds maybe too simple.

They do those things with ladders, so you start with FINS, say, and you get through six changes and it becomes OVID.

Cerberus

Uh I mean the ones in Connections.

Robusto

Oh.

Cerberus

You have seen them do things like that.

Robusto

OK

Cerberus

01:44

@Robusto But how do you feel about that?

Is it fun? Not fun?

Robusto

Meh.

Cerberus

I feel the same way.

Mitch

02:20

I don't feel anything at all.

Is it anomie or ennui?

Either way, it barely deserves a sigh

Anyway, the NYT stole the idea of Connections from the 20 year old British trivia quiz show 'Only Connect'.

Only Connect

Only Connect is a British television quiz show presented by Victoria Coren Mitchell. In the series, teams compete in a tournament of finding connections between seemingly unrelated clues. The title is taken from a passage in E. M. Forster's 1910 novel Howards End: "Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted." == History == Only Connect aired on BBC Four from 15 September 2008 to 7 July 2014, before moving to BBC Two from 1 September 2014. From 2008 until 2013 the show was recorded in Studio 1 at the ITV Cymru Wales Studios based at Culverhouse Cross in Cardiff, which have...

It's 'Round 3: Connecting Wall'.

The three people on a team work together for 2 minutes to solve the 4x4 square.

They often use very specifically UK things. It is after all a British show.

Like 'middle names of defensive coaches of losing Premier League team's

First names are too easy.@Robusto @Cerberus

Cerberus

@Mitch Yes, I am not surprised.

Mitch

So possibly NYT paid BBC for the idea or maybe not.

Cerberus

Of course not, such basic ideas are everbody's.

And I think even in the craziest jurisdictions you still can't patent game mechanisms.

So we are not being illegal yet!

Mitch

I don't know how patents work

CowperKettle

People are making apocalypse jokes.. like there's no tomorrow.

Cerberus

02:33

> FOOT, NURSE, AIRCRAFT, SHELL
MOUSE, SIGN, CHILD, CAT
STAR, MASK, SWORD, MOTHER
PROBE, LOVE, SCALPEL, COMPUTER

Mitch

Connections is not like sudoku where you can just write an algorithm to create as many games as you want.

Cerberus

No, indeed.

Mitch

@Cerberus those are all lexical sets for English phonology.

Cerberus

@Robusto @jlliagre @alphabet How is this one, I made it a bit more difficult. ↑

@Mitch Can you find the conexions?

Meanwhile:

Mitch

@Cerberus the easiest category is ...

I don't know

Cerberus

02:41

I tried to make it a bit more difficult, also with many dead ends.

Mitch

Dead ends? Lots of dead starts for me

Cerberus

Haha, yes, those.

jlliagre

My guesses

Vikas

Hmmm… can't reach this page

Mitch

I can't mouse over because I'm on a phone

jlliagre

02:49

@Vikas That's a spoiler.

Cerberus

@jlliagre Interesting guesses, but none are as I intended them!

jlliagre

Ha ha, I suspected it.

Cerberus

Sorry hehe.

I'm a bit surprised at how you used blade, how does that fit?

But you did fall neatly into some of the traps I set!

jlliagre

Kind of computer that goes in a rack.

Cerberus

Oh, I have not heard of that.

Besides, my connections are a bit more specific than fitting into a theme, except perhaps one.

jlliagre

02:52

Blade server

A blade server is a stripped-down server computer with a modular design optimized to minimize the use of physical space and energy. Blade servers have many components removed to save space, minimize power consumption and other considerations, while still having all the functional components to be considered a computer. Unlike a rack-mount server, a blade server fits inside a blade enclosure, which can hold multiple blade servers, providing services such as power, cooling, networking, various interconnects and management. Together, blades and the blade enclosure form a blade system, which may itself...

Cerberus

Never heard of it!

Let's replace blade with knife for you.

jlliagre

Unintended trap, trap anyway :-)

Cerberus

Hehe.

Or you could even replace blade with...Spoiler.

Does that help at all?

jlliagre

Not that much. I only make a pair with that.

Cerberus

Which one?

Maybe that conexion is a bit weak, maybe I should change it.

jlliagre

02:57

@Cerberus That one

Cerberus

@jlliagre Ah, I'm afraid those are traps. But how about my latest spoiler?

jlliagre

@Cerberus Spoiler

Mitch

I'm still at a loss for any of them

Cerberus

@jlliagre Very close! But do you have the four words that belong with that?

@Mitch Hmm so maybe I have made it too hard.

Mitch

I'm watching 'Pointless' at this very second and one of the categories is 'Portuguese Footballers'

Cerberus

03:02

@Mitch @jlliagre I will say in this game I used one thematic connection, two with collocations, and one morphological.

jlliagre

@Cerberus Spoiler

Cerberus

@jlliagre Ah I see what you did. You got one pair correct, the other is a trap. The thing is, your definition is a bit like "things related to x", but what I am looking for here is e.g. Spoiler..

So a tiny bit more specific.

Maybe that conexion, the only thematic one, is too weak. Maybe I should make it stronger.

Maybe the meaning of one of the words in that one is also too technical.

OK I will change it.

> FOOT, NURSE, AIRCRAFT, SHELL
MOUSE, SIGN, CHILD, CAT
STAR, MASK, SWORD, MOTHER
PROBE, LOVE, SCALPEL, COMPUTER

And a slightly easier version:

> FOOT, NURSE, AIRCRAFT, TUNA
MOUSE, SIGN, CHILD, CAT
STAR, MASK, SWORD, MOTHER
PROBE, NATIVE, SCALPEL, COMPUTER

Mitch

03:18

Now I get one category. But the rest I'm still working on

CowperKettle

Word of the day: betweenities

> I believe in love, all the way through. And while I live will help every man, woman, and the betweenities to win, obtain, intensify, deepen, purify, strengthen and keep it, and I will help all others to do the same. There! That’s me! I mean it!

Cerberus

I have added one word that suggests a specific category. And another that kind of has limited collocations so it may guide you a bit more, I think.

@Mitch But this is good learning for me, getting to know what doesn't work.

M.A.R.

10:16

@Cerberus well, it's some sort of unethical if a pharma company spends 15 years and several billion dollars on a novel drug only for another company to steal its formula and make an inferior product right after its release to the market.

Not to mention it is a disservice to patients since the Iranian copy doesn't undergo the necessary testing to validate that it's as good as the brand product.

Also, since the cheap Iranian alternative is in the market, the government often will, in the name of protecting local businesses, ban imports of the brand product, essentially depriving Iranians of the often superior drug product in terms of efficacy and sometimes even adverse effects.

So yeah, I think it's wrong.

Oh and did I mention that Iranian pharma companies also come up with their own brand names for their generic product?

It's a dog steal dog's patent for novel drug world out there

Robusto

13:34

#WhenTaken #299 (22.12.2024)

I scored 897/1000🏆

1️⃣📍28.3 km - 🗓️5 yrs - 🥇194/200
2️⃣📍1.0 km - 🗓️4 yrs - 🥇196/200
3️⃣📍612 km - 🗓️4 yrs - 🥇178/200
4️⃣📍2.4K km - 🗓️3 yrs - 🥈143/200
5️⃣📍397 km - 🗓️2 yrs - 🥇186/200

https://whentaken.com

CowperKettle

GratefulDisciple

14:17

@M.A.R. I thought you're in a Pharmacy pots-undergraduate program. How come you still need to take Sociology?

CowperKettle

Sir a second deathstar has just been hit

Robusto

Wordle 1,282 4/6

⬛🟨⬛⬛⬛
🟨⬛🟨⬛⬛
⬛🟩🟩🟨⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Connections
Puzzle #560
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟦🟦🟦🟦

Strands #294
“Are you listening?”
🔵🔵🟡🔵
🔵🔵

Daily Octordle #1063
9️⃣🕚
3️⃣7️⃣
6️⃣5️⃣
8️⃣🔟
Score: 59

GratefulDisciple

14:44

@Robusto Yes, it takes a lot of resources to output a quality daily game like Connections. The Atlantic had an interview last month with the creator, Wyna Liu, that sheds some light of the process she and her NYT staff "beta testers" have. @Cerberus

Robusto

Daily Sequence Octordle #1063
6️⃣7️⃣
8️⃣9️⃣
🕚🕛
🕐⓮
Score: 80

@GratefulDisciple Interesting, thanks!

@Cerberus, take note! ^^^

> All of this inspired me to reach out to Liu. I wanted to ask the puzzlemaker my most pressing Connections questions. Namely, who does she think she is? But also: Does she know that her game has us all in a chokehold? Does she hear our rage? The short answer is yes, Liu knows. And she relishes it. (On Monday, Liu’s puzzle contained a sneaky reference to Yang.)

> Liu: There’s a lot of free association, a lot of Google. I keep a notebook, and notes in my Notes app. I make the game in Google Sheets so you can click and drag the words around. You just kind of start to riff off of them. Okay, what could this mean? What could that mean? You just start word-cloud thinking about different meanings of the same word.
Maybe there’s three or four different options for what the word bow could mean. Bow could be something you tie, a bow could be part of a violin, a bow could be part of a ship, or it could be a bow, a gesture of respect.

I'm not sure other languages have this much junk in them, enough to make word clouds.

Tightrope, a daily trivia game | Britannica

Dec. 22, 2024

T I G H T R O P E
✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ 🎉

My Score: 2160

> Liu: Purple is the wordplay category. The four words in that group are not defined by their literal meanings. It’s words that end with ___ or homophones or something. Blue is trivia that is maybe a bit more specialized, not just definitions. Maybe it’s all movies or certain bands.
Sometimes that’s the hardest one. Yellow and green are other category types: They might be four things you bring to the beach, or sometimes they’re all synonyms for the same word. I would say that yellow is the most straightforward.

GratefulDisciple

15:05

@Robusto That's why unless I'm very lucky and intuitively saw the Purple connection, I just focus on the other 3 and resigned to make the Purple a freebie, as long as I don't exhaust my mistake quota.

MetaEd

15:19

Wordle 1,282 3/6

🟨🟩⬛⬛⬛
⬛🟩🟩🟩⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

MetaEd

15:31

Strands #294
“Are you listening?”
🟡🔵🔵🔵
🔵🔵

Connections
Puzzle #560
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟪🟪🟪🟪

jlliagre

16:08

#WhenTaken #299 (22.12.2024)

I scored 897/1000🏆

1️⃣📍111 km - 🗓️5 yrs - 🥇190/200
2️⃣📍84.7 m - 🗓️1 yrs - 🥇199/200
3️⃣📍388 km - 🗓️11 yrs - 🥈170/200
4️⃣📍2.0K km - 🗓️7 yrs - 🥈141/200
5️⃣📍507 m - 🗓️3 yrs - 🥇197/200

https://whentaken.com

@Robusto Exact tie :-)

Wordle 1,282 3/6

⬛⬛⬛🟨⬛
🟩🟩⬛🟨⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

jlliagre

16:25

Connections
Puzzle #560
🟪🟩🟩🟦
🟨🟨🟨🟦
🟦🟨🟨🟦
🟨🟩🟪🟦
:-(

Tightrope, a daily trivia game | Britannica

Dec. 22, 2024

T I G H T R O P E
✅ ✅ ✅ 💔 💔 ✅ 💔 ⎵ ⎵ 🤕

My Score: 870

Cerberus

@M.A.R. I don't think it is unethical to cause a big commercial company to make less profit. I do think medicine should be funded like science, rather than like toys or sodas.

Forgoing necessary testing: that is bad, but unrelated to ignoring patents.

@GratefulDisciple Thanks for the link!

@Robusto So the 'trivia' bit is what I dislike, it is like pub quizzes and, well, basically most television quizzes in any country: it will be partly about commercial 'pop culture'. The rest is also kind of how I would do it, yes.

@Robusto Of course other languages have plenty of the same things, homonyms and synonyms.

Cerberus

17:05

> It was pitched by a couple of my colleagues—one is an engineer, and one’s in audience research. The green-light committee decided that they wanted to try it as a public beta for 60 days. They needed to assign an editor to write the daily boards, and I was the only editor that didn’t have a game. I got really lucky.

So she got to do it more or less by accident, she is not a 'special person'.

HippoSawrUs

18:00

I can't find any Brach's peppermints in this city, which used to be a state capital, for over a week now.

Did a bunch of old people just swoop in and buy them all up, or did they just decide that most everybody who liked them probably died already?

I went with Brach's peppermint nougats instead, my fave, but all the old people will probably choke on them.

I'm not a miracle worker.

The young people like Nerd Clusters. They can go to the $1.25 store; I can't be bothered.

think_meaning_buildß

'tis the season

🎄

't's what 't's

Michael Rybkin

18:21

Does this sentence sound fine to you guys:

I did as he ordered me to do.

think_meaning_buildß

Yes.

think_meaning_buildß

18:53

I would say, "I did exactly as he ordered me to do."

Lambie

@MichaelRybkin It's okay but I prefer: I did what he ordered me to do.

Michael Rybkin

@think_meaning_buildß Thank you

@Lambie Thank you very much

think_meaning_buildß

Do you have more context?

alphabet

19:08

Finally, some Christmas-appropriate weather. Sadly I have errands to run outside and the humidity inside is around 12%.

CowperKettle

19:44

I bought a Tecno Pova 6 phone for mom, and I'm now setting it up. It's pleasantly fast, with 12 Gb of memory.

I know it's a kind of cheap-tier model, but still a lot faster than my old Samsung with its 4 Gb of memory

The screen is a whole inch longer than her previous phone's

Her previous phone is an old Xiaomi with 2 Gb of memory

I still have an old Seagate HDD with a capacity of just 210 Mb

CowperKettle

20:02

Elfstedentocht

The Elfstedentocht (Dutch pronunciation: [ɛl(ə)fˈsteːdə(n)tɔxt]; West Frisian: Alvestêdetocht [ɔlvəˈstɛːdətɔχt], English: Eleven cities tour) is a long-distance tour skating event on natural ice, almost 200 kilometres (120 mi) long, which is held both as a speed skating competition (with 300 contestants) and a leisure tour (with 16,000 skaters). The Elfstedentocht is the biggest ice-skating tour in the world. The tour is held in the province of Friesland in the north of the Netherlands, leading past all eleven historical cities of the province. The tour is held at most once a year, only when the...

Must be fun.

Dannyu NDos

20:59

They say the department of biology teaches chemistry. They say the department of chemistry teaches physics. They say the department of physics teaches math. They say the department of math teaches philosophy.

CowperKettle

23:07

CowperKettle

23:24

> The model suggests that a clock in the Milky Way would be about 35 percent slower than the same one at an average position in large cosmic voids, meaning billions more years would have passed in voids. phys.org/news/2024-12-dark-energy-doesnt-lumpy-universe.html

Cerberus

Connections
Puzzle #561
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟩🟩🟩🟩

This is Monday's.

@CowperKettle It was, but climate change...

Robusto

23:55

Nov 10 at 20:59, by Robusto

@jlliagre An exact tie! What were the odds of that happening?

I guess we know now.

@Cerberus I don't agree with your logic. Accidents sometimes reveal aptitude.

Cerberus

Well, it could have gone to any other editor.

Robusto

@Cerberus Hence the term "accident" ...

Transcript for

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…