[Dixonary] Round 3265 CANTREF results

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Efrem Mallach

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Jul 11, 2022, 9:02:47 PM7/11/22
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Folks,

CANTREF is def #1: a medieval Welsh land division. Wales was divided into a few dozen of them, each with its own court and sometimes its own dialect. (Their number varied over time.) John Barrs knew the word and was DQ. Tim Lodge, Debbie Embler, and Shani Naylor voted for it, giving me a D3. 

Scores ended in a tie between Dan Widdis and the aforementioned Mr. Lodge, with four points each. Since two of Tim's points came from his vote, the next deal is Dan's. Tim can console himself with traditional "winnah" honors and can play in the next round.

There wasn't much of a relationship between definition length and votes this time. Granted, Dan's winning def was long, but John Barrs's was even longer. It got two votes, the same as defs. 4, 5, and 6, and one fewer than the very short #1. Defs that received no votes were scattered, with most near the midpoint of the length scale. The strong connection between length and votes that showed up in an earlier round was, I am coming to believe, mere happenstance. That's just as well, since trying for the longest possible fake def (which we would tend to do, were a real relationship to exist) might be amusing for a while but would surely become tiresome in short order,

Full results:

1. A medieval Welsh land division. From Dictionary which could not vote. Voted for by: Lodge, T.; Naylor, S.; Embler, D. Score: D3.

2. Consolidated archive of North American trees. From Fein, D. who voted 5, 11. Voted for by: None. Score: 0.

3. A South American tropical bird whose young have clawed wings. From Madnick, J. who voted 4, 11. Voted for by: Widdis, D. Score: 1.

4. An upper-level minister of the Australian Bush Baptist Church. From Abell, T. who did not vote. Voted for by: Madnick, J.; Embler, D. Score: 2.

5. An earthenware vessel used to store organs removed during mummification. From Shefler, M. who voted 6, 10. Voted for by: Fein, D.; Widdis, D. Score: 2.

6. Any of the bracing struts joining the knees to the deck beams in a wooden ship. From Lodge, T. who voted *1*, 10. Voted for by: Shefler, M.; Keating, P. Score: 4.

7. To cook (food, esp. game or fish) on an open fire using a stick set in the ground. From Naylor, S. who voted *1*, 10. Voted for by: None. Score: 2.

8. A gum resin similar to myrrh obtained from various trees of the East Indies and Africa. From Embler, D. who voted *1*, 4. Voted for by: None. Score: 2.

9. Also: cantrip. A spell or charm of necromancy or witchcraft; a witch's trick or mischievous device. From Keating, P. who voted 6, 10. Voted for by: None. Score: 0.

10. [Antiq.] A beam, shod or armed at the end with a metal head or point, and projecting from the prow of an ancient galley, in order to pierce the vessel of an enemy; a beakhead. From Widdis, D. who voted 3, 5. Voted for by: Shefler, M.; Lodge, T.; Naylor, S.; Keating, P. Score: 4.

11. [Obs] A body of 100 senior churchmen who were gathered together when necessary to act as an appeal court in eccesiastical matters. They had power over the heads of religious houses. From Barrs, J. who was DQ. Voted for by: Fein, D.; Madnick, J. Score: 2.

As a table, with tied scores in definition list order (because they start out that way, and ties stay in their existing order when Excel sorts a list on another column):


Efrem

France International/Mike Shefler

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Jul 12, 2022, 11:26:21 AM7/12/22
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IIRC I think I created the longest def using the stream-of-consciousness program babble. I can't find the def and I don't remember the round, though. As I recall, it did not win the round.

--Mike
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Daniel B Widdis

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Jul 12, 2022, 8:34:43 PM7/12/22
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I do remember winning around with some really long definition about railroad tracks merging, complete with an ASCII illustration.  I don’t remember the round but I’m sure it’s in the archives somewhere.

Paul Keating

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Jul 16, 2022, 12:23:02 PM7/16/22
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Mike, it was round 2000 (early May 2009), and your def was:

1. The slings and parts of Scandinavia. 2. A nunnery, which we call a winged messenger of the species. 3. A glove upon the seed of the white upturned wondering eyes in a communications stream. 4. A burial mound or not. 5. The seed of the lazy pacing clouds. 6. To be lost, esp. the place you can lose control. 7.  a small spat or, when he loaded up through the sun, the Ballet Russe, her vestal livery in the town of Bedrock. 8. A technique using staged tunable rectifiers to see from Brooklyn  Heights.  9. A technique using staged tunable rectifiers to be in heaven. 10. the signal-to-noise ratio in Washington. 11. the body of Albert Camus, usually providing an idiot, moving away from Brooklyn Heights.  12. The seed of outrageous fortune, esp. the envious moon, usually providing an absurdist counterfoil to dream.  13. O, that which we call a lamp, esp. the release  mechanism of a lamp, most esp. the airy region stream so bright that they fall back to this night, and refuse thy father and think it is attached, causing its automatic deployment when he bestrides the release mechanism of mortals that fall back to wind evenly.

submitted as not one, but rather thirteen definitions for favillous, which actually means “consisting of or resembling ashes”. The deal went to went to John Barrs, but it couldn’t really be called a win, because the round was terminated early by a very explicit public DQ, so eight of the 16 submitters did not get to cast a vote.

There aren’t stats for definition length, so I can’t confirm that its 1,128 characters constitutes a record. With so much material to work with, it wasn’t hard to pick up collocations (envious moon, outrageous fortune) that were readily traceable to some of Babble’s default input texts (Romeo and Juliet, balcony scene, and Hamlet, soliloquy), and so to identify Babble as the true author.

At the time I still had a working copy of Babble. Of course, even if I still had it, it would not run without a DOS emulator. But rather than try to make that work, it would probably be more fun to recreate the program using modern ML techniques. I was playing with that idea just last week.


'France International/Mike Shefler' via Dixonary wrote on 2022-07-12 17:26:
IIRC I think I created the longest def using the stream-of-consciousness program babble. I can't find the def and I don't remember the round, though. As I recall, it did not win the round.

--Mike


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Paul Keating
Soustons, Nouvelle Aquitaine, France

Daniel B Widdis

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Jul 16, 2022, 1:09:48 PM7/16/22
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Mike,

 

You did win the deal in Round 615 with this submission, weighing in at 615 characters, most of them whitespace:

 

 21. the Roumanian one-stringed balalaika (see illus.)

  Submitter: Shefler                  Votes: 3 & 5        0 + 8 =   8<<Winnah!

  Voted for by: Bourne; Widdis; Lodge; Dyer; Cunningham; Savage; Crom;

                Murray

 

                                           /!

 

                                           /!

                                        /   !

                                     /      !

 o                                /         !

 |=+===========================/     __   | !

 | o--|---|---|---|---|---|--|------(--)--| !

 |=+===========================\     ^^   | !

 o                                \         !

                                     \      !

                                        \   !

                                           \!

             Vavasor

 

 

From: Paul Keating <pjake...@gmail.com> on behalf of Paul Keating <dixo...@boargules.com>


Reply-To: Dixonary <dixo...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Saturday, July 16, 2022 at 9:23 AM
To: Dixonary <dixo...@googlegroups.com>

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Daniel B Widdis

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Jul 16, 2022, 1:21:18 PM7/16/22
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And I took your illustration as inspiration to craft this 893-character beauty which won Round 981.

 

15. a tackle consisting of two standing      _______________

     single blocks, two running single          _|_     _|_

     blocks, a fall, and a runner, so          / | \   / | \

     arranged that the fall is rove           (  *  ) (  *  )

     through one running block, to which       \___/| |\___/|

     one end of the runner is attached,         \   | |     |

     is then rove through one standing         __\  | |    /

     block, and is finally attached to     \  /   \ | |    |

     the other running block, which         \(  *  )\ /   /

     supports the load and to which the       \_\_/ _H_   |

     other end of the runner is attached         \ / Y \ /

     after being rove through both it and         (  *  )

     the other standing block: gives a             \_|_/

     mechanical advantage of six, neglecting       |###|

     friction. (See Illus.)                        |###|

Submitter: Widdis                   Votes: 11 & 20      0 + 5 =   5  ** !

Voted for by: Dyer; Pittman; Wetzstein; Jordan; Savage

 

So from the standpoint of number of characters needed to store these definitions in a database, 1128 characters may be a record, at least in my brief search.

 

However, based on the fact that “a picture paints a thousand words,” and that the average word length in the English language is 4.7 characters, the two definitions cited had in excess of 5000 characters and each won their respective rounds. 

 

So perhaps size does matter.

stamps

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Jul 16, 2022, 8:53:45 PM7/16/22
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Yes, this was the first "ilustrated" def. I think it was the one and only
round Fernando Gelbard dealt.

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---------- Original Message -----------
From: Daniel B Widdis <wid...@dixonary.net>
> which actually means ?consisting of or resembling ashes?. The
> deal went to went to John Barrs, but it couldn?t really be called
> a win, because the round was terminated early by a very explicit
> public DQ, so eight of the 16 submitters did not get to cast a vote.
>
> There aren?t stats for definition length, so I can?t confirm
> that its 1,128 characters constitutes a record. With so much
> material to work with, it wasn?t hard to pick up collocations
> (envious moon, outrageous fortune) that were readily traceable to
> some of Babble?s default input texts (Romeo and Juliet, balcony
> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/dixonary/9F8DB49C-48C3-4862-A054-
D8C793561921%40dixonary.net.
------- End of Original Message -------

Paul Keating

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Jul 17, 2022, 5:48:51 AM7/17/22
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It was the Ferd's only deal. 

I had forgotten about those illustrated defs. Entertaining, but a giveaway that the def was fake: I can't imagine finding ascii art in a trustworthy source. But now that is no longer a constraint. I think conjuring up a def with an illustration might be a worthy challenge the next time I deal.

P

Daniel B Widdis

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Jul 17, 2022, 12:59:44 PM7/17/22
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The definition may be true even if the dictionary’s artwork may not match the drawing.  My tackle def is the actual definition for “bell’s purchase” for example. 

Which I can now no longer deal. ;)

image

On Jul 17, 2022, at 2:48 AM, Paul Keating <dixo...@boargules.com> wrote:


It was the Ferd's only deal. 

I had forgotten about those illustrated defs. Entertaining, but a giveaway that the def was fake: I can't imagine finding ascii art in a trustworthy source. But now that is no longer a constraint. I think conjuring up a def with an illustration might be a worthy challenge the next time I deal.

P

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France International/Mike Shefler

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Jul 17, 2022, 2:55:20 PM7/17/22
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You could take any one of those and probably get a vote or two. Collectively, though....
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Paul Keating

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Jul 20, 2022, 3:58:53 AM7/20/22
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I thought trying to make Babble work under Windows 10 would be a chore, but it turned out to be much easier than writing a fresh implementation, though I might still do that.



I downloaded the program from archive.org and it ran first time in DosBox, without any tinkering. Getting a grip on its idiosyncratic interface brought on a wave of nostalgia. I was reminded that in a character-based program, it was important to get every bit of functionality onto one screen, because any pop-up dialogue more complex than a yes-no question was way too much effort, and something like a SaveAs... file dialogue was out of the question.

Babble! 2.0 appeared in 1991 and got a huge boost from computer magazine reviews. Korenthal Associates specialized in language-related applications (a spell checker, a synonym finder, etc) and this was the last application from that stable that I've been able to find. I doubt very much if shareware sales ever funded anyone’s early retirement (mine certainly didn’t), but it would be nice to think this one did.
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