Re: Name for "@"

[Helen Lacedaemonian]

On Friday, June 21, 1996 at 12:00:00 AM UTC-7, Geoff Butler wrote:
> In article <aaron_j._dinkin-...@dmn1-37.usa1.com>, "Aaron
> J. Dinkin" <aaron_j...@fourd.com> writes
> >
> >"#" is an octothorpe. What's a virgule?
>
> A virgule is an old keyboard instrument. What's a spinet?
>
> -ler

A spinet is the uncontrolled skid of a car on ice. What's a whirl?

(As you can see, Geoff Butler invented it.)

Best,
Helen

[Katy Jennison]

On 14/01/2015 21:05, Helen Lacedaemonian wrote:
> On Friday, June 21, 1996 at 12:00:00 AM UTC-7, Geoff Butler wrote:
>> In article <aaron_j._dinkin-...@dmn1-37.usa1.com>, "Aaron
>> J. Dinkin" <aaron_j...@fourd.com> writes
>>>
>>> "#" is an octothorpe. What's a virgule?
>>
>> A virgule is an old keyboard instrument. What's a spinet?
>>
>> -ler
>
> A spinet is the uncontrolled skid of a car on ice. What's a whirl?
>

A mad socialist. What's the Red Flag?

--
Katy Jennison

[James Hogg]

That thing that keeps flying from the Tannenbaum. What's Pegida?

--
James

[Peter Moylan]

On 15/01/15 08:05, Helen Lacedaemonian wrote:
> On Friday, June 21, 1996 at 12:00:00 AM UTC-7, Geoff Butler wrote:

That's the second revival of an ancient thread in a couple of days. Has
somebody's news server suddenly lost its marbles?

--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW, Australia
JE SUIS CHARLIE

[Katy Jennison]

Peggy, yes - a character in the Russian version of The Archers. What's
a milking parlour?

--
Katy Jennison

[Helen Lacedaemonian]

On Wednesday, January 14, 2015 at 3:05:10 PM UTC-8, Peter Moylan wrote:
> On 15/01/15 08:05, Helen Lacedaemonian wrote:
> > On Friday, June 21, 1996 at 12:00:00 AM UTC-7, Geoff Butler wrote:
>
> That's the second revival of an ancient thread in a couple of days. Has
> somebody's news server suddenly lost its marbles?
>

No. It stems from an argument in another thread ("pre-eminent").

In that thread, a URL was posted that claimed that Daniel McGrath invented the game you call "govende." That is absolutely untrue. He may have liked it, he may have named it, but the inventor was Geoff Butler.

I deliberately revived this old thread to show you that this game predated the arrival of Daniel McGrath. The message at the head of the thread, "A virgule is an old keyboard instrument. What's a spinet?" is, to the best of my knowledge, the message that first set out the rules and spawned the game.

Best,
Helen

[snide...@gmail.com]

The thread from 1994 may be where it developed.

/dps

[Helen Lacedaemonian]

I see your 1994 thread, but no game.

Best,
Helen

[snide...@gmail.com]

On further review, there's some hints. There are a couple of other tempting
threads that I have looked at, but I haven't seen a true cascade so far.
But that's only one stab at it to date.

And no, I wasn't there (here) at the time. By the time I stumbled in,
Dan was mostly off elsewhere. Truly D and Purl Gurl were already
below the horizon. Bob Cunningham may also have been.

My presence here has only been in the 21st C,
and not even the earliest moments thereof.

/dps

[snide...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, January 14, 2015 at 3:56:13 PM UTC-8, Helen Lacedaemonian wrote:

> I deliberately revived this old thread to show you that this game predated the
> arrival of Daniel McGrath. The message at the head of the thread,
> "A virgule is an old keyboard instrument. What's a spinet?" is,
> to the best of my knowledge, the message that first

> *set out the rules* and spawned the game.

That beats Mike Barnes' offering of July 7th, at
<URL:https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.usage.english/DW9JatLFGKk/9sFgisFGUCwJ>
in the "Tina, Tina, Tina" thread.

But *set out the rules* is a rather strong interpretation of /an example/.

/dps

[snide...@gmail.com]

Whereas Myles is explicitly documenting rules in
<URL:https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.usage.english/DW9JatLFGKk/9sFgisFGUCwJ>
(July 10th)

/dps

[LFS]

Interesting. You have a good memory. Where are the rules "set out" in
that message?

When did Daniel arrive in the group? He could have come up with the idea
elsewhere. But I've always suspected that a version of the game has a
much longer history: somewhere I have a copy of a book of games that
dates from the late nineteenth century, I must find it.

--
Laura (emulate St George for email)

[Peter Moylan]

I've just remembered an extra piece of information. The first time I
encountered the word "govende" was in a long thread where the word
"Govende" featured as the Subject. If we find the first posting in that
thread, we can work out who used it and what meaning was attached to it.
It couldn't have meant the cascade itself, because the cascade happened
after the Subject line was chosen.

Once I've finished reading the news and mail I'll shut down my
newsreader and do a Goggle Groups search for "Subject: Govende".

I continue to believe that that sort of cascade was happening a long
time before the name "govende" was applied to it. The "Govende" thread
just happened to be a long example of the phenomenon.

[Helen Lacedaemonian]

On Wednesday, January 14, 2015 at 11:50:13 PM UTC-8, LFS wrote:
> On 14/01/2015 23:56, Helen Lacedaemonian wrote:
> > On Wednesday, January 14, 2015 at 3:05:10 PM UTC-8, Peter Moylan
> > wrote:
> >> On 15/01/15 08:05, Helen Lacedaemonian wrote:
> >>> On Friday, June 21, 1996 at 12:00:00 AM UTC-7, Geoff Butler
> >>> wrote:
> >>
> >> That's the second revival of an ancient thread in a couple of days.
> >> Has somebody's news server suddenly lost its marbles?
> >>
> >
> > No. It stems from an argument in another thread ("pre-eminent").
> >
> > In that thread, a URL was posted that claimed that Daniel McGrath
> > invented the game you call "govende." That is absolutely untrue. He
> > may have liked it, he may have named it, but the inventor was Geoff
> > Butler.
> >
> > I deliberately revived this old thread to show you that this game
> > predated the arrival of Daniel McGrath. The message at the head of
> > the thread, "A virgule is an old keyboard instrument. What's a
> > spinet?" is, to the best of my knowledge, the message that first set
> > out the rules and spawned the game.
> >
> > Best, Helen
> >
>
> Interesting. You have a good memory. Where are the rules "set out" in
> that message?

Hmm, perhaps "demonstrated" would be a better word, wouldn't it?

As I see it, strict rules are as follows:

When responding to a "What's X?" question, you answer with the definition of a similar word (a malapropism), and then follow up with a "What's Y?" question in which Y = a synonym for your elided malapropism.

For example:

> A virgule is an old keyboard instrument. What's a spinet?

gives the definition for "virginal," not "virgule," and then follows up with "spinet," which is a synonym for the unstated "virginal."

It's hard to play by strict rules, and besides, it's fun to bend or break them. But when I'm playing, I try to -- at least occasionally -- observe them. The most amusing cascade threads, in my opinion, contain a mix of responses, some of which follow the rules and some of which don't.

>
> When did Daniel arrive in the group? He could have come up with the idea
> elsewhere. But I've always suspected that a version of the game has a
> much longer history: somewhere I have a copy of a book of games that
> dates from the late nineteenth century, I must find it.

Please let us know if you find anything.

Best,
Helen

[John Varela]

On Thu, 15 Jan 2015 10:05:23 UTC, Peter Moylan <pe...@pmoylan.org>
wrote:

I guess I must have come in late; my impression was always that
Govende was a word that Daniel had invented and fixated on, and that
it was meaningless.

--
John Varela

[Peter Moylan]

On 15/01/15 21:05, Peter Moylan wrote:

> I've just remembered an extra piece of information. The first time I
> encountered the word "govende" was in a long thread where the word
> "Govende" featured as the Subject. If we find the first posting in that
> thread, we can work out who used it and what meaning was attached to it.
> It couldn't have meant the cascade itself, because the cascade happened
> after the Subject line was chosen.

Apparently I've lost my googling ability. A GG search found a short
segment of the thread for me, numbering about a dozen messages. I am
quite certain the thread went for hundreds of messages. Anyway, the very
first message starts with an "XXX wrote" line, implying that there was
at least one preceding message.

Is there any way in GG to find an entire thread, once you've found a
fragment of it? It should be possible from the References in the header,
but tracing predecessors one at a time in such a long thread would take
forever. Tracing successors of the last message in the fragment would
take even longer. What we need is a search engine.

[snide...@gmail.com]

GG has trouble with threads with more than 1000 posts, and splinters them off at various times. You found one of the splinters; it may be the same splinter
that either I or Helen has posted links to.

Looking a little farther in /my/ search results, I find what may be the
the first post in that thread:

<URL:https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.usage.english/OvQe7YGCrGw/WOudDzMKCDkJ>
by David Smith in mid-June 1996. And of course, this is only the staight-line
that set things up for the players.

GG says that thread had 2372 posts by 184 authors, which it needs 95 pages to
present.

Markus Laker mentions "something ending in "gry", which may have been part of
what got Daniel involved (eventually).

The game got going on the 20th, and lasted into September.

Geoff Butler's post (Helen linked to it) is on page 2,
but above it is Anne Cheilek's post
<URL:https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.usage.english/OvQe7YGCrGw/u29-Xwrhi6gJ>
which may or may not be a previous move in the game.

/dps

[Peter Moylan]

On 16/01/15 18:37, snide...@gmail.com wrote:

> GG has trouble with threads with more than 1000 posts, and splinters them off at various times. You found one of the splinters; it may be the same splinter
> that either I or Helen has posted links to.
>
> Looking a little farther in /my/ search results, I find what may be the
> the first post in that thread:
>
> <URL:https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.usage.english/OvQe7YGCrGw/WOudDzMKCDkJ>
> by David Smith in mid-June 1996. And of course, this is only the staight-line
> that set things up for the players.

Thanks. I'll try to remember to look that one up tomorrow.

> Markus Laker mentions "something ending in "gry", which may have been part of
> what got Daniel involved (eventually).

"Gry" came from a riddle back in the distant past of AUE. Somebody posed
the problem: There are three words ending in -gry in the English
language. Two of them are hungry and angry. What is the the third word?

The traditional answer to that riddle is apparently "language", because
it is the third word in "the English language". But of course, this
being AUE, people responded with a whole lot of other words ending in
-gry. This became a standing joke for a while.

[Peter T. Daniels]

Of course. When you do a search, you click on the message you want, and it
takes you to the message in its thread. The whole thread. Obviously whole
threads are available, because whole threads from 1995 have been showing up
recently when newbies have been trolling and insist on replaing to a 20-year-
old question.

[Janet]

In article <m9aa6f$rj5$1...@dont-email.me>, pe...@pmoylan.org says...

> Apparently I've lost my googling ability. A GG search found a short
> segment of the thread for me, numbering about a dozen messages. I am
> quite certain the thread went for hundreds of messages. Anyway, the very
> first message starts with an "XXX wrote" line, implying that there was
> at least one preceding message.

Many usenet posters decline (by an automated request) to have their
posts permanently archived by google groups. Google groups shows their
posts for a limited number of days then deletes the originals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-No-Archive

> Is there any way in GG to find an entire thread, once you've found a
> fragment of it?

No, on google's archive you'll only find the edited version, missing
any original posts deleted by author request.

However, you may find copies of deleted posts hidden inside the
archived, quoted replies of other participants.

Janet

[Helen Lacedaemonian]

As I see it, her post may have contributed to the thought process that inspired the game, but it was Geoff Butler's post that exhibited the intuitive leap.

Best,
Helen

[snide...@gmail.com]

On Friday, January 16, 2015 at 8:53:19 AM UTC-8, Helen Lacedaemonian wrote:

> On Thursday-ish, snide...@gmail.com wrote:

> > Geoff Butler's post (Helen linked to it) is on page 2,
> > but above it is Anne Cheilek's post
> > <URL:https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.usage.english/OvQe7YGCrGw/u29-Xwrhi6gJ>
> > which may or may not be a previous move in the game.
>
> As I see it, her post may have contributed to the thought process that
> inspired the game, but it was Geoff Butler's post that exhibited the
> intuitive leap.

That assumes that no other [earlier] thread exhibited the same game play,
which I think is too strong a statement for us to make without further
research.

Nick Spalding kept a complete archive of AUE, and I think he was efficient
in his ability to search it. I'm not sure anybody still standing has half the
archive, and the ability to search local copies doesn't seem very robust
among the current posters. My own archives (which aren't very complete,
and have a big gap between 1990 and 1997)
are waiting my spending time writing scripts to support better search
than Windows Explorer affords.

/dps


and

[Helen Lacedaemonian]

On Friday, January 16, 2015 at 10:50:22 AM UTC-8, snide...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Friday, January 16, 2015 at 8:53:19 AM UTC-8, Helen Lacedaemonian wrote:
> > On Thursday-ish, snide...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> > > Geoff Butler's post (Helen linked to it) is on page 2,
> > > but above it is Anne Cheilek's post
> > > <URL:https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.usage.english/OvQe7YGCrGw/u29-Xwrhi6gJ>
> > > which may or may not be a previous move in the game.
> >
> > As I see it, her post may have contributed to the thought process that
> > inspired the game, but it was Geoff Butler's post that exhibited the
> > intuitive leap.
>
> That assumes that no other [earlier] thread exhibited the same game play,
> which I think is too strong a statement for us to make without further
> research.

Agreed.

Best,
Helen

[Peter Moylan]

Note many people specify X-No-Archive. You're suggesting, I guess, that
it would take only one frequent contributor to a long thread to break
that thread into lots of little subthreads.

That still doesn't explain why a GG search on "Subject:" didn't find the
other fragments.

[Peter Moylan]

Apparently I have the wrong kind of mouse. Or perhaps I'm not clicking
forcefully enough.

[Peter Moylan]

On 17/01/15 12:40, Peter Moylan wrote:

> Note many people specify X-No-Archive.

That "note" was supposed to be "not". Somehow I've said the opposite of
what I intended to say.

[snide...@gmail.com]

Are you putting the search terms into the default search box
at the top of the page or are you using the tic mark to grab the form?
I recommend the latter.

/dps

[Peter Moylan]

I'm using the drop-down search box. In the "Subject" field I put
"Govende", because I recall that that was the subject line for that very
long cascade.

I think I've found the correct thread. The first message is by Andy
Macklin in response to Mimi Kahn. Mimi's message is not shown. According
to GG, that thread has 15 messages.

Ah, wait, I've found it. 1761 posts. I'm not sure why this didn't show
up on my previous searches. (It looks as if you get more results if you
repeat a search.) I've forgotten how to do a tree view on GG, so I don't
know whether this is just main thread or it includes subthreads.

The first poster is an obvious alias for Daniel McGrath, asking "What is
Govende?" It's dated 3/22/97, which is obviously mm/dd/yy format. He had
previously posed that question several times, but without getting an
answer. This time Aaron Dinkin responds with

[This might not be a literal quote; I have to copy it off another
computer, so I'm moving between desks.]

<quote>

@-THREAD WARNING!!

I apologise to everyone, but this is too good to let pass.

A govende is a French peasant dance in 4/4 time. What's a minuet?

</quote>

and then of course many other people follow up. So it's Daniel who
invented the word, but Aaron was the first to use it in this game.

The "@-THREAD WARNING" is obvious a reference to an earlier similar
thread, and I think someone (snidely?) identified that thread a couple
of days ago. Actually, it might be this very thread that someone revived.

I can't find that original thread [but see below]. I discovered that the
Subject line was 'Name for "@"', but a search for that again finds
non-relevant short threads (most of which don't have that as a Subject;
I don't know how to tell GG "search only for what I've specified"). What
I did find was a Bob Cunningham posting with Subject=History of 'Name
for "@" frenzy, dated 1/28/97 and talking about a thread that started on
19 Jun 1996.

But now I have to correct myself. While I've been jumping between
computers it appears that GG has been continuing the search. The trick,
it seems, for doing such a search is to start it, and come back half an
hour later to see what it's found. This is why my searches of a couple
of days ago didn't succeed; I failed to take a coffee break.

So now I've found the original thread. It starts on 6/16/96 with David
Smith (I don't remember him, so not a regular) asking for the name of
"@". The first few responses are conventional, and then it looks as if
Jennie Robinson was the first one to start the game, with follow-ups by
Aaron Dinkin and then Geoff Butler. Geoff appears to have been the first
one (elsewhere in the thread) to say that the name for "@" is "atgry".

What I still don't know is whether there were earlier instances of the
game before the 'Name for "at"' thread.

[Janet]

In article <m9cehp$r4q$1...@dont-email.me>, pe...@pmoylan.org says...

>
> On 17/01/15 02:28, Janet wrote:
> > In article <m9aa6f$rj5$1...@dont-email.me>, pe...@pmoylan.org says...
> >
> >> Apparently I've lost my googling ability. A GG search found a short
> >> segment of the thread for me, numbering about a dozen messages. I am
> >> quite certain the thread went for hundreds of messages. Anyway, the very
> >> first message starts with an "XXX wrote" line, implying that there was
> >> at least one preceding message.
> >
> > Many usenet posters decline (by an automated request) to have their
> > posts permanently archived by google groups. Google groups shows their
> > posts for a limited number of days then deletes the originals.
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-No-Archive
> >
> >> Is there any way in GG to find an entire thread, once you've found a
> >> fragment of it?
> >
> > No, on google's archive you'll only find the edited version, missing
> > any original posts deleted by author request.
> >
> > However, you may find copies of deleted posts hidden inside the
> > archived, quoted replies of other participants.
>
> Note many people specify X-No-Archive. You're suggesting, I guess, that
> it would take only one frequent contributor to a long thread to break
> that thread into lots of little subthreads.

No, I'm not suggesting use of X-No archive breaks or separates
archived threads into subthreads. It remains the same thread with gaps
in it.



Janet.

[Janet]

In article <m9cg3k$upv$1...@dont-email.me>, pe...@pmoylan.org says...

>
> On 17/01/15 12:40, Peter Moylan wrote:
>
> > Note many people specify X-No-Archive.
>
> That "note" was supposed to be "not". Somehow I've said the opposite of
> what I intended to say.

I would agree not many people do today. But 10 or 15 years ago it was
in more common use, iirc, affecting searches in older parts of google
groups archive.

Janet

[Snidely]

Peter Moylan blurted out:

> I can't find that original thread [but see below]. I discovered that the
> Subject line was 'Name for "@"', but a search for that again finds
> non-relevant short threads (most of which don't have that as a Subject;
> I don't know how to tell GG "search only for what I've specified").

There is only limited ability to coax GG (or regular Google search) to
be absolutely literal about a phrase search.

Also, the search engines mostly ignore punctuation (with a few
exceptions), so the ape-tail ('@') is either not part of the search or
is a special value that has some meta purpose (perhaps a wild card).
So don't bother putting the '@' in the search terms.

> But now I have to correct myself. While I've been jumping between
> computers it appears that GG has been continuing the search. The trick,
> it seems, for doing such a search is to start it, and come back half an
> hour later to see what it's found. This is why my searches of a couple
> of days ago didn't succeed; I failed to take a coffee break.

The GG search results arrive via ajax, so scrolling to the bottom or
pressing <page down> or <end> repeatedly brings more finds.

>
> What I still don't know is whether there were earlier instances of the
> game before the 'Name for "at"' thread.

And here is where a local copy of the early years of AUE would be so
helpful, with a little Perl or Python scripting to analyze the
historical record. Alas, I don't think we'll have that ever again.

/dps

--
Maybe C282Y is simply one of the hangers-on, a groupie following a
future guitar god of the human genome: an allele with undiscovered
virtuosity, currently soloing in obscurity in Mom's garage.
Bradley Wertheim, theAtlantic.com, Jan 10 2013

[Snidely]

Peter Moylan noted that:

Yes, that's the normal joke. But in September, Daniel responded to
(what is apparently) another "gry" post with

"I know, I know ... govendegry!"

(links are elsethread)

/dps

--
There's nothing inherently wrong with Big Data. What matters, as it
does for Arnold Lund in California or Richard Rothman in Baltimore, are
the questions -- old and new, good and bad -- this newest tool lets us
ask. (R. Lerhman, CSMonitor.com)

[Guy Barry]

"Snidely" wrote in message news:mn.8d807df1bb596378.127094@snitoo...
>
>Peter Moylan noted that:

>> "Gry" came from a riddle back in the distant past of AUE. Somebody posed
>> the problem: There are three words ending in -gry in the English
>> language. Two of them are hungry and angry. What is the the third word?
>>
>> The traditional answer to that riddle is apparently "language", because
>> it is the third word in "the English language". But of course, this
>> being AUE, people responded with a whole lot of other words ending in
>> -gry. This became a standing joke for a while.
>
>Yes, that's the normal joke.

Are you quite sure that that's the usual phrasing of the riddle? However I
read it, I can't get it to yield the trick answer. The version quoted in
the FAQ is:

"Think of words ending in 'gry'. Angry and hungry are two of them.
There are only three words in the English language. What is the
third word? The word is something that everyone uses every day.
If you have listened carefully, I have already told you what it is."

As pointed out there, "A person who doesn't know the trick and asks someone
else to try
the puzzle will almost certainly change the wording, unwittingly
making it insoluble. It appears that one of these changed versions
made it into circulation on phone-in radio shows."

http://alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxwordse.html

--
Guy Barry

[Anders D. Nygaard]

On 16-01-2015 00:40, Helen Lacedaemonian wrote:
> [On the govende game:]

> As I see it, strict rules are as follows:
>
> When responding to a "What's X?" question, you answer with the definition
> of a similar word (a malapropism), and then follow up with a "What's Y?"
> question in which Y = a synonym for your elided malapropism.

Thank you! Being a late arrival in this group,
I've so far been thoroughly puzzled (and whooshed) by the game,
but can now hope to understand and even enjoy it.

> For example:
>> A virgule is an old keyboard instrument. What's a spinet?
> gives the definition for "virginal," not "virgule," and then follows up with "spinet,"
> which is a synonym for the unstated "virginal."
>
> It's hard to play by strict rules, and besides, it's fun to bend or break them.
> But when I'm playing, I try to -- at least occasionally -- observe them.
> The most amusing cascade threads, in my opinion, contain a mix of
responses,
> some of which follow the rules and some of which don't.

Duly noted.

/Anders, Denmark.

[Peter Moylan]

Mea culpa. I do know the trick, and still managed to write a screwed-up
version.

[CDB]

On 15/01/2015 6:40 PM, Helen Lacedaemonian wrote:
> LFS wrote:
>> Helen Lacedaemonian wrote:

[govende]

>>> I deliberately revived this old thread to show you that this
>>> game predated the arrival of Daniel McGrath. The message at the
>>> head of the thread, "A virgule is an old keyboard instrument.
>>> What's a spinet?" is, to the best of my knowledge, the message
>>> that first set out the rules and spawned the game.

>> Interesting. You have a good memory. Where are the rules "set out"
>> in that message?

> Hmm, perhaps "demonstrated" would be a better word, wouldn't it?

> As I see it, strict rules are as follows:

> When responding to a "What's X?" question, you answer with the
> definition of a similar word (a malapropism), and then follow up with
> a "What's Y?" question in which Y = a synonym for your elided
> malapropism.

> For example:
>> A virgule is an old keyboard instrument. What's a spinet?
> gives the definition for "virginal," not "virgule," and then follows
> up with "spinet," which is a synonym for the unstated "virginal."

> It's hard to play by strict rules, and besides, it's fun to bend or
> break them. But when I'm playing, I try to -- at least occasionally
> -- observe them. The most amusing cascade threads, in my opinion,
> contain a mix of responses, some of which follow the rules and some
> of which don't.

As you say, but I think the rule itself could be a little looser: "Y is
a word or phrase associated, often by a process of lateral thinking,
with some aspect of the answer, or even of the malapropism."

As in these examples, all partly mine (sorry, but I remember them better):

What's "presume"? Kicking the tires on a Mazda. What's a rikishi?
(That evokes "rickshaw", noting in passing that that word is associated
with Japan and comes from (Chinese) words meaning "power wheel" (the
absent "jin" being "human"), but is, more directly, someone in the lower
grades of Sumo wrestling, harking back to "pre-Sume", maybe because
Mazda's "zoomzoom" is spelled with a "z'.)

What's ringworm? Fenrir's smoother brother (the world-girdling
serpent). What's sauce for the gander? (The serpent's name was
Jormagandr, and it was set to drip poison on Loki's head to punish him
for compassing the death of Baldur.)

What's a rhino? Just one Cameron, maybe (the name means "twisted
nose"). What's puirt a beul (mouth-music; the only other common
clan-name recalling something twisted is Campbell, "twisted mouth".

I don't think of those as breaking the rules, exactly.

[Helen Lacedaemonian]

I thought your responses were funny and very clever. But if you write the rules too loosely, then some responses get more and more nebulous, and eventually it becomes impossible for newcomers to understand the game. Perhaps the rules could be written more comprehensively? To include both synonyms and words related in some way to the elided malapropism?

Best,
Helen