3668 🏆 AMADAN

[Paul Keating]

Tony Abell, Johnny Barrs, Judy Madnick, Efrem Mallach and Shani Naylor all proved that they are not amadáin, and voted for #4, the dictionary definition.

The top player score was 4, and there was a 5-way tie for top spot: Debbie Embler, Eric Boxer, Dan Widdis, Nancy Shepherdson and Judy Madnick. Debbie just edges out Eric in the rolling scores and takes the deal of the new round. Judy had a higher rolling score than either, but her 4 points is not a natural score: 2 guess points and 2 dealer points.

You were offered only ten definitions to vote for, but you will see twelve in the results below. Of the other two, I dropped one, and the other went unaccountably missing. So dealer points go to Judy Madnick and Tim Lodge: more on that below.

1	A leprechaun active in hot weather.
	Vote from Shani Naylor
	Submitted by: Johnny Barrs, who voted for 3, 4. Score: 1+2=3*.
2	The state of a planet when viewed from Earth that is 60 degrees from the Sun.
	No votes
	Submitted by: Tony Abell, who voted for 3, 4. Score: 0+2=2*.
3	A well-meaning person whose advice reliably makes a simple matter more difficult.
	Votes from Tony Abell, Johnny Barrs, Judy Madnick, Mike Shefler
	Submitted by: Dan Widdis, who voted for 6, 8. Score: 4.
4	A foolish or stupid person.
	Votes from Tony Abell, Johnny Barrs, Judy Madnick, Efrem Mallach, Shani Naylor
	Real Definition. Score: D5.
5	A traditional wooden boat in the Middle East, used to ferry people across rivers.
	Vote from Debbie Embler
	Submitted by: Shani Naylor, who voted for 1, 4. Score: 1+2=3*.
6	Lacking pressure; permissive.
	Votes from Tim Bourne, Eric Boxer, Nancy Shepherdson, Dan Widdis
	Submitted by: Debbie Embler, who voted for 5, 8. Score: 4.
7	The poisonous fruit of a flowering plant _(Calotropis procera)_ native to the Arabian peninsula and other parts of East Asia, also known as apple of Sodom.
	No votes
	Submitted by: Mike Shefler, who voted for 3, 10.
8	An alchemist’s bag.
	Votes from Tim Bourne, Eric Boxer, Debbie Embler, Dan Widdis
	Submitted by: Nancy Shepherdson, who voted for 6, 10. Score: 4.
9	In Jainism, the concept of an eternal genderless soul as elucidated by Mahavira (599-527 BCE).
	Vote from Tim Lodge
	Submitted by: Efrem Mallach, who voted for 4, 10. Score: 1+2=3*.
10	The repetition of a word to resume speech.
	Votes from Tim Lodge, Efrem Mallach, Mike Shefler, Nancy Shepherdson
	Submitted by: Eric Boxer, who voted for 6, 8. Score: 4.
11	A word in a foreign language that appears to be similar to a word in one's own language but has a completely different meaning.
	Definition lost by dealer. 2 dealer points.
	Submitted by: Tim Lodge, who voted for 9, 10. Score: 2*.
12	A coarse woolen wrap worn over the shoulders in cold weather.
	Definition apparently lost in transit. 2 dealer points.
	Submitted by: Judy Madnick, who voted for 3, 4. Score: 0+2+2=4*.
–	No definition
	No definition from Tim Bourne, who voted for 6, 8.

Def no	Player	Voted for	Votes from	Score from votes	Correct guess	DP	Total
6	Embler	5, 8	Bourne, Boxer, Shepherdson, Widdis	4			4
10	Boxer	6, 8	Lodge, Mallach, Shefler, Shepherdson	4			4
3	Widdis	6, 8	Abell, Barrs, Madnick, Shefler	4			4
8	Shepherdson	6, 10	Bourne, Boxer, Embler, Widdis	4			4
9	Mallach	4, 10	Lodge	1	2		3
1	Barrs	3, 4	Naylor	1	2		3
5	Naylor	1, 4	Embler	1	2		3
12	Madnick	3, 4			2	2	4
2	Abell	3, 4			2		2
11	Lodge	9, 10				2	2
No definition	Bourne	6, 8
7	Shefler	3, 10

I chose the word because recently, a player asked me “If I find a word which has two spellings and one of them has been used, can I use the other spelling as a word in the game?” My response was that the used-word rule was never cast in a form more permanent than a bunch of CompuServe forum posts, and so is now irrevocably lost: we’ll just remember. (Yeah, right.) So we have no way to tell for sure if the intent was to include variant spellings. That, I said, was why the player did not know, and why I did not, either.

I did say that (depending on how different the spellings were), doing it might run the risk of a used-word objection, as in Round 3564, or a swath of DQs; and so one might choose to avoid doing it, but that was the player’s choice. 

Amadan appeared in the OED for the first time in 2021, as part of an ongoing initiative to give solid coverage to ordinary words unique to Anglophone speech communities outside Britain and North America. I did not recognize it, and I thought it might make a good word. I looked it up in the similarity checker. It returned omadawn. I did not recognize that either.

So I went back to Round 1861, which was dealt by founder player Toni Savage (1945–2016). I was not surprised to find that the real definition for omadawn in that round was a match for amadan. But I was surprised to discover that in that round Toni combined my fake definition “a fool” with the real one. So, 20 years ago, it was a word I at least kind of remembered from my childhood in Dublin, though 40 years later I did not consciously recognize it, and thought I had at best a plausible fake. And by this year, I had completely forgotten it. Again. 

I also discovered that the OED has a 1902 entry for omadhaun in much the same sense. I would have expected the OED3 to merge them. But it hasn’t. I suspect that is for pragmatic reasons, and may still happen.

The reason for the two forms is that contemporary Irish writers spell the word as in Irish, amadán, often with the accent; while the form omadhaun in the older entry approximates (along with a dozen other spellings) Irish English pronunciation for a British readership.

This seemed a perfect opportunity to take my own advice about choosing variant spellings of words already in the used-word list: in investment banking that is called eating your own dogfood. 

No-one objected to the doublet and there were no DQs. So that experiment worked well. 

I wish I could say that for the conduct of the round as a whole. Judy’s definition disappeared in transit, and Tim’s fell into the alt-tab between mail client and spreadsheet. Spreadsheets are good at many things, but workflow isn’t one of them.

The last time I dropped a definition of Tim’s was in Round 3172, and at the time I promised that I would one day produce a successor to Coryphæus, which I reckon is the only way to fix the workflow issue. Shoring up my spreadsheet, which I did after another such incident (Round 3353) hasn’t done the trick. And if you look closely at the signature block of my recent round announcements you will see work in that direction has begun.

After Nancy’s definition went unaccountably missing in Round 3370, I set up automated acknowledgements for definitions. That hasn’t had the desired effect. Judy was too busy to notice whether she received an acknowledgement, I was too busy to issue a progress report, and so we only discovered that her definition had gone missing when I made the call for votes. Not even a specially-written application is going to fix that.

--

Paul Keating

Soustons, Nouvelle Aquitaine, France

[France International/Mike Shefler]

It would have been ironic if Judy had won the deal without having a def.

--Mike

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[Judy Madnick]

Fortunately, that didn't happen. 🥰

Judy

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[Paul Keating]

Yes, and it looked like that might happen. I must admit I heaved a sigh of relief when the votes put me off the hook.

P

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Paul Keating

Soustons, Nouvelle Aquitaine, France

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