A word puzzle from a newbie

[stripey7]

Forgive me if this is either too easy or too difficult. I'm new at
this.

A sentence has the following form: "You're my _ _, _ _ _ _ _." Each
underscore represents a word. The letters of one word after the comma
form an abbreviation for the words before the comma, while the
remainder are all the same letters, in the same numbers and the same
order, as the first word before the comma. The phrase preceding the
comma is listed in the American Heritage Dictionary of the English
Language.

I originally posted this on my blog but decided to publish it here too
and extend the deadline. If you have the solution, make sure I see it
by posting it to Gondwanaland at stripey7 dot blogspot dot com.

Eric Hamell

[ken]

t
h
i
s

m
a
y
b
e

a

s
p
o
i
l
e
r

o
r

m
a
y
b
e

n
o
t

I'm your significant other, so sign if I can't.

-ken

[Mark P]

Nit: "You're my..."
But more to the point, how did you ever solve this?

[ken]

On Sep 26, 3:47 am, Mark P <use...@fall2005REMOVE.fastmailCAPS.fm>
wrote:

I'm not being coy but I don't really know, I wasn't even clear on what
the rules were. After a few days I looked at it again (maybe the
Midnight Shift in the brain had been working on it), I saw that the
first word must be a long word and that's the first one I thought of
(and I do remember looking twice at the reference to American
Dictionary and thinking it might be one of their peculiar
constructions). I was amazed when it broke into words, and the
abbreviation, and it made sense. And like you I immediately thought
"How did I get that?"
In other words it was a fluke.
-ken

[stripey7]

Ken,

Yep, you got it. Feel free to post your answer on my blog at
stripey7.blogspot.com.

Eric Hamell

> -ken- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Dan Tilque]

"Mark P" <use...@fall2005REMOVE.fastmailCAPS.fm> wrote in message
news:hRbKi.668$4V6...@newssvr14.news.prodigy.net...

> Nit: "You're my..."
> But more to the point, how did you ever solve this?

I just now read this thread, but I didn't find the puzzle at all hard.
In fact, the answer came to me before I'd even finished reading the OP.
Not sure I can reconstruct my thinking, though.

Am I unusual in this? Did anyone else get it that quickly, but not post?

--
Dan Tilque