License Plate Game

A good twist on the normal license plate game, for Wordies, is - rather than punching each other for out-of-state plates - to make words out of the letters that comprise the license plates of passing vehicles.  Here are the rules:

Take the first 3 consecutive letters appearing on a plate and use them in the same order to form a word.  For example, if the plate reads 3CN RL4, then "canary" would be a valid response, because it contains the letters C, N, and R in order.  "Corn" would not be acceptable because, while it contains all 3 letters, they are not in the correct order.  Likewise, "normal" would not work either, because you are restricted to only the first three consecutive letters appearing on the plate.

Not all plates contain 3 consecutive letters, so the restriction that they must be consecutive may be loosened if desired.  Therefore, a plate like 4B3 R7Y could work, yielding "liBRarY," with the pertinent letters bolded.

Usually I play under a time constraint - 30 seconds or a minute, for example - whereby once a plate and its letters are identified, all contestants have to come up with a word within the allotted time.  The person who comes up with the longest word is the winner.  You could also play where the shortest word wins, rewarding whoever can do more with less.  Or you could volley the letters back and forth until someone is stumped for a longer response.  For the letters, C, N, and R from the example above, the volley could proceed as follows:
Player 1) CaNaRy        (6 letters)
Player 2) CorNeRs      (7 letters)
Player 1) CaNaRies      (8 letters)
Player 2) CaNceRous   (9 letters),
at which point, Player 1 might be stumped to return the volley and Player 2 would win the round.  Usually it's best to start using plurals or words ending in -ed or -ing if you're playing for the longest word.  Volleys usually don't last more than one round, just because each player probably used the longest word they could think of right out of the gate.  But it does give each player a little longer to think and challenge each other.

I wrote up an Excel formula to spit out 3 random letters for playing in bed.  Katie and I played a best of 7 the other night with the following results.  (Don't judge us):

ODE       Katie - Odometer       Jared - Encoded              Katie 1 - Jared 0
RLG                   Rolling                       Relishing              Katie 1 - Jared 1
JSY                                                   Jerseys                 Katie 1 - Jared 2
TJV
EJL                      Ejaculated                Rejailed               Katie 2 - Jared 2
MCL                                                    Immaculate          Katie 2 - Jared 3
MXN                                                    Maximization        Katie 2 - Jared 4

Yes, while I was eventually crowned the champion, I was beaten in Round 5 of my own game by ejaculated.

Height Versus Heighth

I became tongue-tied a couple days ago and couldn't decide which was best to use in a given situation, so I did a little research. 

Always use "height."  Never use "heighth."  It's not a word.  Or, at best, it's a non-standard spelling of "height," and not a word in it's own right.

Boom.  Blog entry complete.

How many ways to skin a coypu?

They say English is one of the most difficult languages to master.

Here is a big reason why.

There are at least 24 different word-endings that rhyme with blue.  TWENTY-FOUR.  In a perfectly phonetic language, where everything made sense and was easily readable from the sounds each letter is supposed to make, there would be 1 way to end a word so that it rhymed with blue.  How telling children to sound out words works is beyond me.

The most popular way to end a word so that it rhymes with blue is... drumroll... simply ending it with "u."  Words like "emu," "impromptu," and "menu" all end this way (as well as 78 others).  A lot of the others were words unknown to me before I began this study, many of them being imports from China or Japan, like "sudoku" or "nunchaku."

The second most common way to end a word so that it rhymes with blue is with "ew."  Eschew, curfew, and screw (while perhaps not good advice to teenagers) are 3 words that exemplify this trait.  74 words that rhyme with blue end in "ew."  Though slightly less plentiful, many more of these words are familiar, everyday words than those than end in "u."  There are still some obscure examples here too, though, like "plew," which is a beaver skin of prime quality.

Coming in at 3rd and 4th place, we have "oo" and "ue," respectively garnering 68 and 64 tallies in the rhymes-with-blue column.  After that, things slow down considerably, with the next 2 places ("o" and "ou") having markedly reduced numbers of representatives at 28 and 21.  From there, "iew" and "oe" each field 10 team members to join the blue-rhyme team.  Mostly consisting of words ending in "view" or "shoe," canoe is the lone standout among these words.

After that, "ough," "eu," "ieu," "out," "ooh" and "oup" all have multiple members.  Examples include: through, leu, milieu, ragout, pooh, and beaucoup.

Then, we have the lonelies.  The guys who try to get set up on blind dates on Valentines only to be stood up.  These are the guys who have only 1 member in their club.  There are 10 such clubs with only 1 member.  They are the "ault," "ewe," "iu," "oue," "ous," "oux," "ueue," "ugh," "ut" and "uu" groups.  For posterity's sake, I'll include their names here:
Sault (meaning a waterfall or rapid)
Ewe
Piu (a musical term meaning more)
Moue (a pouting grimace)
Rendezvous
Roux (a cooked mixture of butter and fat, used to thicken sauces)
Queue
Pugh (interjection used to display disgust)
Debut
Muumuu

So, there you have it.  All the possible ways to end a word and still have it rhyme with blue.  There are at least 387 different words that fit this description and all of them are used in a little story I wrote, which you can read here.  This story has been called "harrowing, riveting, and an edge-of-your-seat thrillride."  Ok, so it has been called none of those things, but it did make one girl laugh so hard milk came out of her nose.

There will be more discussion and analysis of this story in the days ahead for you to look forward to.  I suggest holding your breath in anticipation.  Though I offer you, as usual, a chance to take a vocab quiz and let Dictionary.com estimate the number of words you know.  Your can wet your feet and whet your appetite by letting this quiz be your first: Blue Rhyming Quiz

And now, I bid you adieu.