Re: [announce] Invented Languages magazine

On Sat, 31 May 2008 02:06:54 -0400, ROGER MILLS wrote:
>David Peterson wrote:
>>
>>Call it blasphemy, but I am more impressed by someone who
>>can put together a functional, New York Times-style crossword
>>puzzle than by someone who creates a language.  I have tried,
>>on occasion, to produce a crossword puzzle.  Not in a conlang,
>>or a second language, mind you, but in English--my home court,
>>as it were.
>
>A friend and I tried on several occasions (we also used to race to see who
>could finish the Sunday NYT puzzle fastest :-))) and could only at best make
>one corner or so. Very discouraging,
Yeah, making one is a few magnitudes more of a puzzle than solving one.
Especially if wishing to avoid common "cop-out" words. I've tried too -
usually I get about 80% done before one edge comes to a complete halt.
(Perhaps Finnish is an easier language to work with than English, even
despite the on average longer words, due to a smaller number of graphemes in
use.)


>though somehow we avoided the
>"11-letter word ending in -ec" problem...:-) (But there's IIRC "malbec" a
>grape variety, and how about "Spanish brandy distiller" ans. Domecq)
A search on OneLook.com for "?????????ec" produces two results, both
geographical locations in Mexico… Just one letter short is "megaparsec", and
so obviously using a longer SI prefix, eg. "femtoparsec" (30.86 meters)
would work. Allowing further letters by "?????????ec*", there's 81 results,
including "chimneypiece", "transdialect", "countercheck" and
"sphincterectomy". :)


>Next step-- a London Times type puzzle, with cryptic clues. Ouch.  The
>Harvard Alum. Magazine used to have a very challenging puzzle of that type,
>which usually took me a week or 10 days to solve, if ever-- but it was
>discontinued years ago.
Tried those too, both solving (with good success & fun) and making (less so)…

John Vertical