1. I am sure that you are capable to infer yourself the rules of the game played here. It is simple. Someone puts here a list of ten difficult words and then someone else or the same person completes a sentence using these words and publishes it. The shortest sensible sentence wins the round (we count the words separated by spaces).
2. To play the game you have to complete your own sentence or post here some list of ten difficult words as a challenge for the other people and yourself. A proofreading or editing of the sentences published by someone else may be a nice occupation but it is not an autonomous participation in the game. Shortening or correcting the other people’s sentences you improve their results. Doing that you are joining someone else’s team in that particular round.
3. You may play any past round of the game at any time. It is easy. Just try to complete a sentence with the words from this particular list which is shorter than the shortest sentence published here by someone else so far.
4. Do not publish here your own lists of the words. These should be the lists of the words collected by some notable website such as
http://www.merriam-webster.com. It is easy to cheat finding some difficult and compact sentence, extracting the words from it, putting them here as a list, and then publishing a ready-made sentence as your own. We do not cheat here!
5. The sentence such as:
I don’t know what “defenestration”, “serendipity”, “onomatopoeia”, “discombobulate”, “plethora”, “callipygian”, “juxtapose”, “persnickety”, “kerfuffle”, and “flibbertigibbet” mean.
counts just 16 words but it is not a winner. Such sentences break the rules so they will be ignored.
6. I remind you that these
ten words should be
difficult and
different so the list of the words such as the following is not valid at all (I am sorry!):
● the
● quick
● brown
● fox
● jumps
● over
● the
● lazy
● dog
7. When you start to play some round put into your post the number of the round and the link to the used list of the words (for example: “Round #1;
List by doctorow”). When you continue some round put the number of the round, the link to the list, and the link to the previously winning sentence with the number of the words (for example: “Round #1;
List by doctorow;
Best: 29 words”).
8. “Verbal Dueling” means that we fight the duels with our sentences and the author of the shortest sensible sentence wins the round. Everyone can publish his or her sentence and everyone can publish some list of the words found in Internet – together with a working link. Do not publish the next list of the words here before at least one person completes and publishes the sentence made up out of the words from the previous list.
So I am inviting you to my game...
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The following updated rule was added December 18, 2013:
9. When two different sentences completed in the same round count the same number of the words the winning one is the sentence in which the order of the keywords is closer to its order on the original list. To determine that it is enough to count “the sentence’s coefficient”.
For example the sentence from the
post #3:
A plethora (5) of flibbertigibbet’s (10) juxtaposing (7) and persnickety (8) kerfuffle (9) discombobulated (4) me so ample that I defenestrated (1) him so his callipygian (6) posterior attained the thoroughfare by serendipity (2) with an uproarious onomatopoeia (3).
has the coefficient:
5/1 + 10/2 + 7/3 + 8/4 + 9/5 + 4/6 + 1/7 + 6/8 + 2/9 + 3/10 ≈ 18.215
while the hypothetical sentence with the same order of the keywords as its order on the original list has the coefficient:
1/1 + 2/2 + 3/3 + 4/4 + 5/5 + 6/6 + 7/7 + 8/8 + 9/9 + 10/10 = 10.000
and it wins the contest because the sentence’s coefficient equal 10.000 is the lowest one.
For the comparison the sentence with the reverse order of the keywords has the coefficient:
10/1 + 9/2 + 8/3 + 7/4 + 6/5 + 5/6 + 4/7 + 3/8 + 2/9 + 1/10 ≈ 22.218
and it is the worst one because the sentence’s coefficient equal 22.218 is the highest one.
Two substantially different sentences with the same number of the words and with the same coefficients are equally good. The term “substantially different” means that these sentences have different meanings because when the meaning, the number of the words, and the coefficients are the same in the case of some two sentences the latter is merely a slight modification of the former so it is a plagiarism in the worst case or a reinvention in the best one.
The following updated rule was added December 22, 2013:
10. It is not necessary at all but it is nice to put below your cryptic completed sentence its translation in plain English.
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I wait at least three days (at least 72 hours) after I publish the list of the words and before I publish my completed sentence. It is only me. You may publish a found list of the words and then your completed sentence without any delay.