Thursday, June 30, 2005
Stranger Words — a Weekend with the OED?
Only in Seattle: The weekly news rag The Stranger held a contest to see who could come up with the most words that could be a noun, a verb, and an adjective, without any change in spelling. The winner, Dan Landes, came up with 314 words; second place finisher Karyna McGlynn found 243, 50 of which weren't on Landes' list. For those who care, here is "triple threat" noun-verb-adjective list:
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8 comments:
Oh, Peter, this list is a sestina series waiting to happen.
Sestina words: great idea!
I bet you like Scrabble!
Have you read Word Freak by Stephen Fatsis, or seen the documentary Word Wars?
Oh I *heart* Scrabble. And yes, the Fatsis book was wonderful. Did you see the documentary Word Wars??
I have seen it, and enjoyed. It's very much a visual version of _Word Freak_, (Fatsis is featured in the flim.) You get to see the wonderful kooks Fatsis wrote of:
Joe Edley, Matt Graham, Marlon Hill, Joel Sherman, and others. It really captures the obsessive element of Scrabble.
There's another Scrabble documentary called Scrabylon. It came out in 2003, but I haven't seen it yet.
I am drawn to accounts of obsession, probably because I tend toward obsessive.
Scrabble was a huge obsession for awhile. I think the best online site for playing Scrabble is:
http://www.isc.ro/
Best poem about Scrabble?
David Wojahn's "Scrabble with Matthews"
http://www.poetrymagazine.org/magazine/1002/poem_30900.html
Okay, now I've gotten carried away....
I loved "Scrabble With Matthews." I think it was in Poetry a few years ago: about DW and WM being stuck in the airport and playing a killer game. But my friend Sharon B, who used to be Matthew's significant other, says he wasn't a scrabble player! So who knows what is real.
I've heard your friend Sharon read before (here in Murray, Kentucky, about 18 years ago) and have her books. She's a wonderful poet. That evening, we had a good conversation about poetry, the KingDome, and David Thompson after the reading. Or at least she talked and I rasped--I had laryngitis that evening. I've written that David Thompson poem I promised her I'd write (finally after 18 years). You're fortunate to have her as a friend.
hehe =)
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