...enable us to accomplish all of our OBJECTIVES ELECTRONICALLY

ERIE NERD (the brilliant but socially inept one from the University of Buffalo)

ERIE NERD

Just what you need in snow country, a reindeer!

and a little sheep -
gave bleet

"...
It's a scheme of devices
To get at low prices
All goods from cough mixtures to cables
(Which tickled the sailors)
By treating retailers
As though they were all vegetables
..."

ENIGMATRH

When you're lying awake
With a dismal headache
And repose is tabooed by anxiety,
I conceive you may use
Any language you choose
To indulge in, without ...

... ..... PRIMEROPITY ?

Impropriety

Please, Hab and jerry, don't make me limerick my answers! If so, I will be in need of -

cousinistreat

There once was a man who was Haitian,
In need of some resuscitation.
They gave mouth-to-mouth,
So he wouldn't go south.
But, he was in love, not a patient!

Sere loves Fuller's 1845! CHUG BEER, SERE

cheeseburger

Yum!
How long has Ol' Blue Eyes been gone?

sinatra afar

I am working on it...all those "a's!"

Kalleh,

Think Jamaica

is that RASTAFARIAN ?

NAPSHTER

Could it be panthers?


BOLD SLUG

Oh, Hab, I am so jealous. How did you get that?!

Bulldogs Yale's?

Scorn mi Don't really!

crimson... and clover?

I am always full of

a tennis moths at what you wordcrafters do!

Astonishment

SINOCEPINT

INSPECTION

(KHC - it wasn't limericks, it was "The Nightmare Song," from Gilbert & Sullivan's Iolanthe)

PROTECTIONISN

Gilbert & Sullivan lyrics.. good grief.. what am I up against? I much prefer Rodgers and Hammerstein..

protectionism

I'm foiled again! I've put on the thinking cap, one you would be proud of, and came up with:
septic monitor, mortis entopic, or mitotic person... I don't feel good about any of these. Hint? Or, I'm sure, ol' jerry will jump in to save me.

Oh, KHC, you missed that it had an "n" on the end, not an "m."

CHINCHZEROPIS

I'm of two minds on that last one...

Oh, yes, you got it! Your turn.
Now, I can't let a G&S reference go unheeded. As I have posted here before, I love G&S, and my very favorite song is "I am the Very Model of a Modern Major General." I found these delightful parodies of it online. I particularly liked, "I am the Very Model of a Modern Surgeon General."

Actually, for sheer cleverness and scholarship, I like this one better.

(By chance I was at a Harry Potter Puzzle Party last weekend and Kevin Wald, the author of this little ditty, was there too - to my dismay I didn't find out until the next day. He was apparently on the team in the other room...)

HARPSICHOLS

That was good, Hab! Of course, my favorite parody on this song is the one you posted previously with the elements.

MUCOR HIM No spitting allowed!

CHROMIUM

Principles of Problem Solving part n (n is large):

-- A short-ish difficult word may have a vowel as its first letter.

-- Consider words that don't use Latin elements; Greek ch, ph, ps, rh, th, for example, may provide a camouflaged starting point. There are also other languages whose words we have incorporated.

-- Don't cling to any principle too long. If stuck, take a clean piece of paper, scramble up the letters into a completely new arrangement, and start over form scratch.


Moving on:

SHRITTENPDF (No subtlety here; nothing in particular to do with any of the above tips)

(Daffynition: "shritten," adapted from the German schritten (written). Used anachronistically [see - now THAT would be a word related to the tips above!] by a slightly inebriated Pharaoh in The Ten Commandments - "Thush it is shritten, sho let it be done!")

[This message was edited by haberdasher on Thu Mar 4th, 2004 at 5:49.]

spendthrift with spit

Good tips, Hab!

Halt, Neep!

elephant

lets try

chirosnore, no -
coronerish, no -
horsecorni, no,no wait a second -
coorsinher - yeah, that's it!

Where has KHC been recently????

rhinoceros

CAACA SAID KILL

lackadaisical

HOLY HIPPOS

philosophy

I SWILL DOWN

(what - another beer post ?!)

windowsill

There was no beer in my window! Boo hoo..
That doesn't

SUIT MY EROS

KHC, I was afraid that maybe we had left us!

Ha Ha Cede

Riddle: Can you think of a word has -ADAC- in the middle?
Can't get that one? OK, here's another - think of a word that both begins and ends with the letters HE.
--Douglas R Hofstadter, in Godel, Escher, Bach


TILLFANSREFEREE

I'm working on it....though I am getting a headache!

Hab,
This is excrutiating! Too many letters.. I have a headache too... So far all I have is:

Later feline serf (I guess I would be talking to a cat of mine that actually worked!)

or

Ellen is fart free...

And I don't think either of those is correct..

Hints??

One of the themes of Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach is the answer.

If you've never heard of the book (which is understandable, as it was published in 1979) there's a lovely seven-page review in the July 1979 issue of Scientific American, "Mathematical Games" section. GEB has the dubious distinction of being called the most esoteric book ever to make the NYTimes best-seller list ... and also won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction that year. It's even still in print, and you can read reviews on Amazon.com if you care to, then get it from the library (or the bookstore) if the mood strikes. (I'm a big-time fan, as you can tell.)

PS And yes, "headache" is the answer to both the riddles! Which is what started this whole rant. :-)

I can honestly say that I will never get this one! I have just spent some time in Google reading about Hofstadter's, "Gödel, Escher, Bach," even adding "headache" to the group. No dice. I give.

Hab,
It's 10:30 pm EST, but I'm running to the bookstore for that book.. ! You are messing with my mind.. I love word games and I'm an old math teacher from years ago.. 1979 doesn't sound that far away to me.

I kind of liked Ellen is Fart Free.

nodiarytic

The recurring theme in G-E-B is self-reference.

Godel's "Incompleteness Theorem" explores the difference between Truth and Provability by investigating the contradiction in sentences like "This statement is false".

Escher drew hands drawing each other. He pictured an art shop that was topologically distorted so that it ended up being in a picture hanging on its own wall. His art is full of intriguing pradoxes.

Bach wrote music that modulates to another key and then again and again and finally comes back to its starting point.

DNA contains the instructions on how to make itself.

A TV camera produces a picture on a screen. Does anything interesting happen if you use the camera to take a picture of its own screen output?

Think about intelligence. Can we devise artificial intelligence? Consider intelligence thinking of itself. Consider natural intelligence thinking of artificial intelligence. Consider artificial intelligence thinking of itself. Or of natural intelligence. Is there a difference? How could we tell?

The book is rife with Strange Loops, Or Tangled Heirarchies. One of the characters is a SLOTH. (Another is a Tortoise.)

It's full of self-referential nuggets like that, some discernible only by "sufficiently assiduous inspection of the text." And it's full of puzzles, some math and some logic, some answered, some with answers extraordinarily cleverly hidden, some not answered at all (or at least I didn't find them).

Hope that helps! (And that I haven't made any spelling errors!)

Godel, Escher, Bach, an Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas R Hofstadter: Basic Books, 1979.

from its well-annotated bibliography:

"Copper, Silver, Gold, an Indestructable Metal Alloy, Egbert B Gebstadter: Acidic Books, 1979. A formidable hodgepodge, turgid and confused, yet remarkably similar to the present work. Of particular interest is a reference in its well-annotated bibliography to an analogous, but completely fictitious, work."

I rest my case.

dictionary (The word "dictionary" _is_ defined in the dictionary, isn't it?)

TILLFANSREFEREE

[This message was edited by haberdasher on Tue Mar 9th, 2004 at 7:05.]

Self-referential

How about introducing a rule that hyphenated words must also have a hyphen in the clue word, and that phrases of two or more words must themselves be indicated by a clue in the form of the same number of words?

Even better, how about just sticking to one-word answers?

CANEDTINFOIL

Thank you, Arnie... I was STILL floundering...

canedtinfoil is confidential.

Here is one word:

canopiespail

I'll pray someone gets that right..

Oh, Hab, really! Do we accept hyphenated words? Now see what you have done?

DEIFY TIL

So, any thoughts on my suggestions? I assume that Kalleh does not agree since she used a two-word clue for a one-word answer: fidelity. If we are to use hyphenated and multi-worded answers it would be best to agree on some sort of rules beforehand.

REPEGENACT

I'm in favor of flexibility on this one. In general the words should be single, but for the sake of variety if there is an anagram that just sparkles so much you can't resist I'd like to have it permitted without special flagging. Or flogging, either.

It's good to remember that, if things get difficult, we should try thinking outside the box -- but most of the time it won't be required.

DREAM O'IT

(one word, uncapitalized, no apostrophe)

[This message was edited by haberdasher on Wed Mar 10th, 2004 at 8:53.]

quote:

---

I assume that Kalleh does not agree since she used a two-word clue for a one-word answer

---

Now, arnie, why would you think that? I agree with you; in fact, I made a similar comment about the use (or non-use, thereof) of hyphenated words. Oh, sorry about the 2-word clue. I had done that before just to be fun, and I didn't realize it would confuse people. I won't do that again. After all, arnie, I gave up my ex-favorite word just to get in your good graces again!

Mopeyosun

MOPEYSUN plus D = PSEUDONYM

eponymous

fecundheaders

...but with the double-o it looks EPONYMOUS

Not so!

SALESMEN

It is best for the purse if SALESMEN remain nameless.

How many drinks do you have during Saturday morning TV?

cartoonlivers

Hab,

Are you seeing my posts OK? You've posted after me twice now, and not answered my words:
REPEGENACT

fecundheaders

Probably, and I bet it's related to my habit of using the back button on the browser rather than going out and coming in again. This means if you've posted a reply it's not on my screen until after I post my (now late) response. So I owe you two.

first - CONTROVERSIAL

That still leaves fecundheaders and repegenact. Those are still up for grabs as unsolved. I'll work on them some more.

[This message was edited by haberdasher on Thu Mar 11th, 2004 at 13:59.]

...are you enjoying all our difficulties solving fecundheaders?! It's ce CIA piracy !

[This message was edited by haberdasher on Thu Mar 11th, 2004 at 13:52.]

Got it. Now I can tell you to the nearest hundredth how far I've gotten on that last one.

XEIPHON