Discussion Forum (Archived)
Guest
This week puzzle-guy Greg Pliska gave a quiz called Categorical Allies or Dandy Dyads. He gave a word and Martha and Grant had to come up with the second word that was in the same category as the first and began with the same two letters that the first one ends with.
So, French was a clue, to which we responded Chinese, the category being languages (though it would work as cuisine, too). The two letters CH end FrenCH and start CHinese.
At the end of the quiz, Greg proposed that listeners come up with a string of more than four items in a specific category that follow the same rules. Greg gave the example of American states. His clue was Alabama. We followed it with Maine, Nebraska, Kansas. Or Maine, New Mexico, Colorado. Each word ends with the same two letters that the next word starts with.
So, to play this here in the forums, come up with a fairly narrow category, such as French authors, computer parts, insects, American presidents, or anything else, and then come up with four items that can be linked together by the pairs of last and first letters. Give everyone else the first clue on the forum and the guessing will commence!
How about opera titles as a category? I came up with:
Rigoletto, Tosca, Cavalleria Rusticana, Nabucco, (le) Coq d'Or, Orfeo et Euridice, (La) Cenerentola, Lakmé & Mefistofele - a total of nine. I'm sure listeners could do better. I stuck to fairly well-known operas. Huh, I just realized my list consists of all characters to boot.
Paradox said:
horse, seal, alligator, orangutan, anteater, ermine, newt.
Well done, and very show-worthy. If you accept "coho" (a kind of salmon) , you could append it in front of horse, and precede it with "guanaco" (a kind of llama)...which leads us here. But, course, you'd need to put python in your animals list (right between guppy and onager).
Thanks for the contribution!
Greg
KomposrKeith said:
How about opera titles as a category? I came up with:
Rigoletto, Tosca, Cavalleria Rusticana, Nabucco, (le) Coq d'Or, Orfeo et Euridice, (La) Cenerentola, Lakmé & Mefistofele - a total of nine. I'm sure listeners could do better. I stuck to fairly well-known operas. Huh, I just realized my list consists of all characters to boot.
Love it - great contribution, and a good category to delve into! Too bad you nixed the preceding article to get as far as you did, or else that "le" at the end would come in quite handy. There's a Chabrier opera called L'etoile, but I guess that "L'" is an article, isn't it?
I would note, too, that you could precede Rigoletto with L'italiani in Algeri (or, perhaps, Gustave Holst's not-so-well-known Savitri) to extend the list in that direction.
As for the "they're all characters" note, I looked over a list of major operas, and the vast majority of them are the names or descriptions of characters. Never noticed that before.
Thanks for this!
Greg
Dean said:
Herbs/spices
Borage-Gentian-Anise-Sesame-Melissa-Sallow-OwlerLarch-Chamomile-Lemon Onion
Aren't these also the names of celebrity children? Borage Willis? Anise Paltrow? Larch Phoenix?
This is a nice category, though you know I'd never get away quizzing Grant and Martha about such lesser-known words. Well done - keep these coming...
Greg
Loved the link to Mr. Larch, thanks I'd forgotten about it
How about California Wineries---
Hagafen, Enkidu, Dunah, Ahlgren, Eno, Noggle, Leonardo, Dominari, Ridge, Geyser, Erba, Banyan, Antelope, Perrucci, Cinnabar, Armida, Daume, Melka, Kalyra, Ramian, Anglin, Imagine, Neiman, Analota, Tantara, Rafanalli, Livermore, Rezonja, Jalama, Malibu, Buccella, Larkmead, Adastra, Ravenwood.
I love seeing more ideas come in - thanks, Paradox and TerraRising, for the musicians list (where else would you see Yanni and Malmsteen in the same sentence?) and the girls' names (or is it talk show hosts?).
One of the tricks with a puzzle like this is figuring out what constitutes a viable category. "Words in the English Language" creates a pool so huge as to be, well, pointless, while "AWWW Hosts" becomes too minimal to build a list out of.
Ideally, you want the category to be one that is well-defined and of a size that the average language-show listener (or whatever your audience is, if you want to think more generally) would be at least familiar with all the elements, if not able to think of them all off the top of her head.
US States is a great example. Well-defined, with exactly 50 members, and I'm willing to bet you could all write them all down if pressed. Presidents of the U.S. is equally well-defined, and almost exactly the same size, but perhaps harder to pull from one's brain.
Countries of the World and Chemical Elements are pretty good categories, though they have tricky nooks and crannies. The countries are not entirely well-defined - there is ongoing debate about statehood in various places. And not only can few of us rattle off every member of either, but I'm betting there are both countries and elements that plenty of people wouldn't even recognize. (Kiribati? East Timor? San Marino? Dysprosium? Dubnium? Hassium?)
When you get to a list like Girls' Names or Musicians or Herbs, then you're into shakier territory. The first and second are conceivably infinite sets - if Rumer, Apple and Moon Unit are names, why not Tungsten, Uzbekistan or Puzzle Guy? And I, for one, never can remember what makes something an herb, a spice, a vegetable, a fruit or a flowering plant (though I acknowledge that those categories do have some definition).
Opera titles is interesting. There are arguable parameters to that list, but I suspect a reasonable shared sense of what's fair play. "Les Miserables," while entirely operatic in structure and form, would probably not make most people's canonical list of "opera titles"; "Einstein on the Beach", while hardly in the repertory of major houses is at least recognized as being an opera, however modern and experimental. And the scores (pun intended) of new works and lesser-known efforts by my talented colleagues probably wouldn't make the reasonable person's list of "opera titles", for the purposes of fair-play puzzling.
Anyway, enough philosophy of puzzling - back to the fun stuff. I just wanted to open a little window into what kinds of things constructors consider when they put these things together!
Dean — again said:
Loved the link to Mr. Larch, thanks I'd forgotten about it
How about California Wineries—Hagafen, Enkidu, Dunah, Ahlgren, Eno, Noggle, Leonardo, Dominari, Ridge, Geyser, Erba, Banyan, Antelope, Perrucci, Cinnabar, Armida, Daume, Melka, Kalyra, Ramian, Anglin, Imagine, Neiman, Analota, Tantara, Rafanalli, Livermore, Rezonja, Jalama, Malibu, Buccella, Larkmead, Adastra, Ravenwood.
Wow! Great list. Certainly a well-defined set, though not one that includes lots of elements I'd heard of.
I do know, though, to whose house I'm going for wine tasting!
Thanks, Dean!
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
1 Guest(s)