💾 Archived View for tilde.cafe › ~spellbinding › gemlog › 2021-11 › 2021-11-29.gmi captured on 2023-04-26 at 14:05:13. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-01-29)
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This is a gemlog for the SpellBinding puzzle, in which you construct words using the specified letters (each word must contain the anchor letter).
ADMAN ARMADA DAMN DARN DRAM DRAMA FARAD FARMLAND LAND LANDFALL LANDMAN LARD MADAM MADMAN MALLARD RADAR RAND |
Congratulations gluon, 6a5305, Josias, Gnuserland and mozz lagrange!
I noticed that the word RAMADA (a grassy plain) was missing from my dictionary. RAMADAN is normally capitalized, so is omitted for a good reason. I kept wanting DARMA, but it's really DHARMA...
The puzzle seemed extra hard because of the single vowel A. Apparently some people did not realize you can reuse letters (you can!) -- it's not Scrabble, and letters are not tiles.
Not many in this puzzle. FARAD is a unit of electrical capacitance, named after Michael Faraday. RAND is of course South African currency, not Ayn.
There are three -MAN words (ADMAN, LANDMAN, MADMAN) as we are in a patriarchal purgatory. MADAM does little to compensate! LANDMAN is a bit archaic (rustic, farmer, countryman), and I was not sure if I should strike it.
So I considered removing landman because - well, no one uses it. However that is what makes the puzzle more interesting - words that a reasonable person may not know, but may come across in some old text. It makes the puzzle more challenging - and you can still get to 'genius' even if you don't know it.
I want to avoid truly ridiculous words, and even somewhat ridiculous words, but LANDMAN is not too bad.