💾 Archived View for tilde.cafe › ~spellbinding › gemlog › 2021-12 › 2021-12-05.gmi captured on 2024-06-16 at 14:36:14. 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).
SpellBinding has a new home here at tilde.cafe. I hope there will be less downtime here.
DITHER DITHERER DITHERY EITHER ETHER HEED HEIR HERD HERE HEREDITY HIDE HIDER HIRE HIREE HIRER HITHER HITTER TEETH TEETHE TETHER THEE THEIR THERE THEY THIRD THIRTIETH THIRTY THITHER THREE TITHE TITHER
Yesterday I tried something new: a special rule - no words ending in -ED. I find solving puzzles that have many words tedious when they contain letters E and D. I don't want solving puzzles to remind me of filling out tax forms - if you got DITHER you have to remember to do DITHERED, etc. So watch out for special rules!
Even with special rules, we have DITHER (act indecisively), DITHERER (one who dithers), and DITHERY (a quality of being a ditherer). Computer nerds like will also remember the olden days when we had to dither black dots to simulate grayscale...
EITHER HERE or THERE, or possibly HITHER or THITHER, which mean roughly the same. Surprisingly HIREE was not in Merriam-Webster dictionary which is usually my mentor, but I put it in because it is definitely in common usage everywhere I've been to.
Even native English speakers sometimes confuse possessive THEIR with THERE (that place). Please don't!
If you wish to offer me a TITHE (give me 10% of your income), please contact me via email: stack at tilde.club. It is for THEE to decide. You may choose to TITHE (verb), but don't TITHE me (make me a TITHER, for I am heathen).
To DEHYDRATE is of course to remove water, and HYDRATE -- the opposite. These were accepted - in the verb form. As was ETHER, not as a chemical containing hydrogen, but in its 'medium of space' meaning.
There was a NO HYDROGEN CHEMICAL COMPOUNDS clause, because there are just too many obscure words, words you would not know unless chemistry is your thing, and some of them even form pangrams! But if you were curious, HYDRIDE is a hyrdogen compound, and you probably have a Nickel-Metal Hydride battery in one of your devices.
As chemistry words go, you can also have a DIHYDRIDE, and even TRIHYDRIDE (Merriam-Webster be damned!). HYDRATE as a noun is a chemical compound containing water. A DIHYDRATE has two water molecules, and TRIHYDRATE, three molecules. Then there is DIHYDRITE that is also know as pseudomalachite.
Another day.