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So, this is unfortunate. It appears that my emails were not getting
through to some list members (those with gmail accounts?), such that
some never saw the calls for definitions, and maybe didn't see the
ballot until late in the game. Maybe I should have suspected that
something was up when at the very beginning (when I sent out the
first candidate word), I got an automated reply saying something
about being suspended for too many bounced messages, and I had to
send an email to the mailman to keep from getting deleted.<br>
<br>
In fact, it would be good if someone who does receive this sends a
copy back to the list, in case my emails are still not getting
through to some.<br>
<br>
Be that as it may, we have results! And wouldn't you know it, the
bottom line is a flat out three-way tie between the Jim and Pierre
for their creepy biological horror movie definitions, and Elliott's
defiance of entropy. So let's pit them against each other, and the
one who digests and/or overheats his opponents picks the next word.
<br>
<br>
Also, Elliott is itching for a discussion of the feasibility of his
heat diode designs vis-a-vis the laws of thermodynamics.<br>
<br>
General comments:<br>
<b>Elliott:</b> My, this is an interesting selection.
<br>
<b>Fran:</b> Kinda surprised none of the joke defs reference that
commercial from the 80's where the guy at the laundry service tries
to tell the white lady that he can get her clothes cleaner because
of an ancient chinese secret, and then the laundry guy's wife comes
out and says "we need more Calgon" [Everything is on the internet:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YewrnKgBMM">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YewrnKgBMM</a>]<br>
<br>
<b>ucalegon - adj. - Performing digestion outside of the body.</b><br>
from <b>Jim</b>. Ranjit 1, Pierre 1, Linda 2, Nicolas 2 = <b>6
points</b><br>
<b>Eric:</b> Eww.<br>
<b>Elliott:</b> Aren't there spiders that do this? Inject digestive
juices into a
prey animal, then suck in the soup? But it just doesn't sound like
an
adjective to me.
<br>
<b>Ranjit:</b> 1 point for the bold move of choosing an adjective!<br>
<b>Pierre:</b> Echinoderm alert! Or is it a spider or a robber fly?<br>
<b>Nicolas:</b> sounds amoebic<br>
<br>
<b>ucalegon - n. - The dregs remaining after draining a krater of
wine. </b><br>
from <b>Eric</b>. Pierre 2 plus 1 for correct guess = <b>3 points</b><br>
<b>Elliott:</b> Maybe from FLAGON?
<br>
<b>Pierre:</b> Two points and the cottabus award.<br>
<b>Nicolas:</b> I don't know what a krater is but I don't want those
ucalegon dregs.<br>
<br>
<b>ucalegon - n. - A three-sided French casserole dish, used for
cooking squash.</b><br>
from <b>Josh</b>. Elliott 1 = <b>1 point</b><br>
<b>Elliott:</b> One point, but not sure why.
<br>
<b>Ranjit:</b> Problem is the squash keeps falling out <br>
<b>Pierre:</b> My mother made ratatouille, but didn't have any
three-sided casseroles.<br>
<b>Nicolas:</b> Three sides or squash or French I would have
believed, but all three?<br>
<b>Jim:</b> Why specifically squash?? Is that considered the most
trilateral of all fruits?<br>
<br>
<b>ucalegon - n. - A novelty stringed instrument played like a
dulcimer in the lap or on a table.</b><br>
from <b>Linda</b>. Nicolas 1, Jim 2 = <b>3 points</b><br>
<b>Elliott:</b> Maybe like an Autoharp? What is "novelty" about it?
<br>
<b>Pierre:</b> Which dulcimer? The kind with frets, or the kind with
many strings and bridges?<br>
<b>Jim:</b> 2 points and I want one.<br>
<br>
<b>ucalegon - n. - in Zakharov's doctrine of Undetectability, the
property of not being observed.</b><br>
from <b>Ranjit</b>. Eric 2 = <b>2 points</b><br>
<b>Pierre:</b> I'm waffling on whether this or the heat diode is
Elliott's def.<br>
<b>Nicolas:</b> Hah!<br>
<br>
<b>ucalegon - n. - The part of a parasitic barnacle that wraps
around the internal organs of the host.</b><br>
from <b>Pierre</b>. Elliott 2, Linda 1, Fran 1, Joshua 2 = <b>6
points</b><br>
<b>Elliott:</b> Euuw! Parasitic barnacles! "Ucalegon" certainly
has that
creepy-monster sound, like the above-mentioned Tolkien dragon, and
what could be creepier than something growing parts onto your
internal
organs? And the word sounds Greco-biological.<br>
<b>Ranjit:</b> Scary / gross!<br>
<b>Nicolas:</b> This reminds me of a SeaQuest DSV novel I read
involving intelligent parasitic deep see worms which creeped me out
as a kid.<br>
<b>Pierre:</b> This is real, but it's called the interna.<br>
<b><br>
</b><b>ucalegon - n. - In thermionics, a two-terminal component
through which heat can flow in only one direction. (Properly used
only of the convective heat diode or 'turnstile of Anaxagoras',
but commonly applied to other designs as well.)</b> <br>
from <b>eLLioTT</b> (of course). Ranjit 2, Fran 2, Joshua 1, Jim 1
= <b>6 points</b> (or maybe negative infinity?)<br>
<b>Eric:</b> Ah, is that turnstile managed by Dr. Maxwell? Or his
demon? Negative infinite points.<br>
<b>Ranjit:</b> 2 points for "Turnstile of Anaxagoras", which has now
been updated to accept tap-to-pay credit cards and ApplePay<br>
<b>Nicolas:</b> Too complicated to be real. I think.<br>
<b>Jim:</b> 1 point for verbosity.<br>
<b>Elliott:</b> How many ways can we think of to do this? For the
"convective heat
diode", I was imagining a tall water-filled cylinder with a terminal
at each end. When the top is cold and the bottom is hot, a
convection
current forms and transports heat efficiently upwards, but when the
top is hot and the bottom is cold, there is no convection and heat
has
to creep slowly down the column by conduction.
Another way would use two thin domed metal membranes of fixed
circumference with a vacuum between them, like this: )). When the
left side is hot and the right side is cold, the left dome expands
and
pokes out until it touches the right dome, allowing heat to flow,
like
this: HOT >) COLD. When the right side is hot and the left side
is
cold, the two domes don't touch and heat doesn't flow: COLD )>
HOT.
Other suggestions?
I think "thermionics" is a real word, but I have no clue what it
means.<br>
[Later]: "Thermionics" redirects en.wikipedia.org to "Thermionic
emission",
i.e., boiling off of electrons or ions from hot metal, as in a
vacuum
tube.
<br>
[Later still]: Here's another heat-diode design: Two well-insulated
vessels, each
with a thermometer, plus a robot that can read thermometers.
Whenever
the left-hand vessel is hotter than the right-hand vessel, the robot
lays a copper bridge across them, and heat flows: HOT--->COLD.
When
the bias is reversed, the robot takes the bridge away, and heat
doesn't flow: COLD ||| HOT.
When it's warmer outside than in, open the windows. When it's
warmer
inside than out, close them. I'm working on the patent application
right now.<br>
--<br>
Joke definitions:<br>
<br>
UCALEGON - Vanity license plate on the car of ghostbuster Egon
Spengler, who is proud of his Paraphychics degree from Berkeley.<br>
from Ranjit.<br>
Pierre: "Paraphychics"?? What's that?<br>
Linda: vanity plate--they are a big deal in RI<br>
<br>
ucalegon - n. - A polygon with twice as many sides as an ithielegon.<br>
from Pierre.<br>
Pierre: Proverbs 30:1. "Leitiel" is the longest palindromic word in
the Bible, if it means "to Ithiel". If it means "I am tired, God",
it's two words, "leiti El".<br>
<br>
ucalegon - n. - A hypothesized noble gas with atomic number 168.<br>
from me, since nobody else had riffed on that -on ending. I think I
got the number right for the next element in that column, but I'm
not sure.<br>
Pierre: Until it's discovered, it's called eka-oganesson or
unhexoctium. [This is true. The most fun one was Roentgenium, which
was ununuium until after it was synthesized.]<br>
<br>
ucalegon - n. - The odd 5-sided shape of a grass area in the
University of California that they can't call a quad.<br>
from my coworker Tom.<br>
Eric: Oh, I like that!
<br>
Linda: Didn't it used to be called People's Park? My brother used
to have a print of it on cloth made into a big pillow. Lots of
family went to Cal, including my son Jon for an almost doctorate.
ABD--all but dissertation. He got the Master's and realized he did
not need further degrees for the job he liked and still has.<br>
<br>
--<br>
<br>
And that leaves us with:<br>
<b>ucalegon</b><b><span class="pos-bs badge alert-danger"> - n. -</span></b><b>
neighbor whose house is on fire or has burned down.</b><br>
which is the definition that can be found in various online
dictionaries, though not any of the print dictionaries that I
checked.<br>
Eric 1 = 1 point<br>
<b>Eric:</b> That . . . makes no sense?<br>
<b>Pierre:</b> When I was working at Hand Held Products, which has
since been bought twice, one of the guys in Richmond made a device
that one could stick onto the rear end of a Micro-Wand so that it
could record sound. He recorded "My house is on fire!". I wrote code
that played back the sound on its built-in speaker, without any
additional hardware. One Belgian guy, who had high-pitched hearing,
was annoyed by the carrier.<br>
<b>Elliott:</b> Lovely. Someone is thinking of "proximus ardebat
Ucalegon" ('nearby
Ucalegon was burning'), but is that a Fictionary player or a
lexicographer? In any case, I must keep the vow I made to Jean not
to
vote for anything related to this quote (which I think is originally
from the Aeneid, though I remember it from The Strange Death of
Liberal England, 1910-1914). I have a sense that in The Fellowship
of
the Ring, Gandalf mentions a dragon with a rather similar name as
having an especially hot flame.<br>
[Later]: The original quotation from Book II of the Aeneid, during
the Sack of
Troy, is "iam proximus ardet Ucalegon", `already nearby Ucalegon['s
house] is burning'. George Dangerfield misquotes it in The Strange
<br>
Death of Liberal England, 1910-1914, as "Proximus Ucalegon ardebat",
(`was burning'), which I in turn misquoted as "Proximus ardebat
Ucalegon". Anyhow, the Greeks burned his house.
The Tolkien dragon was Ancalagon the Black. Gandalf says in The
Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter 2 ("The Shadow of the Past"), that
even Ancalagon's fire wasn't hot enough to melt the One Ring. One
on-line source (Link [1] below) gives a Sindarin etymology for the
name, "anc" `jaws' + "alak-" `rushing', but ... Dangerfield seems to
have expected the educated British public to recognize the Aeneid
quotation, so maybe Tolkien, too, thought of Ucalegon when he needed
a
name for something that burned hot.
[1] <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Ancalagon">https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Ancalagon</a><br>
<b>from me:</b> Note, it's also Will Shortz's favorite word:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2007/5/2/15-questions-with-will-shortz-last/">https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2007/5/2/15-questions-with-will-shortz-last/</a>
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