<div dir="ltr"><div>I'm afraid the tiebreaker's not that exciting - I was just going to check whose definition I received first, which I didn't know offhand because I used a random number generator to scramble the ballot. (Answer: Joshua was first by three days!)<br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sun, Feb 4, 2024 at 10:17 AM Joshua Randall <<a href="mailto:joshuarandall.nyc@gmail.com" target="_blank">joshuarandall.nyc@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:large;color:rgb(0,0,0)">I'm happy for Jean-Joseph to do it! I'm also intrigued by what the tiebreaker would have been, though, just to know. </div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sun, Feb 4, 2024 at 8:48 AM Jean-Joseph Cote <<a href="mailto:jjcotedsl@verizon.net" target="_blank">jjcotedsl@verizon.net</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><u></u>
<div>
I've got a file full of potential words, so I'm prepared to run the
next round of Joshua doesn't want to, but if he does, then let's
find out about the intriguing tiebreaker.<br>
<br>
Jean-Joseph <br>
<br>
<div>On 2/2/2024 10:50 AM, Ranjit Bhatnagar
wrote:<br>
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<div dir="ltr">
<div dir="ltr">
<div>Pierre: "I should have two, right? Can we call Emmanuel
Recount?"</div>
<br>
<div><font color="#888888">I </font>completely<font color="#888888"> </font>forgot to take correct votes into
account when scoring. I'm on the phone now with Emmanuel,
just a moment.... ok, the fax from Recount Industries is
coming in, and I've included it below. Apologies for the
miscount.<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>We now have a tie between Joshua and Jean-Joseph at 6
points each. I'll leave it to you two to decide who'll take
the next round (unless you specifically don't want to
decide, in which case I have a vaguely appropriate measure
in mind that I can apply.)</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Ballot with Emmanuel's annotations in *<b>bold</b>*:<br>
</div>
</div>
<div><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">PIERRE: 1 <b>*and then 1 more for a
correct guess = 2*</b><br>
burling, n. The activity of visiting shopping malls hunting
for bargains.<br>
- Eric: From "Burlington"? One point for cleverness.<br>
- Nicolas: I hope there is a word for this<br>
- Pierre: Shop One or Shop the Mall! (Sign in Burlington,
North Carolina)<br>
- Hutch: As far as I can tell, shopping malls rarely have
actual "bargains", however frequently they advertise them. I
have heard of "saling", which is browsing garage sales.<br>
- Elliott: Burlington antedates malls.<br>
- Jean-Joseph: Sounds invented, but I'll be embarrassed if
it's not.<br>
<br>
<br>
NICOLAS: 2 <b>*and then 2 more for a correct guess = 4*</b><br>
burling, n. (Naut.) 1. Tightly coiled rope or cable. 2. A
brewing mutiny.<br>
- Pierre: Is a brewing mutiny a mutiny in a brewery, or is
it a mutiny that hasn't come to a head yet? "Tightly coiled
rope or cable" could be a real def, even though it's a fake<br>
def. Two points.<br>
- Hutch: I could believe the first, but not the second.<br>
- Elliott: The word sounds appropriate to both defs, but the
defs don't sound appropriate to each other. If #1 were
right, wouldn't #2 be something like "an efficient crew", "a
taut ship", etc.?<br>
- Jean-Joseph: Rope I can see, but tightly coiling cable
doesn't seem like a great idea. And I don't see the
connection to to an uprising among the baristas.<br>
<br>
<br>
DAVID: 1+2 = 3<br>
burling - n. - stripped, washed, stripped, and dried jute
fibres ready to be woven into burlap<br>
- Nicolas: Two similar ones but burlap seems too on the nose<br>
- Pierre: Burl? nah.<br>
- Hutch: 1<br>
- Elliott: Implies that "burlap" is "burl" + "ap", when
every schoolchild knows that burlap is so named because when
you wear it, you feel like you've got a burr on your lap.
Burlington would mean "jute-mill town". Hmm.<br>
- Jean-Joseph: By elimination I'm down to the two textile
definitions, and I'll give the two points to this one.<br>
<br>
<br>
THEFREEDICTIONARY DOT COM: 2+2+1+1 = 6<br>
burling (v) Dressing or finishing cloth by removing knots,
lumps, slubs, or loose threads.<br>
- Eric: So, "burling" makes 3/7 of us think of burlap. I
reject them all.<br>
- Joshua: 2<br>
- Nicolas: 2<br>
- Pierre: I don't know "slubs", but one point.<br>
- Hutch: I would have gone for this one instead of the
"burlap" definition above, but "knots" and "slubs" are not
things you would see in woven cloth: you would see them in
spun thread, and you would remove them before weaving. (My
mother is a spinstress and weaver.)<br>
- Elliott: Burlington would be "cloth-finishing town".
Maybe.... But I don't know "slub", and I'm reluctant to
vote for a def that I don't understand.<br>
- Elliott, later: Checking the OED afterwards: "To dress
(cloth), esp. by removing knots and lumps; ‘to dress cloth
as fullers do’ (Johnson)." And the first definition for
_burl_ is "A small knot or lump in wool or cloth.". 1879
quotation: "The burler..carefully removes any knots or
burls."<br>
- Jean-Joseph: One point to the remaining textile def.<br>
<br>
<br>
JOSHUA: 1+1+2 = 4 <b>*and then 2 more for a correct guess =
6*</b><br>
burling, n. a large, circular chamber dug in the center of a
rabbit warren, used as a nest by the highest-ranking doe of
the colony.<br>
- David: 1<br>
- Eric: Would have gotten a point if it had used the phrase
"queen rabbit".<br>
- Nicolas: 1<br>
- Pierre: Rabbits, you have failed to heed the previous
warrening!<br>
- Hutch: Somebody has been reading Watership Down recently.
However, my recollection is that, in reality, nests for the
does are in dead-end or blocked side-passages, rather than
in any large central space.<br>
- Elliott: This is a nice one. Do rabbits have a pecking
order? No idea! What's the advantage of being in the
center? Security? Warmth? Burlington would be "Town of the
Senior Doe". Two points.<br>
- Jean-Joseph: Do rabbits really have a social structure
like ants?<br>
<br>
<br>
ERIC: 2+1 = 3<br>
burling, n. A customs official in charge of enforcing
regulations on foreign currency and currency exchange. (Fr.
Russ. "болгяг", guard.)<br>
- David: 2<br>
- Joshua: 1<br>
- Nicolas: Now I want to play Papers Please<br>
- Pierre: "Болгяг" doesn't sound Russian. Is it Turkic or
Mongolian? 'Г', like 'к' and 'х', is followed by 'а', not
'я', although it's followed by 'и', not 'ы' (the Czechs beg
to differ). I don't see how "болгяг" would turn into
"burling" either.<br>
- Hutch: I would have expected a Russian currency official
to have some connection to either valyuta or den'gi (two
words for, roughly, "money") in their name.<br>
- Elliott: Definition 2: A customs official in charge of
pocketing a hefty share of any foreign currency in exchange
for not enforcing regulations on it. You can get from Canada
to Burlington by boat.<br>
- Jean-Joseph: I think that transliterates to "bolgyag".
Hmm. Does that seem like it would morph into "burling"? I'll
guess not. (More likely it's from Pierre.)<br>
<br>
<br>
ELLIOTT:<br>
burling (n.) -- 1. A failure mode of lava lamps, in which
wax stops circulating and accumulates at the top due to a
weak or reversed temperature gradient. 2. Obstructed
turnover in rotating leadership positions owing to a lack of
willing successors.<br>
- Nicolas: The failure mode of lava lamps is kid begging and
begging for one and then almost never using it 😆<br>
- Hutch: I've certainly been in the latter situation. But
I'm highly skeptical of both definitions: they both seem
overly specific to be real. :-D<br>
- Elliott: Self-plagiarism; #1 is reverse-biasing the
"convective heat diode" def for "ucalegon", the one that
sounded so physically impossible. (Even an actual physicist
I described it to started to object ``But Maxwell's Demon
---'' before identifying it as a convection cell.) #2 is
new, but does it accurately describe Burlington?<br>
- Jean-Joseph: Maybe from Elliott?<br>
<br>
<br>
JEAN-JOSEPH: 2+2+1 = 5 <b>*and then 1 more for a correct
guess = 6*</b><br>
burling - adj. - Reliable, trustworthy, dependable.<br>
- Eric: Two points. Because I reject _a priori_ all the
burlap/fiber definitions, and the only other plausible
definition is mine.<br>
- Nicolas: It's probably actually this one<br>
- Hutch: I suspect that someone is thinking of "burly" (or
perhaps the Dwarfish Ankh-Morpork arms dealers Burley and
Stronginthearm). But going for an adjective is worth 2
points. (Besides which, I don't really believe any of the
rest either. :-D)<br>
- Elliott: Maybe people used to esteem those virtues enough
to name a town after them. One point.<br>
- Jean-Joseph: In honor of Hutch's and my mutual friend Doug
Berling, who certainly has these qualities. (I saw Doug late
last summer, but I expect it's been many years since he and
Hutch have crossed paths.)</div>
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