[Fictionary] wodwo results!

[Ranjit Bhatnagar]

The winner is JUDITH, whose Balinese musical instrument definition
received 9 points.  The real definition is -- well, you'll just have
to keep reading.  Unless you already got impatient and looked it up.



LINDA: 1 and a murnival
wodwo, n -- an Australian anteater related to the numbat but a bit
smaller and rarer.

Pierre: 1 pt
Kir: Great idea; imprecisely worded.
Jean-Joseph: I like "numbat".  I'm going to start calling people that.
Elliott: Sounds like an insult:  "You and what army, numbat?"
Hutch: Not quite believable dictionary phrasing
Nora: Gets the murnival award for small woodland creature related to a
game of cards.  :)



JUDITH: 2+2+2+2+1 for guessing = 9
wodwo, n. A Balinese musical instrument, made of a 10- to 28-inch long
piece of bamboo, 3- to 6-inches in diameter, with metal "strings" from
top to bottom, along about 1/3 of the area.  The left hand damps some
of the strings while the right hand strums all of them.

Kir: 2 pts
Pierre: 2 pts - This reminds me of the Navajo fiddle, which is similar
in shape, but with only
one string. Two points.
Jim: 2 pts
Nora: 2 pts - I think this one could be it, so two votes for this
definition.  I like musical instruments, and since it is Ranjit's
round, this is fitting.
Jean-Joseph: An autoharp without the helpful labeled buttons (and why
does my spell-checker not recognize the word "autoharp".  Is Bali
where gamelan comes from?  That seems mostly percussive to me.  But
anyway, Ranjit too many homemade instruments to resort to telling us
about better-known (but still obscure) ones.
Lawrence: I do like musical instruments, but I'm not sure "damping" is
a specific enough description of how it might be played.  No points.
Elliott: Maybe it makes a sound like "wodwo".
Linda: I like the musical def the best, but I suspect you of planting
it as a dummy.



JEAN-JOSEPH: 2 for guessing
wodwo - adj. - Deceased on the same day as birth (usually, though not
necessarily, in the same year).

Jean-Joseph: I think I had some weird reasoning that resulted in this
definition, but I can't remember what it was.
Lawrence: I would think that approximately 1/365th of people in the
world would die on the same day as their birth, but I'd expect the
number of babies born alive who die before midnight to be
significantly smaller than that.  No points.
Elliott: Hmmm ... can't picture anyone needing a word for this, which
I guess is why it's amusing.
Hutch: I suspect J-J. We often say things like "there oughta be a word
for that" about some fictionitions. I think this one qualifies for the
opposite: There ought NOT to be a word for this.
Nora: Wodsday's child is full of woe...  poor thingy!
Linda: There should be a word for birth and death on the same day;
Irish twins are siblings  who are born on the same day, but not
necessarily in the same year  (we know a father and son both born on
Feb 7).



PIERRE: 1
wodwo, n. (Wolof woddwoo) 1. A form of divination practiced in
Senegal, consisting of throwing a number of shea nuts on the floor and
examining the patterns. 2. One who performs this divination.

Kir: 1 pt
Jean-Joseph: Shea nuts used to be found in the bleachers at Mets
games, but no more, I guess.  Haven't these guys ever heard of
I-Ching?
Elliott: Is this intended to subtly suggest itself as an etymon for
"voodoo"? Clever!



FRAN: 1+1 = 2
wodwo. N. Hook used in gutter-hanging.

Jean-Joseph: 1 pt. - I assume this refers to putting rainspouts on a
house, as opposed to chillin' out just beyond the curb when you can't
get up.  What the heck, I've got an extra point lying around, so I'll
bestow it here.
Linda: 1 pt - And the gutter-hanging hook is perfect:  wodwo equals
thing-a-ma-jig--so one point
Kir: It's gotta have *some* name!
Elliott: Or maybe a horn used in eaves-dropping?



ELLIOTT: 2+2+2 for guessing = 6
wodwo (n.) -- An opportunity which one learns about via an
announcement that it will no longer be available.

Lawrence: 2 pts - There totally should be a word for this!  If "wodwo"
is not it, then I will probably like it better than it's actual
definition.  2 points.
Fran: 2 pts - This happens to me fairly often.
Jean-Joseph:  Ah, so fictionary!  Elliott, maybe, but others are
capable of this as well.
Elliott: Mine, inspired by the free coffee where I work.
Hutch: OTOH, there *oughta* be a word for this. I just don't believe
that there IS.
Nora: This is awesome!  If this isn't the definition, and I doubt it
is, there ought to be a word for this!
Lindaa: My other favorite one is the offer that you learn about after
it expires. When we lived in Frankfurt, Germany forty years ago  (my
husband had been drafted into the US Army), we often bought boxes of
cold cereal at the PX where this applied, so I soon switched to buying
food "on the economy", ie in German shops where the locals took pride
in the good quality of their food.  It helped me to become a good
cook, as I rarely found fast foods in the German shops, and my mom
sent me lots of interesting cookbooks.



JIM: 1+1+1 for guessing = 3
wodwo - k. - 1. Prestu nayevi ko rehdael nida.  2. Lavroscat.

Lawrence: 1 pt - If this is the real definition, it is a great choice.
 If it is a fake definition, it is a cop-out, and the author should be
ashamed.  But will be 1 point richer.  ^_^ 1 point. (I secretly hope
that the translation of the first definition is "an opportunity which
one learns about via an announcement that it will no longer be
available.")
Nora: 1 pt - HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!  Awesome!  This gets my runner-up one vote!
Kir: Ack!
Pierre: di'u ki'asai na te jimpe fi mi
Jean-Joseph:  First guess is that this is from me, because this is the
kind of stunt I'd pull (and I have)(and I got away with it).  Oh,
nope, it isn't.  Second thought it that it's from Pierre, and it
actually means something in Whiipihoovian.  I'm intrigued, and
wondering whether it's a knoun or a krekosition.  It also occurred to
me that it might make more sense if decrypted, but it does not succumb
to obvious things like rot13.
Elliott: Ignotum per ignotius, so no points.
Hutch: HUH???
Linda: I liked all the defs, but did not understand the one in a
language that appears not to be English.



ERIC: 2+2+1+2+1 = 8
wodwo, n.  A sapling pruned and shaped to form a live paling.

Judith: 2 pts
David: 2 pts
Elliott: 1 pt - Nice.  The definition sounds crisp and professional,
and has a believable meaning.  But what happens when the sapling grows
up?  One point.
Hutch: 2 pts - I had to look up "paling" for this. *blush* Cool idea:
very tempting. 2 points
Fran: 1 pt - Nice and boring, excellent believability!
Kir: Wouldn't you need more than one sapling?
Jean-Joseph: I'm trying to remember the real word that I think relates
to this.  I don't know the word "paling".  "Spalling" is coming to
mind.  (edit: I looked it up later, and the word I was looking for is
"espalier".  "Spalling" is a mechanical engineering term, which I
remembered just before looking it up.)



DAVID: 1+1+2+1 for guessing = 5
wodwo - n. (fr. Lapp) - 1. Vodka drunk from the skull of your enemies.
2. (Marian and early Elizabethan mercantile slang) Complete triumph
over an economic rival. 3. (Late Elizabethan and early Stuart court
slang) Humiliation of a court rival.

Eric: 1 pt
   As sheep to freshest grasses flock,
   And bees most fragrant nectar do collect,
   So I of sweetest drink shall take my fill,
   And wodwo overflow my lips ere summer fails.
Hutch: 1 pt - Interesting progression. Makes it very tempting. 1 point
Linda: 2 pts - The drinking from the skull of your enemies is so
graphic that I will give it two points.
Kir: Hah! Lovely.
Judith: I would like the Lapp definition to be right, but I'm afraid I
just can't accept it.
Jean-Joseph: Wodka!  Whoa!
Lawrence: Or onomatopoeia for "the sound of drinking out of a skull",
or "the way drunk Elizabethan's pronounce the word 'vodka'".  A little
too on the nose either way, so no points.
Elliott: Makes it sound like your enemies own the skull jointly, which
suggests that they extracted it from someone on your side.
Nora: Gross!  Although, I could see nasty Vikings doing this sort of thing.




WIKTIONARY: 1+1+1+2+2 = 7
wodwo, n. (also woodwose) A wild man of the woods; a faun, a satyr or
a representation of such a being in heraldry or other decoration.

Judith: 1 pt
David: 1 pt
Jim: 1 pt
Jean-Joseph: 2 pts - Meh, sounds pretty plausible.  Two points.
Elliott: 2 pts - OK, I like this one.  The definition sounds like
something that someone would actually have a word for, and the
``woodwose'' adds verisimilitude. Though come to think of it,
``woodwose'' looks too Anglo-Saxon to be applied to heraldry or
classical mythology.  Two points anyway.
Nora: This was the runner-runner-up.  It gets my half vote in case of
a necessary tie-breaking.
Kir: Now I want to paint one of these...
Pierre: I ran into the word "wose", referring to the Wild Men of
Druadan Forest, in some stuff about Quenya. So I'm voting for
elsewhat.
Lawrence: I love this one, but I seem to be out of points.  Alas.
Hutch:  I know that "woodwose" is correctly used here, but I've never
seen this as a shortened version. Nor have I ever heard of a faun or
satyr being used in heraldry. Certainly I've see plenty of other
mythical critters, but never a "wild man", a "Green Man", a faun, a
satyr, or the like.
Eric gave 2 points but waived them: "I don't know if my vote should
count, as though I didn't recognize 'wodwo', I *do* recognize
'woodwose'."  Thanks for owning up, Eric; you shall be rewarded in a
future round.
Eric also pointed out: According to this
<http://www.monstropedia.org/index.php?title=Woodwose> P.G. Wodehouse
is of the same derivation.
Ranjit: I tinkered with the definition a bit - wiktionary gives
woodwose as the primary and defines wodwo simply as "woodwose."  But I
liked the sound of wodwo better.  I originally found the word in this
entertaining article:
<http://www.strangehorizons.com/2009/20090420/mandel-c.shtml>