[Fictionary] UCALEGON results

[Jean-Joseph Cote]

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.

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.

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.

Also, Elliott is itching for a discussion of the feasibility of his heat 
diode designs vis-a-vis the laws of thermodynamics.

General comments:
*Elliott:* My, this is an interesting selection.
*Fran:* 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: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YewrnKgBMM]

*ucalegon - adj. - Performing digestion outside of the body.*
from *Jim*. Ranjit 1, Pierre 1, Linda 2, Nicolas 2 = *6 points*
*Eric:* Eww.
*Elliott:* 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.
*Ranjit:* 1 point for the bold move of choosing an adjective!
*Pierre:* Echinoderm alert! Or is it a spider or a robber fly?
*Nicolas:* sounds amoebic

*ucalegon - n. - The dregs remaining after draining a krater of wine. *
from *Eric*. Pierre 2 plus 1 for correct guess = *3 points*
*Elliott:* Maybe from FLAGON?
*Pierre:* Two points and the cottabus award.
*Nicolas:* I don't know what a krater is but I don't want those ucalegon 
dregs.

*ucalegon - n. - A three-sided French casserole dish, used for cooking 
squash.*
from *Josh*. Elliott 1 = *1 point*
*Elliott:* One point, but not sure why.
*Ranjit:* Problem is the squash keeps falling out
*Pierre:* My mother made ratatouille, but didn't have any three-sided 
casseroles.
*Nicolas:* Three sides or squash or French I would have believed, but 
all three?
*Jim:* Why specifically squash?? Is that considered the most trilateral 
of all fruits?

*ucalegon - n. - A novelty stringed instrument played like a dulcimer in 
the lap or on a table.*
from *Linda*. Nicolas 1, Jim 2 = *3 points*
*Elliott:* Maybe like an Autoharp?  What is "novelty" about it?
*Pierre:* Which dulcimer? The kind with frets, or the kind with many 
strings and bridges?
*Jim:* 2 points and I want one.

*ucalegon - n. - in Zakharov's doctrine of Undetectability, the property 
of not being observed.*
from *Ranjit*. Eric 2 = *2 points*
*Pierre:* I'm waffling on whether this or the heat diode is Elliott's def.
*Nicolas:* Hah!

*ucalegon - n. - The part of a parasitic barnacle that wraps around the 
internal organs of the host.*
from *Pierre*. Elliott 2, Linda 1, Fran 1, Joshua 2 = *6 points*
*Elliott:* 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.
*Ranjit:* Scary / gross!
*Nicolas:* This reminds me of a SeaQuest DSV novel I read involving 
intelligent parasitic deep see worms which creeped me out as a kid.
*Pierre:* This is real, but it's called the interna.
*
**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.)*
from *eLLioTT* (of course). Ranjit 2, Fran 2, Joshua 1, Jim 1 = *6 
points* (or maybe negative infinity?)
*Eric:* Ah, is that turnstile managed by Dr. Maxwell? Or his demon? 
Negative infinite points.
*Ranjit:* 2 points for "Turnstile of Anaxagoras", which has now been 
updated to accept tap-to-pay credit cards and ApplePay
*Nicolas:* Too complicated to be real. I think.
*Jim:* 1 point for verbosity.
*Elliott:* 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.
[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.
[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.
--
Joke definitions:

UCALEGON - Vanity license plate on the car of ghostbuster Egon Spengler, 
who is proud of his Paraphychics degree from Berkeley.
from Ranjit.
Pierre: "Paraphychics"?? What's that?
Linda: vanity plate--they are a big deal in RI

ucalegon - n. - A polygon with twice as many sides as an ithielegon.
from Pierre.
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".

ucalegon - n. - A hypothesized noble gas with atomic number 168.
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.
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.]

ucalegon - n. - The odd 5-sided shape of a grass area in the University 
of California that they can't call a quad.
from my coworker Tom.
Eric: Oh, I like that!
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.

--

And that leaves us with:
*ucalegon**- n. -**neighbor whose house is on fire or has burned down.*
which is the definition that can be found in various online 
dictionaries, though not any of the print dictionaries that I checked.
Eric 1 = 1 point
*Eric:* That . . . makes no sense?
*Pierre:* 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.
*Elliott:* 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.
[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
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] https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Ancalagon
*from me:* Note, it's also Will Shortz's favorite word: 
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2007/5/2/15-questions-with-will-shortz-last/ 
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