[Fictionary] UCALEGON results

[E Cohen]

Wait, so the only vote for the correct definition was mine, and I only 
chose it because it was clearly wrong? I'd vote a special award to the 
wordmeister for that.

On 12/23/2022 5:56 PM, Jean-Joseph Cote wrote:
> 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/

-- 
-- Eric   |   @GoudyBoldItalic