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Difficulty: Hard Sunday, October 8, 2006

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CHAT LOG for Sunday, October 8, 2006

12:30 am
Grendel

easy.
12:42 am
WHB

Done
1:58 am
mab

where are all the bloody threes? i hate it when there's a missing number.
1:58 am
mab

i suppose i'll figure it out
1:59 am
mab

annoys me
2:01 am
mab

oh... there. i made threes. they just needed to be wooed a bit.
2:03 am
mab

a lesson in patience. maybe that's what sudoku means in Japanese. probably not. it could mean 'patience' but that would be unlikely.
2:09 am
augurus

Sudoku is the Japanese abbreviation for a phrase meaning "the digits must occur only once".
2:11 am
mab

oh. well. that says it. thank you for expanding my understanding. now, for the other two-thirds of the grid.
2:14 am
augurus

Well, they key to understanding is that it's an abbreviation in another language.
2:14 am
mab

hm hm hm, je vois la vie en rooooseee....
2:15 am
mab

yes, it's very efficient, that. hebrew uses tons of such abbreviations.
2:20 am
mab


post!
2:22 am
mab

well, i never! i was saying, for example, the word 'tanakh' is short for torah, nevi'im and kethuvim.
2:25 am
augurus

A lot of languages have adopted some sort of secret rule to slur the words into a run-on word of sorts. The japanese language is no exception.
2:30 am
mab

we don't seem to do that so much in english; we have some acronyms but not lots. the military seems to do that well, but that's not really english, not really
2:34 am
augurus

No, but we're getting there. The type of messages sent on myspace and mobile phones consists mostly of acrynoms and abbreviations. As fluency increases, the speed of speech often/usually increases. And with the advent/rise of convenience, somehow languages will learn to shorthand everything for the sake of convenience.
2:36 am
mab

i was thinking of that too... the language stripped down to mere bones and feathers. inevitable.
2:40 am
janet

There's a rule that linguists know called Zipf's law--whenever something becomes culturally important, a short word will evolve for it. So, television becomes TV, automobile becomes car, and so on...
2:42 am
mab

what an interesting thought. i imagine zipf has an interesting etymology.
2:44 am
mab

love noam chomsky, although less for his linguistic theory
2:46 am
janet

Yes, I admit that I stopped paying any attention to Chomsky's syntactic theories somewhere around his "government and binding" theory...
2:47 am
mab

he's boffo
8:55 am
franebrown

to mab: did you also know that the letter in the Hebrew alphabet also stand for numbers?
9:00 am
yul

hello
10:03 am
spellacked

Whew! much better than when I tried it bleary-eyed at 1AM
11:26 am
badd_girl_13

hey how are u all doing
11:28 am
bluecat

good thanks
11:29 am
badd_girl_13

is anyone on here
11:29 am
badd_girl_13

sool someone is on here
11:29 am
badd_girl_13

thats supposted to be cool
11:29 am
bluecat

lots of people are, they're just sudokuing.
11:32 am
badd_girl_13

oh well i like to talk to people
11:39 am
bluecat

hmm, well, hello :)
12:41 pm
sneeu

evening bluecat
12:41 pm
Ro

hello bluecat
12:51 pm
helenkeller

go
12:59 pm
helenkeller

done
3:45 pm
drwho

Difficulty score = 24. The little green numbers are my friends today.
5:01 pm
chrissie2006

I hear you drwho
9:04 pm
yul

mistake was made
9:19 pm
yul

that was easy
9:20 pm
dchen

hi
9:20 pm
dchen

hi