rec.puzzles Archive

Can you come up with a real word that no one on the Internet has used in a newsgroup in the past few months?

language/english/unused.word.game New

New entry, edited from material collected for the archive and not yet in a released version.

Problem

Can you come up with a real word that no one on the Internet has used
in a newsgroup in the past few months?
Show solution
If you'd like to test your vocabulary, here's a game for you to try.
Point your Web browser to http://www.dejanews.com/forms/dnq.html.  This
is an entry point to DejaNews, a newsgroup searcher.  Try to come up a
word that no one on the Internet has used in a newsgroup in the past
few months.  Search for the word by typing it in and pressing return.
DejaNews will check for matches.  If you don't get a match, you may be
a winner!  Verify the spelling in a common dictionary, such as
Webster's Ninth New Collegiate.

The game is more difficult than it sounds because you can usually find
someone else on the Net who likes to use your favorite obscure word.
My wife and I played it for three hours and we could only come up with
two words that no one else was using: hautboy: an oboe, and
xanthochroid: a fair skinned person.

-- Jim Ward <jfw@radix.net>, March 1996