It was pointed out to me that I neglected to mention how I would be rating themeless puzzles for the week; the short answer is, I won't, at least, not yet. I will still tabulate the number of partials in each puzzle, and I'll write comments about them should I notice anything that strikes my fancy, but I won't assign each puzzle a rating.
Each week at the end of the comments section, I will include a list of entries which I felt were "contrived", as I did previously when this blog was on LiveJournal. However, I don't think the word "contrived" is quite appropriate for what I'm trying to convey--here are some examples of what I'm talking about (bear with me in these first few posts, I've still got to learn how to make fancy tables and such):
Entries I like:Each week at the end of the comments section, I will include a list of entries which I felt were "contrived", as I did previously when this blog was on LiveJournal. However, I don't think the word "contrived" is quite appropriate for what I'm trying to convey--here are some examples of what I'm talking about (bear with me in these first few posts, I've still got to learn how to make fancy tables and such):
- I REST MY CASE
- OOH LA LA, HOLY COW
- ON A RAMPAGE, IN TEARS
- I'M THIRSTY, I'D LIKE TO
- OOH NEAT, THAT'S AWESOME
- ON A SAFARI, IN MICHIGAN
I'm leaning towards calling entries like that in the second list "mix-and-match" entries, because you can replace parts of them with synonyms or similar words to get equally usable phrases (THAT'S AMAZING/NEAT/FANTASTIC, IN MISSOURI/CHINA/PRAGUE, etc.) But when you try to replace some words in the phrases in the first list, your options are much more limited (HOLY MOLEY/TOLEDO/that's about it). Any other suggestions for what to call these phrases?
Jeffrey
1 comment:
Someone coined the term "having dictionary nature", and that's always seemed about right to me. If you can imagine an entry being an entry in some sort of hypothetical reference, it's probably okay.
For example, you might find IN TEARS or ON A RAMPAGE in a dictionary as phrases under TEARS and RAMPAGE. You could imagine finding OOH LA LA and I REST MY CASE in some sort of dictionary of expressions. Etc. But it's very hard to imagine OOH NEAT or IN MICHIGAN or whatever in a dictionary, which suggests that they're not "cohesive" (as you quite rightly put it), which should sound a warning bell to the constructor.
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