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Richard Walker

Daffynitions [1]

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Edited by Richard Walker, Monday, 29 Jan 2024, 21:39

Phobia -  imitation ale

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daffynition#:~:text=A%20daffynition%20(a%20portmanteau%20blend,(or%20group%20of%20words).//en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daffynition#:~:text=A%20daffynition%20(a%20portmanteau%20blend,(or%20group%20of%20words).

Nicked from 3D in today’s Times Quick Cryptic
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Richard Walker

Mr Seal

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Edited by Richard Walker, Monday, 29 Jan 2024, 20:27

A friend spotter this seal on the beach at Aldeburgh. I can’t embed the video on this page but here’s a link to a YouTube playloop:

https://youtube.com/shorts/DNM5P53iUfw?si=NUuBLHTgLb_ABzQk


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Richard Walker

Going Up!

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Richard Walker

Heritage?

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Richard Walker

Meanings you didn't know #1

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From the OED

1889
lobster
One who bowls ‘lobs’ at cricket.

Next up  whisky


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Richard Walker

Wind Haiku

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All night long

The wind was roaring like a lion

About to gobble us up.

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Richard Walker

Record Breaker

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Edited by Richard Walker, Sunday, 21 Jan 2024, 23:47

Yesterday I read in Scientific American that the record for the hottest chilli pepper has been officially broken. The new champion is Pepper X and is listed in the Guinness Book of Records. The plant breeder was the appropriately named Ed Curry (see nominative determinism), who also produced the previous record holder, the Carolina Reaper.

The Scorville rating of the new pepper is 2,693,000 SCU. Here is a chart (courtesy of Wikipedia) that compares this with more familiar varieties of chilli.


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Richard Walker

Unique rhyme?

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I’ve heard it said that there is no word in the English language that rhymes with ‘oblige’, which, as far as I can see is true, unless you count proper names, such as ‘Nige’.

So what about words that only have one other word that rhymes with them? Well, I thought of wombat and combat; but are there any other words that rhyme with these two? If you find any do write in the comments.

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Richard Walker

Sad News

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Sad news, my steeplejack friend had a fall and now he’s expired.. 

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Richard Walker

One Liner

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Edited by Richard Walker, Thursday, 18 Jan 2024, 00:06

Being overcharged for a pencil eraser. That’s daylight rubbery.

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Richard Walker

Words with triple letters

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Edited by Richard Walker, Tuesday, 16 Jan 2024, 01:04

In the Oxford English Dictionary I found the following words where a letter occurs three times in succession.

A list was posted on Quora and all I've done is check which ones the OED lists, plus I thought of oooh.. So there could be others not discovered. Apart from brrr, oooh and yayyy my favourite is frillless, which makes perfect sense, although you don't hear it very often.

brrr

duchessship

frillless

hostessship

oooh

uuula (I guess this is 'uvula' spelt before u and v were regarded as different letters)

vertuuus (which means more or less the same as 'virtuous')

yayyy (!)

Other -ship words are hyphenated, e.g. countess-ship, and I think the OED is just being inconsistent with the two examples above.


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Richard Walker

Down in the Cabbage Patch

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Richard Walker

Dad Joke

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It’s only when you have finger problems that you realise how much you count on them.

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Richard Walker

Helvellyn from Whiteside

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Edited by Richard Walker, Saturday, 13 Jan 2024, 23:41








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Richard Walker

O'er the hills and far away

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Tom, he was a Piper's Son, And fell in love when he was young; But the only Tune that he could play, Was o'er the Hills, and far away.

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Richard Walker

Dad Joke

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Edited by Richard Walker, Wednesday, 10 Jan 2024, 10:43

I keep missing the first letter off words. The doctor says it's rain damage.

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Richard Walker

A Room with a View

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Richard Walker

Night noises

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Why did the cat flap bang just then?
Was it a ghost,
or only the wind.
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Richard Walker

A Lakeland Scene

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Richard Walker

Cave Bears

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This is a tooth from a cave bear. My brother gave it to me some years ago and I keep it by my bedside, as a sort of link to the past and the world in which our ancestors lived. 

The coin is to give an indication of scale. It's a Roman denarius, about 1 cm across.

The tooth looks pretty formidable, and I thought about what sort of a bite it could give. I imagined prehistoric  people competing for cave space with what I though would have been carnivorous animals. However, to my surprise, studies of their teeth suggest they may have been substantially herbivorous [1].

Why did they die out? Some possibilities suggest themselves:

  • The bears' diet was too specialised (think about giant pandas), the plants they eat were affected by climate change and there wasn't enough food
  • Humans hunted them to extinction
  • Humans out-competed them.
It might have ben a combination of all these factors, or something entirely different. Further research may help us learn more about what happened to these fascinating beasts.

[1] Cave Bear: A Vegetarian Carnivorehttps://www.senckenberg.de/en/pressemeldungen/cave-bear-a-vegetarian-carnivore/#:~:text=Together%20with%20an%20international%20team,had%20an%20exclusively%20vegetarian%20diet.

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Richard Walker

The Elephant

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The Elephant is a curious bird

It flits from twig to twig.

It builds its nest in a rhubarb bush

And whistles like a pig.

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Richard Walker

Chicken Joke

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Richard Walker

Yesterday

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Yesterday was the one day in the year when the alphabet has only 25 letters.

Noel.

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Richard Walker

Narga

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This is all I ate.


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Richard Walker

Solution to Probability Question

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Edited by Richard Walker, Sunday, 24 Dec 2023, 16:02

This is the solution to the problem posted at https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/viewpost.php?post=279732

When two dice are rolled there are 6 x 6 = 36 possible outcomes, all equally likely. However the information that at least one has come up six narrows down the number of possibilities to the 11 shown as crosses below.


1 2 3 4 5 6
1 x
2 x
3 x
4 x
5 x
6 x x x x x x

Of these both dice show 6 in only one case, so the required probability is 1/11 ~  9%.                   
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