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Title: How is Your Spelling? Post by THUDandBLUNDER on Oct 13th, 2004, 6:57am Try this spelling test (http://books.guardian.co.uk/quiz/questions/0,5957,1303707,00.html). |
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Title: Re: How is Your Spelling? Post by Sir Col on Oct 13th, 2004, 9:38am Great fun! 8) It's amazing how we can get caught out by the most common of words. My "mispelt" words were irresistible (going for irresistable) and cemetery (thinking it was cemetary). :-[ The English language can be such a mismatch of inconsistencies. The -ible/-able rule says that if the word before the *ble is a word in its own right then you add -able, otherwise it is -ible. For example, adaptable, favourable, knowledgeable, but it would be eligible and sensible. However, there are as many exceptions as there are words that follow the rule, making it completely useless! Resist being one such example; it is resistible and irresistible. |
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Title: Re: How is Your Spelling? Post by towr on Oct 13th, 2004, 10:08am Yikes, only 13 out of 23.. Luckily I have the excuse of it being a foreign language to me.. Not that I'd honestly do much better in my own languages.. bah, it also seems I mis-'corrected' a few, should have gone with my first instincts.. |
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Title: Re: How is Your Spelling? Post by ThyGod on Oct 13th, 2004, 11:01am Wow, I feel so stupid 9 out of 23....... :( |
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Title: Re: How is Your Spelling? Post by THUDandBLUNDER on Oct 13th, 2004, 11:17am I got only 'minniscule/miniscule/minuscule' wrong. 8) How about Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? (1) (http://www.guardian.co.uk/quiz/questions/0,5961,471751,00.html) Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? (2) (http://www.guardian.co.uk/quiz/questions/0,5961,211617,00.html) Weird Words (http://books.guardian.co.uk/quiz/questions/0,5957,786067,00.html) By the way, here (http://www.portia.org/chapter14/frame14.html) is an interesting article by a chess grandmaster about the infamous attempt at cheating in another series of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? (The correct answer to the million-dollar question in that series was 'googol'.) |
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Title: Re: How is Your Spelling? Post by Mayank on Oct 13th, 2004, 11:23am I got 13 too and though english is my second language, I am pretty good at it. The problem with such words is that when you are given an option to choose from similar looking and sounding words your mind tends to get a little bit confused. The trick is to just run through the first word, then without even looking at other words get the spelling in your mind right. Then look at the options and choose the correct one. I gave that page to 5 of my friends and 4 of them got 13. Maybe its because today is 13th Oct. ;D |
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Title: Re: How is Your Spelling? Post by DeMark on Oct 13th, 2004, 11:48am 18 of 23! Hey.... I think I'm good! ;D (I also thought it was cemetary. Actually, I wrote cemetary whole of my life. Oops.) |
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Title: Re: How is Your Spelling? Post by rmsgrey on Oct 13th, 2004, 1:56pm 15 out of 23. Most of mine were ones I was unsure on, but "ecstasy" completely threw me - it wasn't until after checking a couple of dictionaries that I decided to accept their answer |
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Title: Re: How is Your Spelling? Post by Icarus on Oct 13th, 2004, 8:16pm :-[How embarasing! I difinately blew this questionairre, getting only 12 seperete correct answers. (Actually, all of the above "errors" were words I did spell right.) |
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Title: Re: How is Your Spelling? Post by Barukh on Oct 14th, 2004, 8:45am I scored an embarrassing 10/23. on 10/13/04 at 11:17:05, THUDandBLUNDER wrote:
I checked in MS Word and several on-line dictionaries, they accept both minIscule and minUscule. |
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Title: Re: How is Your Spelling? Post by Three Hands on Oct 14th, 2004, 10:07am Meh, 14/23. Although I'm not entirely certain how much there were going for "correct" spellings as more archaic forms. Certainly for some of the ones I got wrong, they are perfectly acceptable spellings (or, at least, when I've seen them spelt elsewhere they would have been considered incorrect by the test) |
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Title: Re: How is Your Spelling? Post by TenaliRaman on Oct 14th, 2004, 10:49am I got 18/23 they say its not bad and i attended school properly .... i better get that page printed .... prolly my sole proof to innocence during school days :D |
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Title: Re: How is Your Spelling? Post by Sir Col on Oct 14th, 2004, 2:47pm on 10/14/04 at 08:45:55, Barukh wrote:
That surprised me when I first read your comment, but it seems that the spelling variant with an "i" is becoming accepted, and this is reinforced by considering the etymology of the word... The word minuscule is derived from the Latin, minusculus, meaning "somewhat small"; which comes from, minus=less. In English, the use of -cule, -cle, and -icle are used to as a diminutive in forming nouns. The problem with the word, miniscule, is that mini- is derived from the Latin, miniare, which means "red lead". Red lead was used in ancient times to decorate manuscripts, and in medieval times, the Latin took the verb form, minium, meaning to illuminate, as in the small elaborate drawings or paintings added to manuscripts. Eventually, English acquired it in a wider context to refer to "small images". Of course, today we use mini- as a prefix to refer to something small, so it seems feasible to allow miniscule to mean the same thing. I really need a new hobby! :-[ As an amusing aside, the use of the suffix -cule, is related to the Latin, culus, meaing end or rear, as in the end of a word. However, it is more colloquially, and perhaps appropriately, used to mean, buttocks. Hence, miniscule could mean, small buttocks, and maxiscule could mean, big arse! |
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Title: Re: How is Your Spelling? Post by Cathos on Oct 14th, 2004, 8:21pm Just so you all don't feel too embarassed (or is that embarrased) I let you know that I got an 8. Yay for me! 8) |
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Title: Re: How is Your Spelling? Post by THUDandBLUNDER on Oct 14th, 2004, 9:20pm on 10/14/04 at 20:21:47, Cathos wrote:
Sounds like you got lucky. :D |
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Title: Re: How is Your Spelling? Post by towr on Oct 15th, 2004, 12:54am [quote author=Sir Col link=board=riddles_easy;num=1097675874;start=0#12 date=10/14/04 at 14:47:49]I really need a new hobby! :-[/quote]Why? Etymology doesn't sound like such a bad one.. Beats kicking puppies ;) |
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Title: Re: How is Your Spelling? Post by Barukh on Oct 15th, 2004, 1:52am on 10/13/04 at 11:17:05, THUDandBLUNDER wrote:
Very interesting… Your formulation suggests that you are among many people to whom “the case … looks a clear cut”? That’s not the position of the author, is it? By the way, “If you don´t take risks, you don´t drink champagne" is not Gary Kasparov’s invention. |
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Title: Re: How is Your Spelling? Post by THUDandBLUNDER on Oct 15th, 2004, 4:39am Quote:
Well, one doesn't normally describe cheating by prefixing 'alleged' if the perps have been unanimously found Guilty by their peers in a Court of Law. :P It may interest you to know that six months later this muddling major was also convicted (http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=788&id=1288622003) of insurance fraud. Other opinions on this matter are most welcome. |
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Title: Re: How is Your Spelling? Post by Barukh on Oct 15th, 2004, 7:10am on 10/15/04 at 04:39:49, THUDandBLUNDER wrote:
I am sorry, I don’t understand something… I searched for the word “alleged” in the whole article, and haven’t found any… Quote:
Well, it’s not fair to discuss if somebody knows only one side’s opinion (and that’s what I do). Probably, you may spread some light on the other side? After all, it has happened in your country, right? Were the tapes made public? Have you seen them? When I read the paper, I had an impression that the arguments are quite plausible. Have you? |
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Title: Re: How is Your Spelling? Post by rmsgrey on Oct 15th, 2004, 11:53am The point of saying "alleged" is to try and cover yourself from being sued. Once a person's guilt has been determined by a court of law, use of "alleged" is no longer necessary since you have sufficient reason to believe they did it. On the other hand, if you believe there is some question as to the accuracy of the verdict, you would tend to use "alleged" to make your position clear. Personally, having read the article, I do not regard the major's guilt as "beyond reasonable doubt", but do consider Chris Tarrant to be guilty of prompting players as a matter of public record. Certainly, if Major Ingram is actually guilty, he's also guilty of criminal stupidity in the way the scheme was put together. Just by thinking for a few seconds, I can think of several simple ways to improve the code allegedly used and destroy the pattern. |
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Title: Re: How is Your Spelling? Post by Icarus on Oct 15th, 2004, 6:30pm I did better on the two "Millionaire" quizzes than the spelling. 9 right on the first, and 10 on the second - not bad at all considering how many British-specific questions there were. For instance, I missed the very first - supposedly easiest - question on the second quiz. In the USA, we say "sick as a dog". I've never heard "sick as a [hide]parrot[/hide]" before. |
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Title: Re: How is Your Spelling? Post by rmsgrey on Oct 16th, 2004, 10:41am I got 10 on each Millionaire, though in each case the 5 I got wrong were the only 5 I was unsure of - meaning I ended up failing to get a 1/4 guess 10 times in a row (odds are a bit worse than 1/16 of that happening - and the actual situation was even worse since several of them I had down to being one of two possibles, in all cases the other one being the right answer...). Also, in both cases, I got the final two wrong, so, assuming my lifelines were useful, I should probably have walked away with 125000, though maybe only 32000, depending on how aggressively I played the final questions... |
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