Puzzles

A section to discuss matters not related to Chess in particular.
Kevin Thurlow
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Re: Puzzles

Post by Kevin Thurlow » Wed Mar 10, 2021 5:22 pm

"strychnine"

well done, Neil, much quicker than I got it when someone asked me!

Neil Graham
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Re: Puzzles

Post by Neil Graham » Wed Mar 10, 2021 7:46 pm

Kevin Williamson wrote:
Wed Mar 10, 2021 5:00 pm
polish/Polish
Nothing really to do with this - but in my youth the BBC used to include on Children's Hour the ubiquitous series "Tales from Europe" which appeared to be (mostly) produced in black and white. Examples of this included "The Singing Ringing Tree" and "The Tinderbox" amongst others. It was many years later that I realised that polish films were nothing to do with waxing the furniture but were in fact from Poland.

Matthew Turner
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Re: Puzzles

Post by Matthew Turner » Wed Mar 10, 2021 7:49 pm

Neil Graham wrote:
Wed Mar 10, 2021 7:46 pm
Kevin Williamson wrote:
Wed Mar 10, 2021 5:00 pm
polish/Polish
Nothing really to do with this - but in my youth the BBC used to include on Children's Hour the ubiquitous series "Tales from Europe" which appeared to be (mostly) produced in black and white. Examples of this included "The Singing Ringing Tree" and "The Tinderbox" amongst others. It was many years later that I realised that polish films were nothing to do with waxing the furniture but were in fact from Poland.
Reference is made to Free Polish(polish) in the Dads Army episode The Face on the Poster.

Kevin Williamson
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Re: Puzzles

Post by Kevin Williamson » Wed Mar 10, 2021 7:52 pm

Matthew Turner wrote:
Wed Mar 10, 2021 7:49 pm
Neil Graham wrote:
Wed Mar 10, 2021 7:46 pm
Kevin Williamson wrote:
Wed Mar 10, 2021 5:00 pm
polish/Polish
Nothing really to do with this - but in my youth the BBC used to include on Children's Hour the ubiquitous series "Tales from Europe" which appeared to be (mostly) produced in black and white. Examples of this included "The Singing Ringing Tree" and "The Tinderbox" amongst others. It was many years later that I realised that polish films were nothing to do with waxing the furniture but were in fact from Poland.
Reference is made to Free Polish(polish) in the Dads Army episode The Face on the Poster.
I think there was a scene in One Foot In The Grave where Victor misread his shopping list and came home with Polish sherry rather than Cherry polish

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John Clarke
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Re: Puzzles

Post by John Clarke » Wed Mar 10, 2021 10:00 pm

Matthew Turner wrote:
Wed Mar 10, 2021 1:49 pm
What word is pronounced differently if the first letter is a capital.
Home. (Pronounced "Hume", as in the 14th Earl of Home, who became prime minister as Sir Alec Douglas-Home.)
"The chess-board is the world ..... the player on the other side is hidden from us ..... he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance."
(He doesn't let you resign and start again, either.)

Matthew Turner
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Re: Puzzles

Post by Matthew Turner » Wed Mar 10, 2021 11:19 pm

John Clarke wrote:
Wed Mar 10, 2021 10:00 pm
Matthew Turner wrote:
Wed Mar 10, 2021 1:49 pm
What word is pronounced differently if the first letter is a capital.
Home. (Pronounced "Hume", as in the 14th Earl of Home, who became prime minister as Sir Alec Douglas-Home.)
That is another really clever answer.

Matthew Turner
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Re: Puzzles

Post by Matthew Turner » Wed Mar 10, 2021 11:25 pm

Judging by some of the brilliant answers, I think a number of you will enjoy this challenge.
How many prefixes are there that make a word have the opposite meaning.
There is room for some creative thinking and some debate over what is 'opposite'. Enjoy.

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IM Jack Rudd
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Re: Puzzles

Post by IM Jack Rudd » Thu Mar 11, 2021 12:16 am

The general cases are in-, un-, anti-, non-, a- and various modified forms of those. There are probably also a bunch of specific cases.

Kevin Williamson
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Re: Puzzles

Post by Kevin Williamson » Thu Mar 11, 2021 6:53 am

IM Jack Rudd wrote:
Thu Mar 11, 2021 12:16 am
The general cases are in-, un-, anti-, non-, a- and various modified forms of those. There are probably also a bunch of specific cases.
Three more are dis-, counter- and im-

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John Clarke
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Re: Puzzles

Post by John Clarke » Thu Mar 11, 2021 8:05 am

Don't forget ig- - a very specific case.
"The chess-board is the world ..... the player on the other side is hidden from us ..... he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance."
(He doesn't let you resign and start again, either.)

Matthew Turner
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Re: Puzzles

Post by Matthew Turner » Thu Mar 11, 2021 9:07 am

A decent start, but I think there are quite a few more out there.

NickFaulks
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Re: Puzzles

Post by NickFaulks » Thu Mar 11, 2021 10:00 am

In- is a strange one - consider invalid and invaluable. Americans fail to grasp inflammable, which can in some circumstances be important. They sensibly use non-flammable.
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a QR code stamped on a human face — forever.

David Sedgwick
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Re: Puzzles

Post by David Sedgwick » Thu Mar 11, 2021 10:07 am

Matthew Turner wrote:
Wed Mar 10, 2021 11:19 pm
John Clarke wrote:
Wed Mar 10, 2021 10:00 pm
Matthew Turner wrote:
Wed Mar 10, 2021 1:49 pm
What word is pronounced differently if the first letter is a capital.
Home. (Pronounced "Hume", as in the 14th Earl of Home, who became prime minister as Sir Alec Douglas-Home.)
That is another really clever answer.
Indeed it is, but "Hume" is not the universal pronunciation of "Home" as a proper noun.

Home House is an upmarket private members' club in Marylebone which was mentioned as a victim of alleged fraud emanating from the Braingames World Championship Match in 2000. (No such fraud was ever proved.)

When I first heard of it, I called it "Hume House", only to be told immediately that it was "Home House".

Matthew Turner
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Re: Puzzles

Post by Matthew Turner » Thu Mar 11, 2021 10:21 am

NickFaulks wrote:
Thu Mar 11, 2021 10:00 am
In- is a strange one - consider invalid and invaluable. Americans fail to grasp inflammable, which can in some circumstances be important. They sensibly use non-flammable.
I think the idea put forward is that inflammable comes from the French 'en flambe'

NickFaulks
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Re: Puzzles

Post by NickFaulks » Thu Mar 11, 2021 10:38 am

I thought it came from "capable of becoming inflamed" - perhaps another way of saying the same thing. Invaluable means you cannot put a value on something because it is worth so much, perhaps like the king in chess. It could mean instead that you cannot give it a value because it's junk.
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a QR code stamped on a human face — forever.

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