Since today’s Wordplay Day coincides with the eve of Halloween, this morning’s Scrabble post includes a list of words for ghosts. Two of the words (banshee and eidolon) are seven letters long, enabling a player or team to Scrabble, or bingo, earning an additional fifty points for the play. Another is eight letters long (barguest) and can be formed by adding letters to a word played previously.
- banshee: a female spirit in Gaelic folklore that wails to warn of a family member’s imminent death.
- barguest: a goblin (also barghest)
- bogy: a goblin
- daimon: a spirit (also daemon and demon)
- eidolon: a phantom or specter
- haint: a ghost
- kelpie: a water sprite in Scottish folklore known for drowning sailors
- wraith: a ghost of a person, often appearing just before that person’s death
- zombi: a zombie
In the second half of today’s class, you will have the opportunity to win one of the copies of Stephen King’s On Writing, pictured above.
Some Sweet Scores
Since Halloween brings trick-or-treat candy, here’s a list of playable sweets. If you have the right letters, don’t be a butterfingers–but play the word if you can.
- Bonbon: a type of chocolate-coated sweet
- Butterfingers: a clumsy person (also butterfingered but not butterfinger)
- Candyfloss: cotton candy
- Fireball: a ball of fire, a meteor
- Jawbreaker: a type of hard candy
- Jujube: a type of edible berry (not to be confused with juju: an object believed to have magical powers)
- Nestle: to lie close to something or someone
- Skittle: a form of bowling, or a pin played in that game (but not skittles)
- Starburst: an image resembling a diffusion of light
- Tootsie: a foot (also tootsy)
Kudos
Skylar Bowry, Avery Broadbent, Nicole Halucka, Claire Jahnke, Devyn Jones, Vivian Laliberte, Mackenzie Mossa, Mariah Robinson, and Sophia Stewart, and Alexis Zavalishin revised their comments on the group presentations and published their revisions as posts on their blogs. For their efforts, they received bonus-assignment credit.
Next Up
Monday, we will examine the sample annotated bibliography “All Hail the King,” which you should read and annotate before class. If you were absent when I distributed copies or you misplaced yours, print a copy from Blackboard. “All Hail the King” is posted in the Sample Papers folder on Blackboard. We will also study the most recent reading assignments in Ted Chiang’s The Lifecycle of Software Objects: Chapter Three (for Wednesday), Chapter Four (for today), and Chapter Five (for Monday).
