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Solving => Today's Puzzles => Topic started by: magus on August 08, 2015, 09:20:26 AM
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THEME: none, but four triples
GOOD ONES:
Chiseler, at times CARPENTER [yet I thought cheater, etc.]
Top sellers TOY STORES
Stands where we lie BED TABLES [aren't they "night tables"]
BTW:
Alan must've been in France recently:
Vous ETES ici
ALPES-Maritimes
RENTE
SOU
"Some Like It Hot Hard": I'm one
RATING: ;D ;D
Three grins = Loved it; Two grins = Enjoyed it; One grin = A bit bland for my taste; One teardrop = Not much fun
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Traversée RENTE et ETES est pas bon.
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Well, you do write complete sentences after all! (Sadly it's French, my most hated subject in H.S.) But if we must, C'est vrai, mon ami.
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When a crossword includes ESA or CASA or some other Spanish word, Mister magus usually notes that the word is "not used in English." I wasted two months...err, I mean I spent two months keeping track of all the words which appeared in puzzles. The lists of the most over-used words are at
http://www.cruciverb.com/index.php?topic=106228.0
http://www.cruciverb.com/index.php?topic=105973.0
and, surprisingly, only two Spanish words were among the most common: OLE and ORO. There were six French words that made the list: ECRU, EPEE, ETE, MER, NEE and TETE. Yes, I know three of those have become part of the English language but all six are French in origin and each of the six includes from one to three E's. E is the most common letter in the English language and it follows that E would be the most common letter in crosswords, but can't puzzle creators find English words with several E's? Do they have to use French and Spanish words?
Scott Bryce has a page of tips for cryptogram solvers. It includes a ranking of the most common letters along with lists of the most common digraphs, trigraphs, double letters, two-letter words, et cetera.
http://scottbryce.com/cryptograms/stats.htm
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Mr. T ---
For the record, and I know you are a man most concerned with precision, I am not opposed to all foreign words, just those not used in our language. The exception are foreign words used in places, on menus, etc. CASA is a foreign word which is used in our language: in this case in restaurant names, among others while ESA never is.
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Oh, I get it now. You just don't like seeing words which are too esa-teric. :)