Word riddles

[darkstar]

Well, maybe not a riddle in the tradional sense, but just stumper, brain bustings questions w/ real answers.

For example:

A 9 letter word in enlish language that is only one syllable.

Don't know if this is an old chestnut or not. (If so, maybe hold back on ready answer for those who would enjoy solving?)

Back in 15 min or so w/ a clue.....

[darkstar]

1. Clue #1:

It is the plural form of the word.

[lazarus]

2. Actually, there's two of them

Just swipe between the stars below to see the answer:

*strengths and screeched*

Now for mine: What english word has six consonants in a row?

[darkstar]

3. Two of them, huh?

Well, lets see. Are both plural forms?

The one I was thinking of (Clue #2) has only one vowel. Is this the case for both?

As for the six consonants in a row, I'll have to start thinking. Going to go swimming soon. Will ponder--brain and arms flailing--as I do laps....

PS: Didn't "swipe between the stars", but that is a chat board trick I've never seen before. How utterly cool!

[lazarus]

4. It's a fun one

All you have to do is put in:

{font color="white"}type stuff here{/font}

then change each { or } to a regular bracket. It also works great for spoilers and stuff. I use it all the time on a Survivor board if I want to speculate about stuff that others might not want to read. The problem is, that board uses weird alternating colours. Took us a while and lots of experimentation to figure out what HTML codes to use for those colours.

One of the words is a plural, one is a past tense, btw. The past tense has three vowels, all the same. That's a big clue.

The six consonants has two syllables. It's fairly obscure, but is very, very English, no weirdo languages that haven't been used since Chaucer's time or anything.

[Piltdown13]

8. Hmmm...

I can think of a few semi-obscure medical terms that have *more* than six consonants in a row, but can't seem to think of any word that fits your criteria. Still thinking....

On edit: Question: does "y" count as a vowel for this exercise?

[lazarus]

9. Nope

Y does not count.

Another hint. It's two three consonant combos that are connected. If that makes sense.

[Piltdown13]

10. Two three-consonant combos?

Well, there goes my guess -- you could split the word I have in mind into two groups of three letters, but individually they don't make any sense. (My guess was "rhythm," by the way.)

[mykpart]

16. Rhythm

i had to know it - I'm Catholic!

[RoeBear]

5. The moderator is a witch (or wizard as the gender applies)!

S/he makes words appear where no words were! A witch I say!

[lazarus]

6. We prefer warlock

:evilgrin:

[RoeBear]

7. Sorry...

...now to go hop off and eat some flies.

[darkstar]

11. Hey Laz:

Got one, *I think.* The other 9 letter, one syllable word. Pertains to having made small? (BTW, I did the "swipe" to see if that's the one you had in mind and it didn't work for me. I was so excited, too.) To be honest the one I have in mind is in a gray area, syllable-wise, my dictionary didn't have past tense. (Central casting "typical geek" voice over: "Wouldn't it be exciting if there were actually three such words in the lexicon?")

The other one has me stumped. Worked on it. Came back. Saw clues. Nowhere near, it appears.

Here's another. Based on my own observations, not a hand me down as the first one was:

Two English words. They are perfect homonyms. They are also--using a particular but still "in the dictionary" meaning for one of them--perfect antonyms. Could be widely known, I suppose, but I don't get out much....

on edit: forgot about yr clues above re: the 3 vowels. So if you count mine--scroll down--then there are three.....




















scrunched

[lazarus]

12. The swipe didn't work?

well, here's the answer to all three, just scroll down a ways:































strengths and screeched are the one syllable words. Latchstring is the six consonant word.

I'll have to think about the homonym/antonym thing. We've got dinner and a movie starting. Watching Yojimbo and A Fistful of Dollars back to back. :D

[darkstar]

13. Yep

see below (answers discussed)




















"Strengths" was my original.

We got three now, huh?

Latchstring would have been *impossible*. Thanks.


All hints I can think of re: the two word puzzle are too obvious, IMO.

I'll try to think up a subtle one.


Good call on the double bill. About a 2 months ago we did "Rashomon" and Bava's "Four Times That Night."

[lazarus]

14. We're doing the whole Spaghetti Western thing

I can't wait to do The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly again. I think it's one of the best 10 films ever made.

Then we're doing Seven Samurai and Magnificent Seven. I not only have all of Kurosawa lined up on NetFlix, we TiVo Samurai Saturday on IFC every Saturday morning. They've been doing Toshiro Mifune films for the past two months. We've got 4 or 5 of those to catch up on next. Best thing about IFC is, they're not only uncut, but LETTERBOX! WOOHOO!

[lazarus]

15. BTW

I'm assuming you don't mean a contranym, right? Cause there's a bunch of those.

[darkstar]

17. Hey

sorry to be so late in getting back to you. Not sure what a contranym is. Antonyms, in my grade school days, anyhow, were words with opposite meanings. I think.

Any way, the words are "raise" and "raze". As in, "last week we raised/razed a building." Hope these aren't actually contranyms....