That was unexpected.

[saxikath]

Last night, the Brattle Theater, Harvard Bookstore, and Houghton Mifflin sponsored an event called a "Define-a-thon." It's like a spelling bee, except that instead of being asked to spell a word, you're given a definition (or a request for synonym or antonym) and four choices of words, and have to pick the one that matches. So you might be given the defintiion "ill-repute" (there was more to it than that, but that was the gist) and asked whether this was the definition for oblast, obsequiousness, obliquity, or obloquy. As in a spelling bee, if you're right you stay in, if you miss one you're out. Or you might be asked which of the words was the best synonym for recalcitrant or antonym for cacophonous.

They did two heats of 20 contestants each. The first time around in each heat, the "level 1" questions were all pretty easy. I think only one person of the 40 total missed a word in this round. The next several go-rounds they used "level 2" questions, which varied -- some seemed noticeably tougher than others. (And you really needed to know your science!) Once the field had been winnowed down to fewer than 10 or so, they went to the "level 3" questions, which got very tough (though again there was a lot of variation -- some I knew right away, some were much more obscure). At the end, the winners of the two heats went head-to-head in a best-three-out-of-five showdown.

A number of Boston-area NPL folk came, including hahathor, luckylefty, Ucaoimhu, D. Ness, Aesop, Lucis, and Eric. (All of whom competed except for Lucis and Uc. luckylefty was in the first heat, the rest of us in the second.)

The first heat was won by a charismatic woman named Brandy, with luckylefty runner-up. The second was won by...

...well, me. And I ended up winning the whole thing.

That's right, I demonstrated my wordgeekiness in front of the entire Brattle Theater full of people. (100 people? 200? I'm terrible at crowd estimation.) I got lucky in the questions I was asked -- there were a number of words other people had to guess that I would have gotten wrong, but most of the ones I got I actually knew. (I think my knowing "ballista" particularly surprised the host.) The ones I didn't know, I was able to eliminate a couple of the answer choices and make a reasonable guess. My biggest scare actually came early on -- my second word, my first in level 2. The definition was something like "a small anchor with three prongs," and the answer choices included two I could eliminate right off, and then grapnel and stanchion, both of which I'd heard but neither of which I was entirely certain of. Fortunately, I guessed correctly.

There was a film crew from CBS Sunday Morning, working on a story about word games, and an interviewer from the Boston Globe (City Weekly section, a week from this Sunday, apparently), and they took a photo of me, the runner-up, the host, and a couple of the Houghton Mifflin people to go in Publishers Weekly, of all things! (I hope I don't get in trouble for being in a photo that touts one of my company's competitors...)

So, yeah, I'm a geek. As if you didn't know that. But it was fun!

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[gnomi.livejournal.com]

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