Monday, April 12, 1999

THE WORDS FOR THE FINALS WERE:  DUCK, WITHOUT, and RESOURCES
  So how did I come up with this magical combination?
  And what were the "tiebreaker" words???

I went to my favorite web search site:
http://www.askjeeves.com (no affiliation) and
input the following question:  "What test words
should I use for my MOO contest?"  ... I decided
beforehand that I would choose the fourth four-letter
word on the fourth page I could find, the seventh
seven-letter word on the seventh page, and the ninth
nine-letter word on the ninth page.  So here's what
turned up:

http://www.georgetown.edu/cball/animals/cow.html gave me
  the sounds of the world's animals page ... a HORRIBLE 
  choice since most of the words were really "sounds".
  While I didn't know that cows in different countries
  actually spoke different languages, this was not helpful.
  I decided to use the fourth 4-letter word in the list of
  animals at the bottom of the page, and came up with:
  bird, crow, dove, and the chosen one:

			D U C K 


http://www.matisse.net/files/glossary.html was the next
  selection ... a glossary of Internet terms (which was
  prefaced by a copyright agreement).  As I was carefully
  counting down the seven letter words on the page I
  found Matisse (wouldn't have used this, but I counted
  it as number one), hosting, spamcop (wouldn't have used 
  this one either), granted (I decided not to count words
  that were repeated), content, altered, and then:

			W I T H O U T


http://www.ualr.edu/~owl/wpeinfo.html appears to be from
  the University of Arkansas providing information about
  the writing proficiency examination.  Counting nine
  letter words in the main frame I got preparing, agreement,
  generally, knowledge, admission, available, September,
  questions, and the winner was:

			R E S O U R C E S


Having decided on the three final words, I figured I'd come
up with some additional words to use for tiebreakers.  Since
my local paper, The Asbury Park Press, was sitting on a table
in front of me, I picked an article (on car insurance rates in
New Jersey) and picked 2 each of 4-9 letter words.  They were:

	CALL ALSO 
	TODAY URGED 
	BEFORE POLICY 
	BARGAIN SHERIFF 
	EXPIRING HONESTLY 
	DISTRICTS INSURANCE

Yeah - I know it was low-tech - but I could have lied and
 said I got it from their web-site ... I'm just too honest!

=Fred ... no complaining allowed for I am the POTM-master!