[Dixonary] Rnd1621 QUEASOM - The Defs

[Chris Carson]

Your hardworking dealer is running a little behind the curve but hopes that the players will excuse the delay. As anyone who has ever dealt on a road trip knows, deadlines are hard to stick to. In any case, we arrived at the YMCA Camp of the Rockies at Estes Park, CO and have settled in. The facilities are primative, necessitating a bit of jerry rigging of phone cables and connections but dialup is far better than nothing and it seems to be working quite well, albeit a little slow compared to my cable connection at home.

And now to business. Here we are with a total of 21 cleverly contrived definitions for QUEASOM, one of which actually came from a dictionary. I'm going to stretch the deadline a bit again to work around activities so please vote for your two favorites by public reply to this message before 11:00pm EDT on Sunday, June 26, 2005. That would be 9:00pm in my present location, MDT and 8:00pm on the left coast.

New players are always welcome and you need not have submitted a def to vote, but please check the rules at tapcis.com or the Coryphaeus Group on Yahoo before posting to avoid inadvertently giving the game away.

And now, without further ado, here are the definitions for your voting pleasure.


1. A cutting tool with a wooden handle and a curved blade terminating
in a hook at its tip, used for pruning, chopping, etc.

2. A mineral of hydrous sodium carbonate, Na2CO3·10H2O, often found
crystallized with other salts.

3. The reinforcing brace of a heavy-duty plow.

4. [German] An exceptionally large and strong man.

5. A round decorative window, usually over another window.

6. [Naut.] A fiddle and mounting without a becket on the traveler car.

7. A shore-based naval officer responsible for victualling ships.
[obs. from lat 'quaestor'].

8. A writ of the king allowing a noble to hunt on the grounds owned by
the crown.

9. A reasonable quantity; a sufficiency.

10. A collective term for a colony or swarm of bees or wasps (N. Eng.).

11. Cowardly; craven.

12. An obsolete form of apricot.

13. (Noun) When holding someone for ransom upsets your stomach.

14. A horizontal dividing bar of wood or stone in a window.

15. A miniature bivalve found only in the North Atlantic.

16. A highly-spiced dish of quinoa, peppers, onions, tomatoes, and
cilantro.

17. To choke; stifle.

18. Tending to cause nausea.

19. (_Southern U.S._) A small amount; a smidgen.

20. _Ch. Brit._ In examinations, "to whom does this statement apply"
[possibly Latin in origin].

21. Ancient double-reed wind instrument.


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[Daniel B. Widdis]

I would like it to be 8 or 19. It probably isn't.

--
Dan

[Bill Hirst]

The ouija board says it's definiterly 7 or 20 this time.

[Guerri Stevens]

I vote for 6 and 9.

Guerri

[Guerri Stevens]

Chris Carson wrote:

> ... 21. Ancient double-reed wind instrument.
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>

What does that last line mean? What non-text portions were there?

Guerri

[Chris Carson]

I don't know, Guerri. I've seen that tag before but am not sure where it
comes from. It may have been Yahoo. There were no non-text items in the
original post ... straight text was all there was.

Chris

> Chris Carson wrote:
>
> > ... 21. Ancient double-reed wind instrument.
> >
> >
> > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> >
>
> What does that last line mean? What non-text portions were there?
>
> Guerri

[Dave Cunningham]

7 and 10 for no special reasons at all ...

Dave

[Hugo Kornelis]

Hi Chris,

My votes are for:

5. A round decorative window, usually over another window.

and

8. A writ of the king allowing a noble to hunt on the grounds owned by
the crown.

I'd have loved to reward the author of #13 with a point, but since #5 and #8
are obviously both correct, I'll just have to vote for them instead...

Best, Hugo

[Hugo Kornelis]

Hi Guerri,

> > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> >
>
> What does that last line mean? What non-text portions were there?

In Outlook Express, I can choose to send e-mail as HTML or as plain text.
This choice defaults to HTML when replying to Coryphaues messages. (I don't
know why, though - since I've requested Yahoo to send the messages as plain
text, replying in kind would be the more logical choice).

I usually change the choice to plain text before sending my reply. But
sometimes I forget. And when I do forget, then the message returns to me
with the same last line.

So for my messages, the non-text portion is the HTML code sent along with
the e-mail text. I assume it's the same for mails sent by the other
participants of this group.

Best, Hugo

[Guerri Stevens]

It could also be that Thunderbird added that information, due to some
setting I've made. I also have seen that before and have wondered.

It could be Yahoo - while I was using CompuServe Mail, occasionally I
would get a message from a correspondent using Yahoo that would have
that MIME decoding junk in it, claiming that it couldn't decode the
message. The suggestion from others was that there were some non-ASCII
characters in the messages, but I could never find any. Oh well.

Guerri

Chris Carson wrote:
> I don't know, Guerri. I've seen that tag before but am not sure where it
> comes from. It may have been Yahoo. There were no non-text items in the
> original post ... straight text was all there was.
>
> Chris
>

[Guerri Stevens]

I wonder how Chris sent his message? From the group directly? Via a
reply to my message as forwarded to his Email? From tapcis.com?

Your explanation makes a lot of sense. I think HTML codes are actually
just text, are they not? But maybe something along the way knows they
are not text or has translated them into formatting which is not text. I
should learn to ignore this stuff!

Guerri

Hugo Kornelis wrote:
> Hi Guerri,

> In Outlook Express, I can choose to send e-mail as HTML or as plain text.
> This choice defaults to HTML ...
>
> I usually change the choice to plain text before sending my reply. But
> sometimes I forget. And when I do forget, then the message returns to me
> with the same last line.
>
> So for my messages, the non-text portion is the HTML code sent along with
> the e-mail text. I assume it's the same for mails sent by the other
> participants of this group.
>
> Best, Hugo
>

[franellewetz]

I'll vote for #3 and #9, please.

[Chris Carson]

Guerri,

I think Hugo hit the nail on the head. I posted the defs by emailing them
to the Yahoo group. I use Outlook Express as an email client and it is
indeed set to default to HTML messages. I guess there is HTML info attached
even though the content is pure text.

Chris

[Hugo Kornelis]

Hi Guerri,

> I think HTML codes are actually
> just text, are they not? But maybe something along the way knows they
> are not text or has translated them into formatting which is not text.

Yeah, that's correct. Standard procedure for HTML mail is to send the same
mail twice, once as plain text and once as HTML only (some mail programs
leave out the plain text part - in my experience these are all from
spammers). Some specific codes in the mail are used to show where each part
begins and what each part is. If you want to know the exact technicalities,
read on. If you don't want to know the details, than the rest of the mail is
not of interest to you!

Here are some snippets from a mail in my archive that was sent as HTML mail.
(I'm prefixing all lines below with "Quote=> " to make sure that no mail
client will get confused).

The three lines below are embedded in the standard e-mail headers:

Quote=> Mime-Version: 1.0
Quote=> Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
Quote=> boundary="----=_Part_6635_7360894.1119268867481"

I'm not sure if the Mime version is relevant, but the content type shows
that there are multiple parts in the e-mail, and defines the boundary
between the parts. After the headers follow the defined boundary, a
description of the type of content in the first part and the body of the
message (Note: I removed the actual text of the e-mail <g>)

Quote=> ------=_Part_6635_7360894.1119268867481
Quote=> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Quote=> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Quote=>
Quote=> Hello HugoK,
Quote=>
Quote=> blah blah blah

After the last line of the mail, the boundary is repeated, and then the
description for the second part defines it as html text. I guess that this
is enough for Yahoo to decide to skip this entire part and move straight on
to the next occurence of the boundary.

Quote=> last line of mail test
Quote=> ------=_Part_6635_7360894.1119268867481
Quote=> Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii
Quote=> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Quote=>
Quote=> <html>
Quote=> <head><title>Blah blah!!!</title></head>
Quote=> <body>
Quote=> Hello HugoK,
Quote=> <p>
Quote=> blah blah blah

The text is the same, but with some text embedded that define where to use
bold face or a smaller font. The last lines of the actual mail text are
followed by two tags (to close the open tags near the beginnen), and of
course the boundary to signal the end of the second part. And since nothing
follows this boundary, that's also the end of the e-mail. (If the sender
would have attached a picture or something, then that would have been a
third part, using yet another content type).

Quote=> last line of mail test
Quote=> </body>
Quote=> </html>
Quote=> ------=_Part_6635_7360894.1119268867481--

Best, Hugo

Final note, in case you've made it this far: Outlook Express users can check
the e-mail as it was sent by RIGHT-clicking the mail in the inbox, selecting
properties, switching to thte details tab and clicking the button "view
source" (or something like that - my version of Outlook Express is Dutch
<g>). I often use this to check a mail that might or might not be spam,
since viewing the source won't execute any embedded HTML code, so it'll
never activate viruses or send hidden confirmations that the e-mail address
was valid to the sender.

[Tim Bourne]

1 and 9, please.

Tim B

[Guerri Stevens]

I am using Thunderbird, and tried the right clicking thing on your
message in my Inbox. I got the "open in new window", "reply to ..." and
move/delete stuff, but no properties. I do have a view option for the
message body, though: Original HTML, Simple HTML, and Plain Text. I
tried the different options on a couple of messages that were HTML, but
didn't get any HTML codes showing up. There may be yet another feature
that would show them, but I am done experimenting for the moment.

Guerri

Hugo Kornelis wrote:
> Final note, in case you've made it this far: Outlook Express users can check
> the e-mail as it was sent by RIGHT-clicking the mail in the inbox, selecting
> properties, switching to thte details tab and clicking the button "view
> source" (or something like that - my version of Outlook Express is Dutch
> <g>). I often use this to check a mail that might or might not be spam,
> since viewing the source won't execute any embedded HTML code, so it'll
> never activate viruses or send hidden confirmations that the e-mail address
> was valid to the sender.

[Wayne Scott]

If it's something you did, I did it,too.

Wayne

[Wayne Scott]

7 and 8.
Why did you omit the real definition?

[Tony Abell]

Having victuals in sufficient quantity right now, I'll waste my votes
on 7 and 9.

[Russ Heimerson]

I'll go for # 9 and # 11, please.

Russ

[mshefler]

I'll fall for 9 and 17.