Might be sesqui is a century and a half and pedal is by foot…
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“Sesquipedalian” is kind of a joke of a word, being a long word that means “a word that’s too long”, but it’s a joke that goes back to Latin! We find it in Horace:
Et tragicus plerumque dolet sermone pedestri
And in tragedy, Telephus and Peleus often grieveTelephus et Peleus, cum pauper et exsul uterque
in prosaic language; in poverty or in exile theyproicit ampullas et sesquipedalia verba,
throw away their swellings and their foot-and-a-half-long wordssi curat cor spectantis tetigisse querella.
if they want their laments to touch the audience’s heart.
I’m pretty sure the only reason it was adopted into English is for the joke, though.
(Also, “swellings” here is literally “flasks”; the word got metaphorically applied to actors who puff up their chests to look big on stage, and end up looking like a flask with a big round body and a little head.)
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Holy dooley, I turn my back for 5 minutes and when I return, I’m bedazzled by make-believe words, rabbit farts and Latin lessons from @Draconis.
Is that anything like diarrhea? There seems to be a lot of it in this thread.
I don’t do the New York Times crossword, as I don’t live in New York. However, it is quite famous and even those of us that live in the Antipodes have heard of it. Now that I know about Will Shortz, I plan to write him a letter asking whether XYZZY has ever appeared in the NYT crossword and, if not, why not.
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Oh! In all seriousness, if you actually do write him about this, please let us know if he responds!
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Seconded.
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This is the best idea I’ve heard in a long time. And it’s good to have help in dealing with Will’s shockingly bad behavior. Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one doing anything about it.
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Per XWord Info, XYZZY has not yet appeared in a NYT crossword puzzle.
SESQUIPEDALIAN on the other hand has appeared three times.
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god help me I love writers
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I’m looking forward to this year’s IFDB Awards!
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Quick question - I haven’t read all of this thread: Are the XYZZY Awards dead?
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No, but they’re currently significantly behind schedule - i.e. the 2023 awards have not been held yet.
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See this thread for the latest official information.
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Thanks!
The XYZZYs are still dead. Is nobody prepared to recognize that there is a problem here?
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Do you have a proposal to improve the situation? The IFDB awards have run in the intervening time and been (at least in my eyes) a great success; given everything Pinkunz has been dealing with, I don’t think pestering him more about it is going to make the XYZZYs happen any faster.
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“Pester”? I’m observing and acknowledging the reality of the situation.
The handoff to Pinkunz as the new organizer was 9 months ago now. He hasn’t even been “seen” by the forum for four months, i.e. not since making bold claims (some now deleted) that the pending awards – for 2023 games – would very definitely be rolled out by the end of 2024. We’re almost a third of the way through 2025 now, and there has been zero observable activity. In fact, the only statement about scheduling that has not yet been disproven by events was: “No, the 2023 awards will not be announced in 2025.”
As you note, the IFDB Awards, by contrast, were delivered 100% on time – with plenty of communication throughout the process – for the third year in a row. That’s what proper conduct of an organizer for an important community event looks like.
This will already be the latest XYZZYs in history – the previous record was announcing the XYZZYs for 2022 games in January 2024. The point of the handoff was to reverse that trend, not continue it.
Everyone seems willing to implicitly recognize that Pinkunz is failing in his stewardship of the XYZZY awards. In my opinion, the cause of that does not matter. If I were making a proposal, it would be that Pinkunz pass the torch to someone who will fulfill the duty to the community as quickly as possible, to begin the work of restoring this now much-tarnished community heirloom.
Alternatively, we could all just acknowledge that the IFDB Awards are the new XYZZYs, and that the old XYZZYs are defunct.
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I contacted @pinkunz in the last few days of 2024 to ask whether there was anything that I could do to help with the XYZZYs.
He said that for his first year running the XYZZYs, he had wanted to follow the existing process without making any changes so that he understood it. The existing process, as I understand it, involves manually vetting the list of every game released in the year in question for eligibility. I can imagine this was not a big deal in 1997, but it’s a mammoth task now. Pinkunz said he had wanted to do it all by himself so that he understood the scope of the task. At that point, he said he still thought it would be possible to open nominations for the 2023 awards before the end of the year (i.e. within a day or two).
I offered to help with the vetting of eligible games for the 2024 awards. In early March he sent me a list of a couple of hundred games which he said represented the bulk of what was left to process and I sorted through them to determine which ones were eligible according to the XYZZY criteria. The last I heard was about a month ago when Pinkunz said he was hoping to post an update on the XYZZYs on this forum shortly.
So that’s what I’ve done to try to help with keeping the XYZZYs going. Do you have a particular further course of action in mind that you’re proposing that you, or someone else, take?
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If you want to reach out to Sam Ashwell and suggest alternate candidates then go ahead – he’s still got the keys to the kingdom, so to speak. That said he was very reluctant to hand them off at all and was, well, very picky about who would take them over. Is there another candidate Sam would approve of? Who knows.
That said, on this subject – would it hurt to show a little sympathy? Pinkunz has been going through all lot (and has continued to have unexpected things happen to him since your last post that haven’t been shared with the forum). These are things that couldn’t have been foreseen and frankly, you haven’t ever been remotely nice about his situation or even offered to help yourself.
If you want to make any progress here, I would recommend adding a little honey to your approach because the vinegar is off-putting.
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For your information, I was helping Pinkunz with the eligible list of games for the XYZZYs in March. We were on the 2024 games. Does that help your confidence at all? I hope it does.
They will get done. Be that tomorrow, next month, or maybe next year.
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The proper point of comparison is not 1997, which is a rhetorical extreme. As I understand it, the last time that the XYZZYs were delivered on time was circa 2015.
My understanding is that the “keys to the kingdom” were handed over as of last July. Per the official announcement, the XYZZYs have been Pinkunz’s responsibility since that time.
My sympathy or lack thereof is irrelevant. Every time I bring up the XYZZYs, people immediately try to make the conversation about me. It is not about me, though the desire to “shoot the messenger” may apply. It’s also not about whether or not I, or anyone, has confidence in Pinkunz. The facts speak for themselves.
The secondhand information being disclosed here is of interest, but I have to ask why it is coming from you (and coming now) instead of being proactively disseminated to the community as Pinkunz repeatedly has promised – and repeatedly failed – to do. Almost 50 people clicked on the link here in the hopes of fresh news last month; I’m clearly not alone in wondering just what is going on.
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