The Slush of Meaning: A Game of Skill, Chance, and Disappointment with the State of Language Today

October 24, 2004

http://www.arras.net/slush_of_meaning/

The rules are simple, but the combinations of play, infinite.

You will be faced with a three quatrain poem based on Noam Chomsky's
famous example of a sentence that is grammatically correct but logically impossible -- i.e. nonsensical or "meaningless."

The trick is to pick the phrase that has the most Google hits. That is, which phrase, when typed into the Google search engine with double-quotes around it, would get the most hits.

If you guess the correct phrase, a browser window will open up that will show you the Google page with those hits. If you are incorrect, a window will open happily informing you of this matter.

Try for a perfect score -- that would be 5, as there are only 5 levels. (Btw, the levels never change -- if you want to go to the first level again and got it right in the past, you'll get it right again.)

Before starting, position this browser window so that it takes up the right side of the screen. Your score windows will accumulate at the left.