Googlewhacking

[astcell]

Today's paper (Riverside Press Enterprise, Section D1) had an interesting article on Googlewhacking. Googlewhacking is where players go to the search engine google.com and type in two-word combinations, hoping to score a single hit.

The rules are: No proper nouns, no quotation marks in your search, and no made up words. It is a real word if you can find it at dictionary.com

It's harder than you think.

spider suffocation = 18,300 hits
weasel lips = 156,000 hits
bugsy grandma = 3,600 hits
rancid quadrangle = 689 hits

Think this can be tweaked into something official, fun, and prizeworthy?

[TheCotMan]

Its harder than you think

glial buttmunch even though buttmunch is slang.

Think this can be tweaked into something official, fun, and prizeworthy?

That would be a good idea ;-)

You just need someone to host it, and set it up and get it approved-- someone with more free time at DefCon than me. ]:>

[Added content:]
glial attowatt and both are words. glial is in dictionary.com, but attowatt is not in dictionary.com; that is probably because they are pretty small ;-)


hah!

[astcell]

I saw your post from before, but some of the replies could be subjective as to how close they relate to the search terms. This would come up with one number, which is easy to decide.

Heck, I have learned a lot in the last 15 minutes trying this!

[TheCotMan]

I saw your post from before, but some of the replies could be subjective as to how close they relate to the search terms. This would come up with one number, which is easy to decide.

Heck, I have learned a lot in the last 15 minutes trying this!

It (yours) is a pretty cool idea, and easy to judge, but you would need to work out issues of people pre-figuring two word combinations to beat the game before they played. This could be solved with limits on words being from certain subjects.

[astcell]

Well we can draw two letters at random from a hat, and the words would have to start with those letters.

I know what you mean about guessing in advance, but if you have a hit today with one result, can you be sure it will be there, or not added to, in a few days?

[TheCotMan]

Well we can draw two letters at random from a hat, and the words would have to start with those letters.

A good solution. People would have to remember many words that have small numbers of hits with google, and though not impossible, would be time consuming.

I know what you mean about guessing in advance, but if you have a hit today with one result, can you be sure it will be there, or not added to, in a few days?

Good point. Given enough time, those two examples I provided above will have at least one more link in google... a link to this thread.

[LosT]

You just need someone to host it, and set it up and get it approved-- someone with more free time at DefCon than me. ]:>

[

So I take it you are going to show then? Right? :)

LosT

[TheCotMan]

So I take it you are going to show then? Right? :)

ATM? Still 1/0 [or at least 0/0].

[TheCotMan]

Well we can draw two letters at random ...

So, are you going to submit this to DT and make it an official game? If so, could you keep us posted?

[astcell]

I'll drop him a note and see what he thinks. I can add some variations to make it interesting (booby prize for most hits) and skillful (in case of tie, oldest single link wins, or have a runoff with three atempts).

[hackajar]

dig on this!!!

Hurray and check before google bot grabs link and then I loose!!!

[astcell]

"Spectrophotofluorometrically" cannot be found on dictionary.com. Drat!

[hackajar]

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...ly&btnG=Search

[hackajar]

Don't like the first one?

Stick this in your pipe and smoke it!

Now with Dictionary goodness

[TheCotMan]

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...ly&btnG=Search

I think that astcell said the rules required the word to be listed in dictionary.com to be a word.