When you learn about something in the St. Louis paper, you know that you are not on the cusp of a cool new on-line endeavor. The idea with Googlewhack is to find a two word combination that returns a single web page when the (unquoted) combo is used in a Google search. The page cannot be a word list and both words have to be in the on-line dictionary Answer.com. (The Googlewhack web site runs a validation check.) According to the article, the exercise the improves the mental acuity of those who probably have too much spare time.
It took about a half dozen tries, but I made it to the Whack Stack with existential palmerworm (don’t ask.)
Not so fast – Google says 1-5 out of 7.
Try
vainglorious palmerworms
1-1 out of 1
There is an English comedian by the name of Dave Gorman who does ‘comedy experiments’ for the BBC. Previous ones include searching the globe trying to find people with the same name as him. He also got several people to change their names to Dave Gorman (including a Mr and Mrs Dave and Dave Gorman…). Another involved following his horoscopes to the letter for a month to see if they brought happiness to him compared to if he didn’t. His last one was “Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack adventure”. Read all about it here http://www.davegorman.com/googlewhack.htm
I remember seeing him interviewed on Australian television, he’s a very, very funny man.
Googlewack is wack easy. For example just find two obscure words on this page:
http://web.mit.edu/~golem/Public/er-words
(e.g. palmerworm tuberiferous)
Bry, When I posted my two words here, my single hit success lost its Whack status. For some reason my post echoed through other sites that Les maintains – thus my brief 15 seconds of fame.
Exactly. I think the source quoted in the Post-Dispatch/Boston Globe article might have over analyzed the benefits of the game. However, some mental activity is usually better than none.
The MIT web page is a word list. Therefore, palmerworm tuberiferous doesn’t qualify as a Whack. Since the Googlewhack site appears to add several hundred submissions per day, I’m not sure how the site’s manager enforces that rule.
Me thinks the point is to actually give it some thought and think of words yourself instead of just flat out looking up obscure words. Course, I haven’t really read the googlewhack website…
who ever made this site is realy anoying because when you try the example it comes up with 2 results because your site comes up aswell
lol i agree with kristine.the idea of googlewack is to find words that dont cum up?