Wednesday, January 14, 2009

¡ay, caramba!

Instead of posting updates in here, I have been buried in the task of fine-tuning the word list for the Bee. In order to avoid errors, I painstakingly check each word, and manually override my word-processor's spell-check function for the more obscure words. Then I get the definition, so that the words can be classified into categories for study (and of course we need the definitions during the Bee itself). It's a tedious job, but it's important to do it correctly.

The other day when I opened the word file, I found that every single word was underlined as misspelled--even the ones I had already checked. It was a heart-stopping moment: it looked like the entire list was junk.

After a little noodling around, I discovered that some other computer user in my house had switched the default language in the word processor to Spanish. Apparently someone had been trying to translate song lyrics from Spanish to English, and modified the word processor to check the product. Better living through technology, and all that.

Once the word list is finished, I will have fun plotting my revenge on the Songster. Expect the words to be available to paid-up teams by the 12th of February.

¡Hasta luego!

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