Talk:Gry

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This is the answer to a frustrating riddle (as most riddles are before they are solved). "There are three words in the English language that end in "gry". ONE is angry and the other is hungry. Everyone knows what the third ONE means and what it stands for. Everyone uses them everyday, and if you listened very carefully, I've given you the third word."

I wouldn't say that the word "Gry" is known by everyone, and used everyday. Neolux 22:21, 31 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Answer: "language".

Eh? That makes no sense at all. How's it related to the other 2 words? Evercat 22:29, 31 Jul 2003 (UTC)
the phrase "the English language" has three words in it. The third word is "language". It is a play on words and basically one of those trick riddles.
But how do angry and hungry fit into it? It seems this riddle would work just as well with any 2 words. Evercat 22:43, 31 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Also, how can this possibly be shortened to "Name three commonly used English words that end in 'Gry'."? Evercat 22:45, 31 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Alright then, that makes more sense now. It's almost too funny that it's allegedly librarians who are most vexed by this, given that I too work in a library. :-) Evercat 23:09, 31 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Ask someone at the reference desk (and duck) <G> It's a very annoying riddle. -- Someone else 23:11, 31 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Large edit by anonymous user

Please don't delete large blocks of text (especially anonymously).

[edit] Unit of measurement

"Gry is an obsolete unit of measurement, equal to one tenth of a line, which is in turn one twelfth of an inch. Hence, a gry is 120th of an inch, or 211.66 micrometres, presuming international inches are used."

I doubt that "obsolete" is the correct terminology here. Can whoever added it cite any sources? It seems more likely that this is a recent neologism, a non-serious coinage made with the "gry puzzle" in mind. Maybe it was applied half-seriously to some dot-matrix printer resolutions or something like that, but not something that ever rose to the level of any significant actual usage? Gene Nygaard 13:08, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)


John Locke's proposed use of gry was unsuccessful, but it was neither recent nor non-serious. It predates this puzzle by well over a century. Cited here: See http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Locke0154/Works/0128-02_Bk.html JOHN LOCKE, THE WORKS OF JOHN LOCKE IN NINE VOLUMES (1824) VOL II: OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING (PART 2), ELEMENTS OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, AND OTHER WRITINGS

...A gry is 1/10 of a line, a line 1/10 of an inch, 
an inch 1/10 of a philosophical foot, a philosophical foot ⅓ of a pendulum, whose diadroms, 
in the latitude of 45 degrees, are each equal to one second of time, or 1/60 of a minute. 
I have affectedly made use of this measure here, and the parts of it, under a decimal division, 
with names to them; because, I think, it would be of general convenience, that this should 
be the common measure, in the commonwealth of letters...

. Hope this helps. jg 11:49, 26 February 2006 (UTC)


Trick answers 1 and 2

I don't deem myself established enough here to actually edit the article, so I'll post here. In trick version one, the word stated is 'agree'. But 'pedigree' (and probably other words) also hold here. In trick version two (which I rather like), 'energy' is stated, but I thought of 'metallurgy'. Of course, one might argue that 'pedigree' and 'metallurgy' aren't words that everyone knows, but I'd put them on par with 'gryphon'...

[edit] Proposed History

The version cited (which is essentially the same as the eighth in the list of alternate versions) was first published in the late 1990s whereas the puzzle is known to have originated in the mid 1970s, so how could it have been the origin of the puzzle? Canon 02:47, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Canon: I didn't see version #8. Did someone erase it, too? The explanation I found and copied in makes the most sense. "Language" is a common word, it is mentioned in the puzzle, and we have has a long history of other attention-diverting riddles. Ted Pack 12:29, 25 Mar 2006

The "language" version is the eighth in the list of alternate versions but it is numbered "1" because it is the first in the list of meta puzzles. Sorry for the confusion. I agree that there are many puzzles that are based on the tricks used in the meta puzzle list. However we can see that the -gry puzzle did not arise in that way, because the "language" version did not appear until the 1990s while the -gry puzzle was popular in the 1970s. All of the alternate versions have proponents, people who claim them to be the original versions. To find the real origin of the puzzle, you need to find the first occurrence in time of the puzzle, which is what I have done, and I've given the documentary evidence in this article. If anyone can find a version that predates March 1975, let them come forward. The evidence that this will not happen is that the letters to Merriam Webster started at that time and have been continuous since then. Canon 21:02, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Another proposed history

I have removed the proposed history below from the main article, because it is known that the puzzle in it's current form originated in 1975 (over 30 years ago) as is explained in the main article. This newer version is listed in the main article as the first in the meta-puzzle section:

Here is the riddle in its original form (going back about 20 years):
"Think of words ending in -GRY. Angry and hungry are two of them. There are only three words in the English language. What is the third word? The word is something that everyone uses every day. If you have listened carefully, I have already told you what it is."
In its proper, original form, the first two sentences have absolutely nothing to do with the question: "Think of words ending in -GRY. Angry and hungry are two of them." Ignore those two sentences. They are there only to throw you off course. (And it worked, didn't it?) What's left is the actual riddle itself: "There are only three words in the English language. What is the third word? The word is something that everyone uses every day. If you have listened carefully, I have already told you what it is." The key is the phrase "the English language." In this three-word phrase, the third word is simply the word "language." Get it? "Language" is definitely something that "everyone uses every day"! Without that quirky little twist, the puzzle would be just another trivia question, not a riddle.
You might be tempted to say something like: "That can't be the right answer. It's too stupid!" Hey, remember that most riddles ARE "stupid." For example, there's an old riddle which asks: "What is Bozo the Clown's middle name?" (The answer is "the." Now THAT'S "stupid"!)

Canon 16:11, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] alleged copyvio

This article is derived from the rec.puzzles archive entry http://rec-puzzles.org/index.php?Gry which predates http://alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxwordse.html and is in the public domain. Canon 00:23, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

There is no evidence that that's public domain. Also, the section is pretty useless with all the words listed there like "power-hungry". I like my version better. Ashibaka tock 15:05, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
Rec.puzzles is a Usenet newsgroup. Posting to Usenet means intentionally releasing the posting to the public domain. The problem with the shorter version of the list is that it invites people to add words to it, as can be seen from the history of this article. The longer list is also intrinsically interesting because it contains many words that are hard to find. I agree that in general we do not want to clutter up Wikipedia with lists like "all the words that contain the vowels once in any order" because these lists can readily be found elsewhere and if not they can be created easily by scanning a word list by computer. However, this list of words ending in "gry" was not assembled that way; it was assembled by concerted human effort scanning many obscure sources and required decades to produce. Since the "-gry" puzzle has been the most frequently asked word puzzle for over thirty years, the list is notable and it is appropriate that it be included in Wikipedia. Canon 14:28, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

"Posting to Usenet means intentionally releasing the posting to the public domain." Oh, this is your reasoning? Well, that's flat-out wrong, so I'm afraid I'll have to remove the copyvio. Ashibaka tock 23:36, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're arguing here. If you're saying that posting to Usenet does not automatically release copyright, then you are right. You cannot post copyrighted material on Usenet (e.g., a song or a movie) and thereby remove the copyright. However, original postings to Usenet are certainly put in the public domain, because the whole idea of Usenet is to release material to be copied freely by anyone who wants to. This is why Usenet postings can be legally copied from computer to computer, collected into archives, distributed on CD-ROMs, and put onto Web sites (like Wikipedia). Actually, in this case the situation is even clearer because the original posting to rec.puzzles contained only 100 "-gry" words. When I authored this article I added to that list with the results of recent research. Even the original posting to rec.puzzles was collected together from other previous lists. No one person could claim copyright even if they wanted to. The list quite clearly is in the public domain. So I'm going to put the list back, and if you still disagree, I suggest that rather than unilaterally deleting material you escalate the issue using normal WP procedures. I see that you're a sysop so you know what those are. Canon 04:17, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
Anticipating a dispute on this issue, here are my arguments for keeping the list in the article. This may repeat some of the arguments above, for which I apologize, but it's probably a good idea to have all the reasons in one place.
First, the list is worthy of being in Wikipedia. The "-gry" puzzle is the most frequently asked word puzzle. It first arose in 1975 and has been around ever since. Rec.puzzles regulars coined the word "nugry" to describe a newbie who asks a FAQ. It is a standing joke on the Stumpers reference librarian list that it's time to change your car's oil when it is posted again on that list. Merriam-Webster receives about four letters a year asking the question, by far the most commonly asked question. I've been editing the rec.puzzles archives for twenty years and I know of no other puzzle that has generated as much interest, and as many alternative versions, as this puzzle. The list of 130 words in the Wikipedia article was composed originally for the article, extracted from 30 years of research in obscure reference sources looking for words and names ending in "-gry." My experience is that if you publish a shorter list, people just add words to it until it approaches this list anyway, and unfortunately many of the words added are incorrect, so publishing the whole, correct list is a defensive move to save editorial time.
Second, the list can legally be included. I published a 94-word version of the list in rec.puzzles in 1992 and I think that list is in the public domain. That list has been extensively copied and edited, into other Usenet postings, onto Web sites, into books, on CD-ROMs, etc. The specific 130 word list in this article is original to this article. I think it clearly is legal to put Usenet postings into other media, and in particular Web sites, and I'm not alone in that opinion. Google, for example, offers Google Groups that does just that. Fortunately I don't need to argue this in this case, however, since I'm the author of the original 1992 94-word version of the list and of the 130-word version in this article. And if they were not already in the public domain, I now positively affirm that they are in the public domain now. Canon 11:23, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Usenet is not a public domain resource-- there's no legal cause for that-- and Google is taking a risk by posting its entire archives online. But since this is your list, it absolutely makes sense to publish it here. Thanks. Ashibaka tock 22:57, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

The courts have repeatedly found that Usenet is a public domain resource, unless copyright is asserted in the posting or the posting of the material is itself a copyright violation (both of which are rare occurrences). Here is a recent case involving Google specifically:
Parker v. Google, Inc., 422 F. Supp. 2d 492, 499 (D. Pa. 2006) ("USENET postings" not a registered work as required by the Copyright Act).
Outside of the USENET context, myriad cases could be cited for the proposition that a published work falls into the public domain unless published with the requisite copyright notice. See for example:
Letter Edged in Black Press, Inc. v. Public Bldg. Com., 320 F. Supp. 1303, 1309 (D. Ill. 1970) (An author is not allowed to publish a work and then after a period of time has elapsed choose to invoke statutory copyright protection. If the statutory protection is not acquired at the time of publication by appropriate notice, the work is lost to the public domain).
It concerns me that Ashibaka as a sysop would not be aware of this, since this is well known to old Internet hands like myself. Is there somewhere I should go on Wikipedia to straighten out the youngsters? Canon 19:26, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Usenet. Also, I had never heard of this case before and I know a bit about copyright law, so thanks for the details. Ashibaka tock 03:24, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

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