Quadrivial Quandary
Quadrivial Quandary is a word game and a form of constrained writing. The challenge is to write a single sentence that contains all four words from a daily selection. Success is determined by how well the composition illustrates the meaning and idiomatic usage of each mandated word, while obeying the grammatical and syntactic constraints of an English sentence. The best solutions also pursue an aesthetic goal, such as humor, brevity, lyricism, or thematic interest.
As Quandary requires participants to master the definition and usage of each word, it can be seen as a practice for building and reinforcing vocabulary. Inasmuch as the challenge involves strict constraints while permitting an open-ended variety of solutions, it can be seen as an exercise in creative problem solving. In contrast to word games like Scrabble that emphasize orthography and the breadth of the player's mental lexicon, Quandary emphasizes the semantics of words and the participant's ability to fuse unrelated concepts into a coherent whole.
While statements of fact are acceptable as Quandary resolutions, participants often address the challenge by creating a fictional scenario that connects the four concepts. These sentence-length stories can be seen as an extreme form of the flash fiction genre.
Wordplay
Quandary resolutions often exhibit various forms of word play. In some cases, wordplay is used as a problem solving technique. For example:
- To overcome the challenge of defining a fictional character in a single sentence, telling character names are often used. A person who dwells on a topic might be named Mr. Harper, while a composer of avante-garde percussive works might be named Maestro Banger.
- If a noun seems too specific to work into a given scenario concretely, the noun can sometimes be incorporated by way of metaphor or simile. For example, if the writer cannot fit an actual acnestis into a story, the writer might say that some other concrete and bothersome element in the story is “like an itch in the acnestis.”
- If the conventional usage of a word does not lend itself to the writer's theme or sentence structure, the writer might apply anthimeria or otherwise invent a nonstandard application of the word. For example, while the delirious lint-picking behavior known as carphology is generally considered a medical condition, a writer might use “professional carphologer” to describe someone hired to enforce a fastidious household regimen.
- When terms from rhetoric appear as Quandary words, participants might illustrate the term not by explaining it, but by reifying it in the sentence. For example, a Quandary resolution including the term aposiopesis might itself be cut short. When Quandary includes such words about words, it often generates sentences that themselves exhibit self-reference.
Independent of its use in problem solving, wordplay also appears as a mechanism for increasing the humor or aesthetic qualities of the resolution, and as a means of intensifying the challenge. For example, some participants have resolved the Quandary while electing to satisfy the additional constraints of a poetic form, such as a limerick.[1]
Word sources
Quandary focuses on words that are in some way interesting or uncommon. To this end, Quandary makes use of the words of the day as chosen by various dictionary websites. The Quandary site moderator decides which sources to use in general, but does not seek to engineer a particular combination of words on any given day. Word sources have included Wordsmith.org, Wordnik, Wiktionary, Merriam-Webster, Reference.com, and Urban Dictionary. By arrangement with contributors to The Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form, Quandary has also included limerick definitions of words.[2]
History and status
Quadrivial Quandary was implemented as a website by software developer Rudi Seitz in September 2009, based on a game he had played with colleagues in the early 2000's over instant messaging. [3] As of June 1, 2010 it had 1248 published resolutions, visible in the archive section of the website. The site is currently non-commercial. Although site content is loosely moderated, there is no formal judging process and entries that break the guidelines of illustration and idiomatic usage do appear.
Quandary has been cited in the language blogosphere both as a challenge of interest to logophiles [4], and as an educational activity that might build students' interest in writing [5].
Parallels in language pedagogy
Quandary resembles certain exercises used in language pedagogy.
- Using an unfamiliar word in a sentence is a common technique for vocabulary building. [6] In a classroom strategy called Possible Sentences, for example, students prepare for a reading assignment by writing sentences that include multiple words from the text to be read. [7]
- Various exercises in sentence manipulation have been proposed as a way to build writing skills. In a sentence combining exercise, for example, the student is given two or more sentences and must compose one sentence that encompasses them. The educational merits of this exercise have been a subject of discussion and debate in the field of composition studies.[8]Quandary resembles a sentence combining exercise, but is more open-ended, beginning with individual words instead of sentences. The participant might pursue a solution by first composing several sentences that each use one or two of the words. Finishing the solution then amounts to combining the intermediate sentences.
Related challenges
Other writing and speaking challenges based on mandated vocabulary include the following:
- In a thread on salon.com started in 2004, each contributor attempted to write a sentence including five words selected by the previous contributor[9]
- Collaborative fiction sites have sometimes featured challenges that require participants to use a certain set of words in a story[10]
- In the party game Literati Challenge a contestant must tell a story in 90 seconds, including the 5 words on the contestant's cards. Contestants must bluff when they don't know the definitions of the words.[11]
- In the British radio show My Word!, contestants were given a popular phrase and required to tell a story that used the phrase and proposed its origin.
- Word lists are sometimes used as prompts for poetry. In writing a word-list poem, the poet begins by choosing a set of provocative words or by taking word suggestions from someone else. The poet then tries to employ all the given words in one piece. For example, Tess Gallagher conceived one of her early poems, The Horse in the Drugstore, in response to a word list from a teacher. [12]
References
- ^ Example of a limerick resolution to the Quandary
- ^ Discussion of Quandary in OEDILF (limerick dictionary) forum
- ^ Founder's essay on the origins of Quadrivial Quandary
- ^ Discussion of Quandary on the language blog languagehat.com, Mention of Quandary in blog about literary hypertext, htlit.com, Mention of Quandary at word reference site visualthesaurus.com
- ^ Discussion of low-stakes challenges for use in writing instruction
- ^ Promoting Vocabulary Development: Components of Effective Vocabulary Instruction, 2002 Online Revised Edition, Texas Reading Initiative pp. 17-18 discuss the practice of writing example sentences as a way of learning new words. In particular, this reference discusses the idea of using several new words together in single sentence, and the idea of creating stories or questions that employ several new words.
- ^ For a discussion of Possible Sentences classroom strategy, see Stahl, Steven A. and Barbara A. Kapinus: Possible Sentences: Predicting Word Meanings to Teach Content Area Vocabulary, The Reading Teacher, Vol. 45, No. 1 (Sep., 1991), pp. 36-43, International Reading Association. For an online summary see AdLit.org. For another discussion of vocabulary building through writing exercises, see Duin, Ann Hill and Michael F. Graves: Teaching Vocabulary as a Writing Prompt, Journal of Reading, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Dec., 1988), pp. 204-212, International Reading Association.
- ^ For a history of sentence combining as a pedagogical technique, see Rose, Shirley K.: Down from the Haymow: One Hundred Years of Sentence-Combining, College English, Vol. 45, No. 5 (Sep., 1983), pp. 483-491, National Council of Teachers of English. For a discussion of sentence combining as applied to vocabulary building, see Briggs, Christine: Sentence Combining and Vocabulary Development, Journal of Reading, Vol. 27, No. 3, Reading in Content Areas (Dec., 1983), pp. 271-272, International Reading Association.
- ^ Salon Table Talk thread
- ^ Example of a storywriting challenge on the collaborative fiction site Ficly.com, including mandated words
- ^ Discovery Bay Games' website, manufacturer of Literati Challenge
- ^ Drury, John: Creating Poetry, page 26. Writer's Digest Books, 1991.
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