I would not have spelled it that way, but would expect to find a definition that related to that of a shillelagh, which is "a wooden walking stick and club or cudgel, typically made from a stout knotty stick with a large knob at the top, that is associated with Ireland and Irish folklore."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shillelagh_%28club%29

There are a number of words with variant spellings used, which look strange to my eye, but which can be matched by elimination or by similarity to the more expected variant.

3. A spot caused the staining with rust or ink
Your answer: iron mould


Should there be a use of the word 'by' between caused and the?

A wrong answer typo:

"a speaker with an unusually laoud voice"

This may be hard to locate.

Happy Word Wizard Trivia!

From Word Wizard 10/06/10 Time: 6 PM to 7 PM Level: 61 - 150
I could find no definition that matched these words as they are in WW in this section & time.

Preceding in time "The correct answer was priority"


A mountain mahogany "The correct answer was hardtack"

~~TinyDetail

Should be 'An edged...'

Without finding an online dictionary that provides the definition of priority as coming first in time, it is clearly a possible usage in reference to an event which occurs prior to another - the condition of being earlier could certainly be referred to as priority. (Old-fashioned, certainly, but English.)

The dictionary with my word processor (Microsoft Works Word Processor) has this:

4. earlier occurrence: the state of having preceded something else

4. Lunar_time_period

Your answer: there are usually two high and two low tides each day

This doesn't seem to be a proper definition.

9. Graft

Your answer: place athe organ of a donor into the body of a recipient

A typo from the same set.

Happy Word Wizard Trivia!

13. Tsutsugamushi_disease

Your answer: transmitted by larval mites and widespread in asia

This seems incomplete.

Happy Word Wizard Trivia!

Another incomplete definition:

------

5. Kirsch

Your answer: from fermented juice of black morello cherries

------

I think the definition is missing "liqueur" or something similar.

12. Nervus_oculomotorius

Your answer: supplies extrinsic muscles of the eye

This seems incomplete. Adding "nerve which" or something like that would seem necessary.

Happy Word Wizard Trivia!

4. A metrical unit with unstressed-unstressed syllables

Your answer: pyrrhic

This is somewhat confusing. Replacing "unstressed-unstressed" with "two unstressed" would be much better.

Happy Word Wizard Trivia!

1. Canon

Your answer: a ravine formed by a river in an area with little rainfall

This is the definition of "Canyon". Although the above definition does occur in some online dictionaries, I'm fairly sure that the above is due to a typo which propagated.

Happy Word Wizard Trivia!

Instead of a typo, it could be to represent "cañon" which is an alternative spelling of "canyon" from the Spanish; my dictionary has this for etymology:

[Mid-19th century. Via Mexican Spanish cañón < Spanish , "large tube" < caña "pipe" < Latin canna (see cane)]

7. Niblick:
an iron with considerable loft


For getting those high points on a shirt when doing pressing?

A reference to it being a golf club would seem to improve this definition.

6. Charity
Your answer: the quality of being kind and gentle

the quality of being kind and gentle is the definition for "graciousness"

The correct answer was a kindly and lenient attitude toward people


These choices are a bit ambiguous, especially when they are presented together. I know that "gentle" and "lenient" do not have the same meaning, but "an act of kindness" might be a stronger definition.

8. Isolate or separate
Your answer: separation

separation means "the act of dividing or disconnecting"

The correct answer was close off

So separation does not mean separate?

Separate is either a verb or an adjective, depending on how you pronounce it. Separation is a noun describing the state produced by the verb. Therefore the verb response 'close off' is a closer fit. It's sometimes tricky to decide between alternatives with similar meanings, and that kind of grammatical hint is often useful.

7. Sound is not amplified by electrical means

Your answer: acoustic guitar

This may have come up before. "Musical instrument in which" or something like that would complete this.

Happy Word Wizard Trivia!

Richie Havens, Woodstock, "Freedom", Acoustic guitar, people in the back heard him. Acoustic does not necessarily mean unamplified.

3. A burn cause by hot liquid or steam

Your answer: scald

Should be "caused".

Happy Word Wizard Trivia!

This interpretation is unusual, as far as a definition contained in standard medical dictionaries. Most people would not have access to a medical dictionary, and "hunch forward" is the intuitive response and the one found in most non-medical dictionaries.

A lot of the definitions used in the database for Word Wizard (and a lot of the spellings of words) are unusual, to say the least. That makes it more challenging to find the match, but not incorrect. I reckon that playing it 10times a day, 7 days a week, in an effort to collect letters for the word game would become quite boring if all the definitions were the obvious ones!

Some of the definitions are bizarre. I read, a lot, and studied Latin at school, which does give a basis for many words I wouldn't otherwise know. Despite this, I fail to score enough to win a letter far more often than is good for my blood pressure (or self esteem),

One explanation for some of the strange matches is a colon. What's happening is that the free dictionaries often list synonyms for a word and then define the synonym after a colon. So if the word is Monster, it might be matched with the word Beast, which would be fair enough. But one definition of the word Beast in the Google dictionary is

"Animal: a living organism characterized by voluntary movement"

When the Word Game uses that definition it only uses the part after the colon. So the Word Game definition of Monster might be shown as "a living organism characterized by voluntary movement" which is not what we would take the word Monster to mean. We would recognise the definition of the word "monster" as including the words "beast" or "animal" but we don't associate it with the more generic definition of the word "animal".

I don't know if the problem lies with how the Word Game is programmed or in how definitions are fetched from the dictionary but something is discarding words before a colon - and that leads to some definitions which are wrong.