agnate is one related on the father''s side


A " versus '

plagiarize is take without referencing from someone else''s writing or speech; of intellectual property


Another " instead of ' .

I loved this. There's something so right about it being so wrong.

Would a bigamist refer to a partner as "one of my better thirds"?

Reminds me of a bunch of bigamy/marriage quotes...

Bigamy is having one spouse too many. So is monogamy. (Mark Twain, I think)

Spouse: one's bitter half. (Ambrose Bierce, I think)

Bigamy is illegal. The punishment is known as trigamy. (Ogden Nash, I think)

Don't get married. Why make one person miserable when you can make so many so happy? (Benny Hill, paraphrased)

I don't think these two "relationships" words should be in the same set, since "queer" and "hinder" are pretty much synonymous (at least according to the definitions):

1. disappoint is related to queer

You said: hinder

disappoint means "fail to meet the hopes or expectations of"
queer means "hinder or prevent (the efforts, plans, or desires) of"


2. occlude is related to hinder

You said: queer

occlude means "block passage through"
hinder means "be a hindrance or obstacle to"

I don't whinge too often on here, but I think this one was a bit unfair - obviously I got them the wrong way around


draftee is related to military man

You said: serviceman

draftee means "someone who is drafted into military service"
military man means "someone who serves in the armed forces"



gunner is related to serviceman

You said: military man

gunner means "a serviceman in the artillery"
serviceman means "someone who serves in the armed forces"

Yeah, the gender bias is bothersome!

In today's set 23:


small letter is the characters that were once kept in bottom half of a compositor''s type case


A " instead of ' .

take issue is be of different opinions
You said: have a disagreement over something

argufy is have a disagreement over something
You said: be of different opinions

Set 19

"wooden-headed is used informally"

pacificist is related to grownup

pacificist means "someone opposed to violence as a means of settling disputes"
grownup means "a fully developed person from maturity onward"


One does not have to be a "grownup" to be a pacificist. And "grownup" is a very vague term, unles it specifically refers to a question that relates to age. I got it correct because it was the last choice available.

That's often how Part 3 works - if you take the time to search around, you may find alternative definitions for each word that share a common term. The 'is related' is sometimes more like a tenth cousin than a sibling, but the process of elimination is available to help.

In today's MM set 25, I got the following definition

lira is the basic unit of money on Malta; equal to 100 cents

While the answer was obvious, it is nonetheless outdated by about 6 years.

In today's set 20, I had the following under "Relationships" that I failed to understand :-(

going away is related to exploit

You said: believer

going away means "act of departing"
exploit means "a notable achievement"

If someone can explain this relation to me, would be grateful...

That "notable achievement" has bugged many of us. It has been discussed previously.

If you're trying to couple some relationships you are not certain about, you may consider the word type. "Going away" (a verb) would most probably not be coupled with "believer" (a person).

Thanks, Jan...I knew "going away" could not possibly be related to "Believer" but I was running out of time thinking too much on this and didn't see how anything else would fit I knew when I clicked that I had it wrong, but couldn't possible guess that "going away" and "exploit" could be related (and with such "definitions"!)

Grrrr! (set 16)



The opposite of exculpate is convict

You said: blame

exculpate means "pronounce not guilty of criminal charges"
convict means "find or declare guilty"



The opposite of free is blame

You said: convict

free means "let off the hook"
blame means "put or pin the blame on"

vacuousness is total absence of matter

You said: the absence of matter


vacuum is the absence of matter

You said: total absence of matter


I think that it should really be the way round that I had it - a vacuum is a total absence of matter, while vacuous is just empty.

What makes it especially annoying is that I needed to score 29 on Mind Melt for one of my daily challenges. I should have guaranteed getting one answer wrong, and the other right, by giving the same definition for both answers! :-(

There's an extra set of " at the end of the definition

cabstand is a place where taxis park while awaiting customers; "in England the place where taxis wait to be hired is called a `taxi rank''"


Or maybe it's only an extra '
It looked like five ' in the game ....

juke house is related to spliff

juke house means "a small roadside establishment in the southeastern United States where you can eat and drink and dance to music provided by a jukebox"

spliff means "marijuana leaves rolled into a cigarette for smoking"



I think this one has come up before. I don't see how the second relates to the first (this was from the third section). Simply because someplace is a honky-tonk with one of those old fashioned music playing machines, it does not necessarily follow that people have or use a "spliff" while there.

The link seems to come from the list of synonyms for each - a juke house has jook house, jook joint, juke, juke joint, jook listed, with joint defined underneath as a disreputable place of entertainment.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/juke+house

Synonyms for spliff include marijuana cigarette, reefer, joint, stick.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/spliff

This means that they are both synonyms for joint, although different meanings of the word.

Thank you for explaining the mystery of why spliff is related to juke house. It's a tortured, very roundabout connection but now it makes sense.

Regardless, there is (virtually) no relationship between "a small roadside establishment in the southeastern United States" and "marijuana leaves", except through an unbelievably absurd lexicographical connection. What's next, words being related because they both start with the same letter?

The matches are generated by a computer so these odd relationships crop up occasionally. To me, it's part of the charm of the game when I'm stuck with two apparently random words. I prefer those to the ones where there are two possible matches as I'm guaranteed to make the wrong choice on those.

Quite a few of the word match ups seem to have "an unbelievably absurd lexicographical connection."

The connection between "juke house" and "spliff" isn't their connection to each other but their connection to another word - joint. And that connection seems to crop up often in this game. It would be interesting to see some day two words Lewis Carroll made up for Jabberwocky in the third section of Mind Melt.