The Google Game

My father introduced me to a new game over Thanksgiving Break. And although I'd like to keep this blog very teaching-centric, I think it's a good vocabulary game that perhaps someone who teaches high school English (or SAT prep) might be able to use. Actually, if anyone who reads this teaches for Kaplan, as I used to, it would be a great challenge for your students (in addition to their regular Kaplan homework.)

The challenge is to use two regular English words (no proper nouns allowed), search in Google, and come up with no results. This is much harder than it sounds. I won the game today with "caribiner" (a metal clasp used in climbing) and "copacetically." Well, at least I think I won. And if I did, then I secured my victory with the pairs "symbiotic copacetically," "lilliputian copacetically" and "vestral copacetically."

"Copacetically" is actually not defined in Merriam-Webster, though (even though 391 pages come up when you Google it alone, including a movie reivew in the New York Times). "Copacetic" is a word, and it means "very satisfactory." So I think "copacetically" should be a word as well, meaning "very satisfactorily."

And if files that are not html don't count as results, then "caribiner steatopygian" is a winning combination as well.

Anyhow, I have no absolutely fail-safe winners yet. So if you find one, post a comment so that we can wreck it for everyone else who searches that pair of words in the grand Googling game.

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Update: evidently the "real" game is to find two words with exactly one result, where both words are linked in blue by Google at the top of the page (indicating that a dictionary definition is available.) It is called "Googlewhacking." Click here for the main Googlewhacking website.