Googlewhacking Miscellany

Matthew Baldwin has introduced a Web-based Googlewhacking tool that rivals Kevin Marks’ client version.

Stefan Ritter writes:

Stefan Ritter I’d like to note that I think better Googlewhacks are ones in which the terms can be strung to impart perhaps some meaning. But I’ve only been at this a few minutes; I am sure this has been considered.

So sooner said than done. In the same batch of email was a notice that Gary Stock, the creator of Googlewhacking, has introduced a type of semantic googlewhacking in which you are rewarded for coming up with googlewhacks that sort of make sense even if they are low on the Marks scale. He writes:

Thanks to all who are in the Whack Zone! I’ve posted some of your efforts: Examples from the first hundred or so:

What do you get when you add a pound of sawdust to a gallon of gasoline?
jerkwater plastique

What’s on the front of the Rutabaga Railway’s “Lettuce Locomotive”?
vegan cowcatcher

What does a gerontologist call the walk from the parking lot to the office, and back?
nonagenarian biathlon

Some of these, I’m just not sure about:

banana circumcision
What is the most extreme form of…

…no, let’s not go there :-)

E-Brake, however, isn’t afraid to go there. She recognizes that her entry is low-scoring with a a mere 5.6 billion Marks mark, but she puts it forward for its sweetness on the tongue: “Microsoft vomitories.” (Also, Microsoft is a proper noun.)

Likewise, [name removed at the person’s request] knows that his half billion score for “spermatozoa astroturf” won’t win any prizes, but, he says “Imagine the hockey they could play!” (Ned apparently isn’t deeply into sports. Even I know that hockey is played on AstroIce, not AstroTurf.)

Similarly, David Stephenson writes:

the Googlewack stuff reminds me of a band that a friend was going to start while we were in grad school: Sarsaparilla Sorcery — taken from the first and last words in one volume of the Brittanica. The only deterrent was that none of us could play anything or carry a tune.

Jonathan Peterson pursues the self-referential meta-Googlewhack with “googlewhack schadenfreude,” a reference to one of the very first Googlewhacks.

Terry Dooher is all whiny about the fact that Google is wildly inconsistent in its hit counts, costing him many points for “microbicidal linux”:

Damn Google. I had 15,900 for it, then 12,800, now I’m getting 4,110. It’s easy to see how a word might have a 5% tolerance in its score at any given moment, but dropping 70% of its hits in the space of a week is a bit weird.

Now, Terry, the Pillsbury Bakeoff results are subject to variations in atmospheric pressure, chess players are sometimes disturbed by audience members with hacking coughs, and Olympic runners have to contend with inconsistent doses of street steroids, so I don’t see why googlewhacking should be any different.

Categories: Uncategorized dw