Maybe a Little TOO Frequently Asked?

A couple of years ago I made a post about a cool website called Wordle. Two years and three months later, I think 94% of all people in the world have used the site. So I'm not going to write about the site itself today.

Instead, I want to write about the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page that appears on the site. I was reading it yesterday (Sometimes I just read these things. I can't explain it, either.), and I was amused by one of the replies to a question.

Most of the replies were pretty standard fare. For instance, the question of "I entered a word many times. Why does it only show up once?" is answered with the following: "Wordle uses the number of times a word appears in a text to determine its relative size. See the next question for details." Similarly, the question of "Why aren't numbers showing up?" gets a response of "By default, Wordle strips numbers from the text before drawing. See the 'Language' menu to change that setting." I'd describe the tone of all of the responses as "Professional-technical."

Except for one. The tone of the response to this question is so different from the others, in fact, that I'm assuming that it wasn't written at the same time. Instead, I think it was probably written in a fit of anger after getting the same question one time too many. The question is "Could you remove or change the name of the 'Sexsmith' font? I don't want my students to see it."

Here's the response:

Yes, with pleasure. First, please write to the musician Ron Sexsmith, after whom the font is named, and get him to change his name. You may also want to write to Sexsmith, Alberta, Canada, and see if you can get them to change their name before any of your students inadvertently consult a map. Christian rocker Paula Sexsmith ought to be in your sights as well; don't let her feel left out. Take a slapshot at goalie Tyson Sexsmith, while you're at it.

"Sexsmith" is a common surname and placename, especially in Canada. It's analogous to “Shoemaker”, “Fletcher”, or just plain “Smith”; it's a profession. A “seax smith” was someone who made seaxes.

The place-names Middlesex, Essex, Sussex, etc., all derive their names from the seax.

If the children of Boston and its suburbs can grow up in Middlesex county, perhaps giggling occasionally at the mention of the sheriff or courthouse thereof in local news broadcasts or 5th-grade geography lessons, then I believe that the children of the world can weather the mere sight of those letters, in that context. Good luck!



Click here to read the complete FAQ.




P.S. And by the way, just an aside, I made the Wordle above by copying and pasting all of my blog posts for August and September into Wordle. I learned that apparently I use the word "just" WAAAY too much!