Throwing the hat back in the ring (hoping that I am the almost-winner) - I claim that a prosopanoisa-sufferer can not recognize people's faces.

Just realised that if I am not the almost-winner, that I am now the total-loser.

No loser you, Garthmeister - you have done it. For the Prosopagnosiac, the connection between face and identity is missing; he or she might, for example, be able to identify a loved one from the sound of his or her voice (or other cue)-- but could not recognize the person by looking at her face.

For any etymologically-enabled players out there who would have gotten more than halfway without our unfortunate lapse in orthographic perspicacity, and might have come in ahead of G.J. (Opus Dark?), we acknowledge that You Wuz Robbed. It's a damn shame, really.

BT - is "Opus Dark" a reference to a MetaFilter member? I was wondering what this strange parenthetical comment menant and so - fearing for my recently achieved status as Friday Quiz Winner - I used the banned-for-Friday-quiz Google to search for some reference. And a MetaFilter member is what I came up with, but it's all news to me.

Or am I misunderstanding wildly, and should put more caffeine in my system?

the inability to recognize when a contest is over?

the whiskey rebellion?

gartherooni: yes, opus dark is a metafilter member. and a very good one at that.

bt's parenthetical comment is a reference a guess that opus dark made on the previous page.

so, bt was saying: g.j. is the winner, but not necessarily deserving since he's probably not as smart as o.d.

your triumph will always have an asterisk, my friend.

g.j. is the winner, but not necessarily deserving since he's probably not as smart as o.d.

Thanks a lot, mlang. We're down to a few pitiful scraps of credibility and you're trying to piss off the winner?

What we meant is that we were simply acknowledging that had we not made a wee mistake minding our p's and s's, Opus Dark or someone exhibiting similar word-detecto abilities might have gotten in sooner; no reflection on the Garthmeister's relative cerebral talents was implied -- we're all supergeniuses around these parts, right?

sorry, folks. no offense meant. i was 'j/k' as the kids today say.

i would never impugn the intelligence of a man whose handle is a nod both to one of dana carvey's most inspired characters and hip hop icon jam master jay.

Thanks mlang -- It's a little world of peace and love here at the File; an oasis, if you will. Oh, and Garthmeister J -- how may we contact you, should we ever get our act together about these prizes? Email me if you don't want to post your address here.

I've slapped my e-mail address here. It's basically my "spam me!" address anyway, so no problems really.

And of course I must defend my honour! I actually live in Sydney, Australia, so your "Friday Quiz" is really my "Monday Morning Quiz" - hence my joy when I discover the contest is still wide open when I join the fray.

But after saying that, Opus Dark could probably kick my ass.

Gosh.
I like this game.
Postmodernism has found a new playground.
May I suggest the next imaginary word?

"Madfly".

Remember, this is not a word - it is an allusion to a word. Your definition must derive logically from this fake word, but must ultimately gibe with the conventional definition assigned to the imposter's reified doppelganger.

It's not whether you're right or wrong - it's how good you look.
--Richard Palmer (not really)

Hey, mlang - wassup? Yup, it's Metafilter me...ricochetted in here when Matt's Rhapsody in Blue squelched out last Friday. (I bet many bloggers of a lesser god measured a hit hike.)

Thanks, BT (BrainTease?) for the recreation. Let's play Pomo Scrabble sometime, where any sequence of letters is a word (extra points for neologisms).

Garthmeister J - nice to meetcha. Actually, my most formidable feature is my nym - it's pretty much all disillusionment from there on out.

Rest assured, OD, I get all of my pomo jollies from hosting a contest featuring prizes that may or may not exist, and which depends on everyone involved pretending that the words "search" and "engine" don't hook up together into an intelligible phrase. The additional linguistic pleasures made available for players subsequent to my abominable screwups are, as they say in some places, lagniappe (you know, Derrida would have held my attention in grad school better if he'd been Cajun).

Now, as for "madfly"...if that were the actual word in question, I'd guess that it was an ironic recombination of two bits of outdated hiphop slang from the late 80's/early 90's, used to indicated a rougly decade-length amount of passe: hence, to have a "madfly" look is to be approx 10 years out of date.

But since "madfly" refers, as you say, not to itself, but to some other sign designated by "Opus Dark"'s reified signifier, I'm going to guess that it's a slight remix of the Early Middle English fymlad, found in the little-known 'D' text of Langland's Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman, and translated by Skeat as "subtle one" (For hadde neuere fymlad wit the faith to dispute [XI,159]) -- a text which Furnivall himself referred to as Langland's "Dark opus of wit."

I'll check back later to see how well I did.

That whizzing sound you hear is my touchéd tush flying over the stadium's south wall. Do-wel, Do-bet, Do-best et Do-wah Do-wah Do-wah.