Charade¶
charade · letter · validated
A word that divides into two or more shorter words, used as the hinge of a riddle or a line.
Provenance¶
- Source: Traditional; a staple of 18th-century French and English parlour verse
- Attribution:
traditional— classical or folk; no single origin to name - Checkability:
self— decidable from the text and its parameters alone - Attested:
codified— formulated as a rule by a tradition rather than declared by an author
Details¶
- Kind: restrictive
- Languages: en, de, fr
- Requires:
tokens,lexicon.words - Deterministic: yes
- In other languages: Scharade (de), Charade (fr)
Notes¶
The checker asks this of every word in the text, not of one designated word, so the unit to give it is the word itself — courtship — and not the riddle written around it. A charade poem in the 18th-century manner ("My first displays the wealth and pomp of kings") describes the parts and never prints the answer, so it holds no dividing word for the checker to find.
Prompt hint¶
Choose words that split cleanly into smaller words and build the line around them.
Parameters¶
| Name | Type | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
parts |
integer | 2 |
Pieces each word must split into. |
Examples¶
carpet¶
en — this text satisfies the procedure.
carpet
Source: constructed example; the form is traditional
indivisible¶
en — this text does not satisfy the procedure.
zzzq
Source: constructed counterexample
bahnhof¶
de — this text satisfies the procedure.
Bahnhof
Source: constructed example; Bahn and Hof are both nouns the lexicon knows, verified with is_word
bonjour¶
fr — this text satisfies the procedure.
bonjour
Source: constructed example; bonjour divides into bon and jour, verified with splits_into against the French lexicon
musique-ne-se-divise-pas¶
fr — this text does not satisfy the procedure.
musique
Source: constructed counterexample; musique admits no cut into two words the lexicon knows
charade-elton-courtship¶
en — this text satisfies the procedure.
courtship
Parameters: parts=2
Source: Jane Austen, Emma (London: John Murray, 1816), Vol. I, ch. IX (Mr Elton's charade); standard etext, not collated against the 1816 first edition