61–70 of 309 posts
First comment on the answer: > This is quite the most extraordinary stack exchange answer that I've ever seen. And I couldn't agree more. Well worth perusing if you (like me) usually only check the comments on HN.
(https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/395382/which-wor...) 615 points|Gigablah|7 years ago|158 comments
(https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/395382/which-wor...) 179 points|flexagoon|1 hour ago|53 comments
(https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/395382/which-wor...) 56 points|colinprince|4 years ago|4 comments
(https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/395382/which-wor...) 3 points|kent1|7 years ago|0 comments
(https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/395382/which-wor...) 3 points|vermilingua|7 years ago|0 comments
HN really should surface these by default.
The most upvoted answer gives the explanation the ball manufacturer is Swedish ('axe' in Swedish starts with a 'y'), but other answers say it was probably manufactured in a country where English wasn't the first language (e.g. China) and the 'y' for axe was simply a typo. The evidence against the Swedish explanation is that the ball says c for 'cat' and d for 'dog', but in swedish the translations are 'katt' and 'hun…
hund, not hunn
There is a smoking gun in one of the later comments: https://i.stack.imgur.com/bDRX5m.jpg
Y for yellow, given that's the color of the handle and that you need something to be representative of the color. Even having a yellow square could confuse it with S for square, or having a banana can confuse it with B for banana. Similar problems exist with S for Sun, C for (a yellow) crayon etc. Also the handle is what has been drawn superimposed over the letter. Still, confusion with A for axe isnt any better than…
Having said that, I enjoyed how the case was built on the faded outline, while this entire spot of the ball shows faded black print, as may be observed by the outlines of the infamous "Y".
(I'd rather opt for the "yxa" approach, probably the route taken by someone just browsing image search for quick ideas and failing to realize that this is not an English word. — Non-indo-european languages and scripts do exist.)
Wasn't yew wood used for wooden handles in the past? It kind of looks like a yew-handled axe. Surprised that nobody mentioned that option. Fun fact: Ötzi the iceman had a staff and axe made of yew -- https://www.iceman.it/en/equipment/
> It kind of looks like a yew-handled axe OK, I'll ask: What is it about this rather poorly drawn axe makes it look like it's yew handled?
Played RuneScape as a kid => grinding woodcutting on yew trees => axe.
First comment on the answer: > This is quite the most extraordinary stack exchange answer that I've ever seen. And I couldn't agree more. Well worth perusing if you (like me) usually only check the comments on HN.
No, although this answer is awesome and very well researched, it cannot match the famous answer to the question about parsing HTML using regular expressions :-) : https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open... . BTW, I got curious about the highest scored answer and this meta answer explains how to find it: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/266570 . The highest scored answer is this one: https://stack…
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From back in the day when Stack Overflow was fun.
