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Which word begins with "y" and looks like an axe in this picture? (2017)

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211–220 of 309 posts

Re: Which word begins with "y" and looks like an axe in this picture? (2017)

#211

I wonder why no one emailed the Chinese company and ask them where the letter comes from. That would be the simplest and better solution.

They did?:

> reached out to Hedstrom via their online contact form, Twitter, and Facebook. They replied…

Though it turns out to be a knock-off, finding the actual manufacturer might be difficult.

Re: Which word begins with "y" and looks like an axe in this picture? (2017)

#212
post #161

> I think the manufacturer of your son's ball mixed in a Swedish word I found this super unconvincing at first. But they just kept goin. And going. And going. And the more I scrolled and the more I read, I started to think that they are right. And by the end I was fully convinced! Well worth reading. Thanks for sharing, OP!

Same! But then I read another answer further down that suggested it might be a Chinese word for axe, romanized in pinyin as yuè (for 鉞). Since the knock-off ball seems to have been made by a Chinese company, that seems more likely to me. That doesn't explain the weird u-boat thing, though.

Chinese probably stole the cliparts without understanding where they come from and what needs to be adapted.

Similar thing happened with "Polish dancing cow meme song" being used in some singing toys. The song is very vulgar and talks about hard drugs withdrawal, depression and suicide.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huZOgoihHVk

Re: Which word begins with "y" and looks like an axe in this picture? (2017)

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14672359

I’m confused to how you made the assumption that the designer would be searching for “axe” in Chinese. That still assumes axe but then they decided to color it yellow afterwards?

I'm confused too.

Their posts brought up two points:

1. Y might be for yellow than axe.

-- I agree but that remains a theory.

2. The designer likely used a clipart of axe by searching "axe" in Chinese ("斧头"). The exact image was found.

-- ..OK? Not sure how this means anything, let alone "solved".

To be fair, other comments in that 2017 threads confused me too, e.g.

> 1. The letter 'A' and an upside down Y-shaped character share the same key on a Chinese/English key board

I have no idea what's that "upside down Y-shaped character" is about, as a native-Chinese speaker.

Re: Which word begins with "y" and looks like an axe in this picture? (2017)

#214
post #46
post #12

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…

I can't say that comment about regular expressions is particularly good -- it isn't even true.

(Some variants of regular expressions can implement arbitrary context-free grammars).

Re: Which word begins with "y" and looks like an axe in this picture? (2017)

#215
post #203

I was the one who solved this. It was an exciting time

Well done for completing God's own work.

Am I missing some joke or wordplay, or are you just a genuine believer who felt God warranted a mention here?

Re: Which word begins with "y" and looks like an axe in this picture? (2017)

#216
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My favorite is this one: A bear falls into a well. The depth of the well is 19.617 meters, and it takes the bear 2.0000 second to reach the bottom of the well. What is the color of the bear? https://qr.ae/pKqzpC

I like the work he put into the answer but he totally flubs it at the end. Black bears are actually dark brown and brown bears are also brown, so there’s no need to try and guess a specific bear species; the bear is necessarily brown.

Re: Which word begins with "y" and looks like an axe in this picture? (2017)

#217
post #215
post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well done for completing God's own work.

Am I missing some joke or wordplay, or are you just a genuine believer who felt God warranted a mention here?

As far as I know, “you’re doing God’s work” is a relatively common - if somewhat archaic - idiom. It means roughly “I appreciate what you’re doing.”

Re: Which word begins with "y" and looks like an axe in this picture? (2017)

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m confused to how you made the assumption that the designer would be searching for “axe” in Chinese. That still assumes axe but then they decided to color it yellow afterwards?

I'm confused too. Their posts brought up two points: 1. Y might be for yellow than axe. -- I agree but that remains a theory. 2. The designer likely used a clipart of axe by searching "axe" in Chinese ("斧头"). The exact image was found. -- ..OK? Not sure how this means anything, let alone "solved". To be fair, other comments in that 2017 threads confused me too, e.g. > 1. The letter 'A' and an upside down Y-shaped cha…

I was wondering the same. After a little searching, I reckon they're referring to 人 on a keyboard using a dàyì layout.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dayi_method

My first thought was bopomofo ㄚ (which corresponds pleasingly to pinyin "a") but that's just a normally-oriented Y! And it sits on the other side of the keyboard anyway

Re: Which word begins with "y" and looks like an axe in this picture? (2017)

#219
post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I missing some joke or wordplay, or are you just a genuine believer who felt God warranted a mention here?

As far as I know, “you’re doing God’s work” is a relatively common - if somewhat archaic - idiom. It means roughly “I appreciate what you’re doing.”

Ah, yeah if it had been worded like that I'd have recognised it as the idiom, but hadn't occurred to me it could be an unusual wording of that idiom.

Re: Which word begins with "y" and looks like an axe in this picture? (2017)

#220
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be sure to read that link with showdead. thedrake’s victorious final comment “ SOLVED!!!!!! I spent several hours looking for an axe or a hatchet or an Ubåt…” is dead. Possibly because of a heuristic aimed at killing spam posts with too many links.

Thanks! it's https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14673626 and I've unkilled it now. (It was killed because of the lmgtfy link btw)

is there a way to show [flagged] and [delayed] ?
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