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Does anyone want to swap word lists?

What about words such as delta? Can we use a triangle for it or does that count as a letter?

Draw a river mouth opening into a body of water

I've seen it both ways in the rules, but can we draw a pair of jeans for genes? I guess last year we weren't supposed to and i've seen it both ways online. What was decided?

Nonscientific pictures are totally allowed; in fact, sometimes they work better than the actual picture. You can draw a pair of jeans for "genes".

Thanks a lot! I hope this helps us!

SO4L wrote:Nonscientific pictures are totally allowed; in fact, sometimes they work better than the actual picture. You can draw a pair of jeans for "genes".

I'm not sure if you were intending sarcasm, but you definitely cannot do that. The pictures HAVE TO relate to the term.

I disagree with your interpretation of the rules, rndm - You definitely can do that. You're right in that it does have to relate to the term, but the rules just say that "all other symbols must represent the word(s) given," and I'd say a pair of jeans quite clearly represents the word jeans in a logical way that any outsider could clearly understand ("oh, that's a drawing of a pair of jeans, and since this is about scientific terms and jeans is a homophone, the term must be "genes"). No where do the rules say that you must convey the "scientific definition" of the word or even that you must represent that word exactly and not a "sounds like" version, since a homophone or some "sounds-like" device can be thought of as representing the word. That line of the rules is to prevent teams from making up codes and alphabets where they can use a formula that can pinpoint any word regardless of what it is - this essentially means just that there has to be a clear logic to what you drew and how your guessers got from that drawing to the term they guessed.

Question: For hyphenated terms, do you draw one line or two? Can you acknowledge correctness of just one part of the hyphenated term?

Yeah, they even went out of their way to specify that you can represent isobar with an ice cube at the coaches' clinic.

Also, I think your question on hyphenated terms is irrelevant. There aren't any on any of the past nationals lists I can find, and I don't think there ever have been. Nor have I ever seen a hyphenated term at any competition. If you do happen to come upon one, you're probably better off just not drawing any lines or writing down parts to be safe. If you really are worried, you can ask your proctor before the event starts.

nejanimb wrote:I disagree with your interpretation of the rules, rndm - You definitely can do that. You're right in that it does have to relate to the term, but the rules just say that "all other symbols must represent the word(s) given," and I'd say a pair of jeans quite clearly represents the word jeans in a logical way that any outsider could clearly understand ("oh, that's a drawing of a pair of jeans, and since this is about scientific terms and jeans is a homophone, the term must be "genes"). No where do the rules say that you must convey the "scientific definition" of the word or even that you must represent that word exactly and not a "sounds like" version, since a homophone or some "sounds-like" device can be thought of as representing the word. That line of the rules is to prevent teams from making up codes and alphabets where they can use a formula that can pinpoint any word regardless of what it is - this essentially means just that there has to be a clear logic to what you drew and how your guessers got from that drawing to the term they guessed.

Question: For hyphenated terms, do you draw one line or two? Can you acknowledge correctness of just one part of the hyphenated term?

Well at Regionals the proctor explained the rules to everybody for some reason. She did not say it like that.