Boggle-licious words of the week!

1. roc: Dominick remembered this word from the Age of Mythology PC-game. A roc is a legendary bird of great size and strength, believed to inhabit the Indian Ocean area, and able to carry 100 tons--that's a lot of fish! A roc is a carnivore, so perhaps the 100 tons would be in large mammals--humans? The roc glided over the rough seas in search of prey, its wings blanketing the ocean below, where a herd of blue whales swam dwarfed and darkened by the roc's shadow.

2. seel: this one seems legendary as well, and seems at least to have its origins in some archaic custom. It's a verb, meaning to close the eyes of (as a hawk) by drawing threads through the eyelids. The archaic meaning (because the previous one was so modern) is, quite simply, to close up (one's eyes). Ouch. I seeled my eyes as the sunlight's glare pierced and burned.

3. rube: a fun word, like dola or gary, I suppose, that traces its roots to the name Ruben (the only Ruben I've ever known was Ruben Kincaid from the Partridge Family), or even a particular person named "Ruben" who must have been enough of a piece of work to engender comments, comparisons, and finally, this memorialization, however infamous, of his unsophistication: n. an awkward, unsophisticated person; rustic; or a naive or inexperienced person. George Bush often appears to be a real rube, in appearance, behavior, and speech.

4. sate: We all know the word satisfaction, as in "can't get no...," but do you know the word "sate"? v. to cloy with overabundance, glut; to appease by indulging to the full. This holiday season, I plan on sating myself with all the sweets I can get my hands on.

5. pate: rhymes with sate, means head. "Cover your pate!", Mom always says, "before you get cold and miserable."

6. gast: This would have been handy at Halloween: v. to scare.

7. olio: n. a miscellaneous mixture. Sounds like a cafe' to me. We liked to eat at Cafe' Olio, because there was something for everyone.

8. S-O-N-E What 3 and 4-letter words can you make with these four letters?
one
nose
ones
son
noes (plural of no)
sen (yen)
sone: n. subjective unit of loudness for an average listener equal to the loudness of 1000 Hertz sound that has an intensity of 40 decibels above the listener's own threshold of hearing. Huh?