Six Legos can be arranged in 915,103,765 ways

[DSYoungEsq]

Leggo my Legos!!!

[Richard_Pearse]

@gazpacho

It has everything to do with corporate marketing drones they just got to you at an early age. Legos as a mass noun comes from the lego company.

I don’t know how you interact with the sand in the sand box but I always interact with in a large number of grains at a time. In contrast to legos. With legos you generally have a need to refer to individual lego blocks. Most of the mass nouns that I can think of you don’t really interact with them at the individual unit level.

I think the distinction is that those of us who refer to “Lego bricks/blocks”, or a “box of Lego” would not refer to a “lego”. It is not a “lego”, it is a “Lego brick”.

[AWB]

[hijack]My loving parents bought me many Legos, all before the little figurine craze, which I think dillutes the artistry of making objects with Legos.

I could build a reasonably accurate model of the Starship Enterprise (NCC-1701) using white Lego 2x4’s and various-sized “flats” (those Legos that were [sup]1[/sup]/[sup]3[/sup] the thickness of regular Legos). I didn’t need no little figure to know what it was.

The most irregular Lego pieces I had were circular pieces that were 4 Lego-units in diameter, with 10 Lego knobs on top. The top half rotated indepenent of the bottom, so it was useful in making cranes, carosels, etc.

My parents consternation was that the tiniest Legos, the 1x1 flats, often did not get put back in my collection boxes, but rather got lost in the carpeting throughout the house. Just the other day, my mother said she stepped on a Lego. And this was in a house that I’ve never played Legos in. :D:D
[/hijack]

[CurtC]

@TheLoadedDog

I’d have called 'em chazwozzers!

No, we call those “bullfrogs.”

[Mandarax]

@Vetch

You were lucky! I had to make do with an empty box and no sand in the pit.

You 'ad a pit? We dreamed of 'aving a pit!

[Martini_Enfield]

@Mandarax

You 'ad a pit? We dreamed of 'aving a pit!

Luxury! We used to dream of 'avin dreams!

[Malacandra]

@Chronos

You’ve got me stumped. For a combinatoric number, 915103765 is remarkably short of factors: The only factor it has under 110 (as far as I was willing to check by hand) is 5. If nothing else, this means that they’re treating the bricks as indistinguishable, because otherwise, the number would have to be a multiple of 720. And there are enough ways to fit them together (and enough qualitatively different ways, once you get above 2) that I have a hard time seeing how to calculate this, other than a brute-force count. Even that would be difficult, though, because there would be a lot of degeneracies.

Yup, 915103765 factorises to (5, 183020753). God bless REXX.

[gazpacho]

@1920s Style "Death Ray"

I think the distinction is that those of us who refer to “Lego bricks/blocks”, or a “box of Lego” would not refer to a “lego”. It is not a “lego”, it is a “Lego brick”.

And the distinction is there for legal and trademark reasons.
from
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000943.html

Trademark grammar

I am very grateful to Keith Ivey for pointing out to me that the International Trademark Association (INTA) is the source of the strange Microsoft prescriptivism about trademarks. The INTA is fuller in its list of prohibitions — and apparently nuttier. Their grammatical prescriptions seem at first sight worse than just insane, because at one point they’re self-contradictory. But one can make some sense of it all. Let me explain.

Here are some quotes, with my comments following each.

NEVER use a trademark as a noun. Always use a trademark as an adjective modifying a noun.

EXAMPLES:

   1. LEGO toy blocks
   2. Amstel beer
NEVER modify a trademark to the plural form. Instead, change the generic word from singular to plural.

EXAMPLES:

   1. tic tac candies, NOT tic tacs
   2. OREO cookies, NOT OREOS

You will find that many organizations try to tell you how to speak. For example Adobe.

Trademarks

The Photoshop trademark must never be used as a common verb or as a noun. The Photoshop trademark should always be capitalized and should never be used in possessive form, or as a slang term. It should be used as an adjective to describe the product, and should never be used in abbreviated form. The following examples illustrate these rules:

[Richard_Pearse]

@gazpacho

And the distinction is there for legal and trademark reasons.

You’re missing the point.

Some people naturally maintain brand name distinction simply because it doesn’t occur to them to use the brand as a noun. This does not mean that corporate marketing drones have got to us. It means that we coincidently speak in a manner that keeps the drones happy.

We do it for the same reason we don’t listen to music through our “sonys”, it just doesn’t sound right.

I had never been aware that Lego didn’t want people referring to “legos” and I’m sure my Mum didn’t when she was buying them for me in the mid seventies. I didn’t even know that any significant group of people called them “legos” until I read it on this board.

It seems to be mostly a USA thing, and probably has more to do with America’s use of language* than on the ability of marketing drones to get to the rest of the world.

*I mean that in a neutral way. Although “legos” sounds wrong to my ears, I really don’t care what other people say and accept that language evolves.

[Martini_Enfield]

@1920s Style "Death Ray"

You’re missing the point.

[…}

We do it for the same reason we don’t listen to music through our “sonys”, it just doesn’t sound right.

I agree with you, but that may not be the best example- the vast majority of our customers at work call ALL MP3 players “iPods”, regardless of manufacturer or features. Apple have arguably shot themselves in the foot with this one, since “iPod” could now be considered the generic name for an MP3 Player, just as “Thermos” is the generic name for any flask designed for keeping beverages warm, and “Hoover”- in places like Australia and the UK- refers to any vacuum cleaner.

I had never been aware that Lego didn’t want people referring to “legos” and I’m sure my Mum didn’t when she was buying them for me in the mid seventies. I didn’t even know that any significant group of people called them “legos” until I read it on this board.

Count me in as another person who had never heard “Legos” until coming across this board. Everyone I knew as a kid called them Lego, in the singular.

[gazpacho]

@1920s Style "Death Ray"

Some people naturally maintain brand name distinction simply because it doesn’t occur to them to use the brand as a noun. This does not mean that corporate marketing drones have got to us. It means that we coincidently speak in a manner that keeps the drones happy.

But the English saying lego for both singular and plural is using lego as a noun. If you were not using it as a noun you would say a box of lego blocks not a box of lego.

[Asimovian]

I’m really, really sorry. But my jaw had only halfway dropped to the floor before I realized that the thread title did NOT say “Six Negroes can be arranged in 915,103,765 ways.” :eek: :smack: