I didn’t put this in The Game Room, because it hardly qualifies as a game. Mods will of course feel free to move it.
When I get bored, I sometimes type made up words into Google, with the idea of getting the smallest number of hits, while getting at least one hit. The idea is to get as many in a row before you get something with no hits. I’m still attempting to get my first ever 1 hit word. As I’m sure you know, Google will show exact hits, and suggested hits. Of course, you use the exact hits in scoring.
First word I tried was “bacarab”, which yielded 772 hits due to such combinations as “BAC Arab”. Next choice was “snuhdel”, which yielded suggestions for “snudel” but no matches for the spelling I specified. Okay, I finally got a good starter:
ligfaz – 8 hits
trubofe – 3 hits
Whoops, 235 hits for shaxil. No way I’m going to beat your average…
The last one came up on a non-English page, so I don’t know if that counts. Some no-hitters in between, too, so these don’t qualify per the stated rules, but it’s a fun game nonetheless, if only to come up with words that have a few hits.
You know what’s funny? Board readers scour the SDMB and in a day, maybe less, this thread will be searchable by Google. So every word we put here will automatically cause your hit count to increase by one.
Okay, but that doesn’t really matter as far as the game goes, since the words will only appear a day later, or whatever, and presumably no one will be able to stay in a given game for that long.
I think it would be good to define your word! Now it seems that the real whensetac is a user name on a discussion board, but my whensetak is an adhesive used to attach children’s artwork to walls. “Mom, can you get the whensetak? I made a drawing!”
Who would’ve thought that this game would be educational? Putting in “Thorkel” got me a link to info on this guy
And “Schlenk” was apparently the name of an organic chemist. He came up with a way of manipulating materials in extremely cold and dry conditions. There’s something called a “Schlenk apparatus” for doing so, and there are “Schlenk conditions” under which some organometallic reactions can happen.
Sheesh! Most all of the words presented here almost appear as random combinations of letters, and don’t appear to have any use. Most, but not all.
I made up a word, which I have used on another board as a verb. It’s meaning is rather apparent when used properly. I just did a search on that word and came up with one hit, which was on that board. And its not just any quackamamy word, either. I’m not going to tell you what that word is because I can imagine it to be used for a new online pseudonym sometime in the future.
So, in wrapping this up…
<my secret word> - 1 hit
quackamamy - 0 hits
Maybe you should be able to use your made-up word in a sentence…
Sorry, I guess I misunderstood. I had LOTS of words that got no hits. I didn’t write them down! I was mistaking it for the game of Googlewhack: http://www.googlewhack.com/ in which you try to get only one hit. Some of my friends play it.