SMS Whacking

It took me a while to figure out how to use the SMS on my phone. I don't use it much in the US. For some reason it is rather expensive than it is here in India (~15c and 40c for international messaging) and it that is the subject of US federal investigation. As we all know, text messages consume very little bandwidth compared to voice transmission, so they should be much cheaper.

I was typing a message and I wanted to use the word 'nostalgic'. The T9 system did not have it in the internal dictionary. It was perhaps technology's polite way of saying - 'perhaps a shorter word would do, your show off! As a matter of fact, even 'fuck' is not in the dictionary; you have to add it your personal dictionary if you use it often. You live and learn.

Pondering more over this, I figured out a good game to play when you are bored which I call SMS whacking. The object is to use words that the T9 system won't recognize. Understandably, 'intransigent' was not part of the T9 dictionary. But, it's not always be big words. It did not know 'phlegm'. The funnest part is to find really small and common words that T9 won't recognize.

So far,
'exuberance' - yes
'recondite' - no
'abstruse' - yes
'Machiavellian' - no
'squaw' - no
'brie' - yes
'locquacious' - no
'pithy' - no
'lugubrious' - yes