Talk:Ditloid

Possible new page here!
How's about: Pairs of Wikipedia pages which reference each other? ‎ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.122.47.162 (talk) 21:55, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

This looks like an advert
This should be changed to meet wikipedia's quality standards. 82.43.137.216 (talk) 15:10, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * What is being advertised? A defunct magazine? An out of print book? Not sure what you mean. Canon (talk) 04:34, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Format of list
If the purpose of the list of ditloids is to illustrate the concept, there do not need to be so many.

On the other hand, if the purpose is to provide the reader with a bunch of ditloids to test themself on, then putting the question and the answer on the same line of text is "unhelpful", since they cannot read the question without seeing the answer. A format something like what follows would be better, IMO.

26 = L. of the A.


 * (26 = Letters of the Alphabet)

7 = W. of the A.W.


 * (7 = Wonders of the Ancient World)

1,001 = A.N.


 * (1,001 = Arabian Nights)

12 = S. of the Z.


 * (12 = Signs of the Zodiac)

Or put all the answers in a separate list below the questions. CBHA (talk) 21:01, 26 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The purpose of the two short lists in the article is to show how the art form evolved in the early years. Canon (talk) 21:45, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Copyvios removed
The previous version of this article included what seemed to be Will Shortz's entire original list as well as many paragraphs of direct quotes. Quoting that much text directly rather than paraphrasing it and citing the original source amounts to a copyvio, as it far exceeds the minimal use of non-free content permitted by WP:NFCC. Therefore, I have removed it. —Angr 22:18, 26 November 2008 (UTC)


 * This cannot be true, because the original list was copied and circulated so far and wide by samizdat that it has certainly fallen into the public domain by now.Daqu (talk) 00:26, 18 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Things don't fall into the public domain by virtue of being widely reproduced. Depending on when the list was first published, it won't be public domain until either 95 years after it was published or 70 years after the author's death. —Angr 07:21, 18 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I respectfully disagree. That is one way that things do fall into the public domain -- in addition to the statutory amount of time passing.


 * Another exception to copyright is the fair use doctrine, which is unfortunately not cut and dried, but this use would almost certainly fall under that even if the excerpt were held to be under copyright.


 * Still, to avoid any doubt, I will try to obtain explicit permission from the copyright holder.Daqu (talk) 08:30, 20 February 2009 (UTC)


 * No, it really isn't. It's true that trademark protection can be lost if it isn't defended (which is why trademark holders try so hard to protect against genericized trademarks), but copyright protection only expires after a given amount of time. See the helpful chart at http://www.copyright.cornell.edu/public_domain/. The list was first published in 1981, so the only way it could be in public domain now is if it was published without a copyright notice and copyright was not registered within 5 years. It seems unlikely that Games magazine would have been published without a copyright notice, though. English Wikipedia does, unfortunately, allow the use of some copyrighted material under "fair use", but what I removed (if I remember correctly) was the entire original list. Repeating a small number of items on the list may be fair use, but not the list in its entirety. But even repeating a small number of items is unnecessary, since the article already has examples of what ditloids are. Incidentally, Wikipedia does not use copyrighted material by permission. Part of Wikipedia's mission is to be freely reusable by others, and copyright permission extended to Wikipedia doesn't extend to third parties. So we only use copyrighted material in cases where the fair use claim is strong enough that we don't need permission (and neither does anyone else). —Angr 10:40, 20 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Okay, based on your authoritative-sounding comment immediately above, I have asked the copyright holder if they are willing to place the entire original list of 24 questions in the public domain. (I don't know how the copyright holder can do this legally, but presumably there is some legal procedure for doing it, and the copyright holder surely has access to this information.)  Will report back here on outcome.  I feel the original list has historical value and so is worth quoting here if possible.Daqu (talk) 20:49, 20 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Progress report: It looks as though the copyright holder is willing to put up that list on its website, and Wikipedia will be welcome to link to it. This would be a fully satisfactory resolution as far as I'm concerned.Daqu (talk) 05:05, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
 * That sounds like a good solution to me, too. —Angr 17:00, 22 February 2009 (UTC)


 * The original puzzle has now been put up on the Games website and I've included a link to it in our article. For those who might enjoy getting the full original experience, it might be a good idea to replace the three examples given in our article (3 B.M., 24 H. in a D., and 52 C. in a D.) that also occur in the original puzzle -- verbatim or close -- with different ones. But I'll leave this to others.Daqu (talk) 17:36, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

What is the origin of the word "ditloids" ?
If anyone can find a reference to this, it would probably make a useful addition to the article.Daqu (talk) 07:19, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
 * The origin of the term is given in the first paragraph. —Angr 07:24, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Single-source concern
I agree that this article should be citing more sources than just the Ditloid Droid page. Amongst other problems, the "rules" given are just the Droid's take on them, not the generally-accepted ones.

In particular, "Common words such as 'the', 'in', 'a', 'an', 'of', 'to', etc. are not normally abbreviated." This is not true of DiTLoIDs I've come across elsewhere, and indeed is not true of the archetypal DiTLoID, which under that "rule" would have to be presented as "1=D in the L of ID". I suspect this "rule" was invented by the author of the Droid, to make the puzzles easier and thus more likely to be solved by the Droid. — 92.41.16.102 (talk) 12:41, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

External links modified
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Letter Equation Solver
Not sure if it would be appropriate to add this Letter Equation Solver as an external link? --Jameboy (talk) 01:54, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

History strange
I haven't read the article about Will Shortz, but all this history seems not historic and not relevant. Although "OR", I was doing these quizzes (not by the name ditloid) as a child in the 1960s. And they were never "maths", always, just identify the phrase. So what is with the history section? -- SGBailey (talk) 11:27, 13 August 2019 (UTC)