I'm just sayin'

REGAL is a better word than LARGE. I'm just sayin' ...

It occurred to me while in yet another unremarkable commute back from work. To ease the pain of spending 20 minutes with mostly unfamiliar faces, the upgraded metro trains, running between Jersey City and New York, have video screens airing mostly infomercials. Alas, more often than not, they exacerbate the commuter boredom. Things I like about it are weather forecasts, celebrity trivia (mostly to know who is hot these days) and anagrams.

I am usually buried in my phone during the commute, trying to connect with distant knowns than dealing with nearer unknowns. But when I am not, I do look up to the screens and try my luck with anagrams. Yesterday, I saw 'ARELG' flash on the screen and instantly chemical juices in my head started to flow. I can never tell why I can solve one anagram and not the other. But I was hoping to solve this one. Just a split second before the screen revealed the answer, REGAL flashed in my head. As I muttered it, the correct answer came on the screen - LARGE.

The chain of my reactions was something like this - started with 'huh'; followed by second-guessing and making sure I was spelling REGAL correctly; which led to "what the hell? I am right" moment; finally it all ended with a smile. That smile was a result of sort of mini divine tap-on-the-head moment. Multiple 'correct' answers are possible even for an anagram !! Just five characters can sort themselves out to have different meanings depending on who solves it.

Thankfully, English language is finite – there is a limit to the number of ‘correct’ English words that can be formed with these five characters. Try asking a broader question. My favorite, as somebody who follows economic policy, is “how to fix the tax code?”. And then watch the debate. We usually start with the presumption of 'other' side being wrong and end up concluding the same. But is that really the case? You don't have to be blind and feel different parts of the elephant to come up with alternative viewpoint. Even in broad daylight, same things/issues/observations can have very divergent interpretation, depending on how your chemical juices flow. The answers are not necessarily wrong, they might be just different 'right' answers. The follow-up question is - which ‘right’ answer is better?

REGAL is a better word than LARGE. I'm just sayin' ...

Comments

Arpita said…
GLARE - I am right too!
Enjoyed reading this, the tussle between right and right is always ugly. Thanks for pointing to blind men and elephant story, it's interesting. Real life should also be like anagrams, no matter how you look at it, if it has same set of characters, everything goes right!
9:42 AM
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