Congratulations to Phyzicist and Quilt_Bug on a successful battle through the mosquitoes to earn FTF honours! (There wasn't a mosquito in sight when the cache was placed!)
If you solve/have solved this puzzle as it appeared prior to 2020-07-26, you are "good to go." It should be noted, however, that at that time the puzzle was changed and the DR raised as a result.
Lexicography: The Word
According to the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, lexicography is “the compiling, writing, or editing of dictionaries.” It follows that the people who perform these tasks are called “lexicographers.” In the preface to the 1925 edition of what we refer to usually as “Roget’s Thesaurus” is written the following description: “Lexicography is not a prophetic science: it merely records the past and the present . . . plays an important part in the standardization of speech [and] must be kept abreast of present-day requirements. Not only is the language actually growing, but old words take on new senses, while others drift into desuetude.” And, yes, that last word is in current dictionaries!!
Some Noteworthy Lexicographers
Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784) created A Dictionary of the English Language which was published in two volumes in England in 1755. It was not the first English dictionary nor did it include as many words as some previous attempts but his definitions were, on the whole, considerably better than those of his predecessors. One feature of his work was that, with the definition of a word, he included examples of usage of the word using quotations taken from the works of writers from the Elizabethan period to his own time. In fact, he explained that an illustration from a writer’s work could be interpreted as a suggestion to read that writer’s work.
Noah Webster (1758 - 1843) was born in Connecticut and educated in one-room schools, with tutors and at Yale University. He taught school briefly (later even establishing a couple of schools) and completed studies to be a lawyer but turned his hand to writing. A lucrative creation was a popular blue-backed speller the proceeds of which enabled him to spend many years working on his relatively unprofitable dictionaries, the first of which was published in 1806. Starting in 1807, he began decades of work to complete his comprehensive An American Dictionary of the English Language. In the process of verifying the etymology of the words, he mastered twenty-eight languages. His hope was to standardize the use of English across the United States because citizens spelled, pronounced and used English words differently in different regions of the country. He chose to use the spellings such as “center” and “color” which were already in existence because, he felt, they were more accurate phonetically. The first edition was published in 1828 and the second in 1840 but Webster was never rightly acknowledged for his accomplishment before he died.
Peter Mark Roget (1779 - 1869) was born in London, studied medicine in Edinburgh and London and had a varied practice until his retirement from medicine in 1840. By 1846, he had begun an imponderably difficult task which culminated, in 1852, in the publication of the Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases Classified and Arranged so as to Facilitate the Expression of Ideas and Assist in Literary Composition. It has been said that he suffered from depression for most of his life and that he used “list-making” as a coping mechanism; that led to the thesaurus. If one were interested, for example, in using a different word from “depression” one would look up the word “depression” in an alphabetized list and, in this case, be led to any one of eight sections in the book each dealing with a slightly different meaning of the word and there find a multitude of synonyms using various parts of speech. Where relevant, antonyms are provided also. The book has gone through many editions and each edition includes new words and new meanings for words as they appear in the language.
Sir James Murray (1837 - 1915) was born in the Scottish border country and was a grammar school teacher from 1855 to 1885. He became the first editor of A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, now known as The Oxford English Dictionary. The work was meant to be an inventory of words used in English from the mid-12th century and, in some instances, from earlier dates. The dictionary was to be based on historical and descriptive principles, each definition to be accompanied by an example of its usage and the date of that example. The first section, A–Ant, appeared in 1884, and from that time until his death, Murray completed about half of the dictionary but it was his organization of a tremendous amount of material that made its completion possible. He was aided by many people one of whom - an inmate of Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum - is treated in Simon Winchester’s The Professor and the Madman published in 2005.
Katherine Barber (born 1959) is a native of England but emigrated to Canada in time to earn degrees from two Canadian universities. She became the “Editor-in-Chief of Canadian Dictionaries” for the Oxford University Press in Canada in 1991 and continued until 2008 when their dictionary department was closed. In that time, she was responsible for two editions of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary published in 1998 and 2004 respectively. Known also as “Canada’s Word Lady,” she has appeared regularly on the CBC commenting on various facets of our language. She is recognizably one of the foremost authorities on Canadian English and known to many fans for making word stories lively and entertaining. The second edition of the COD continues to define the authoritative standard for Canadian dictionaries set by the first edition. Definitions, clearly enunciated, are presented with the most familiar meaning to Canadians given first. The reliability is exceptional because of Oxford's unparalleled language resources and the five trained lexicographers who were on the job for over five years. The new edition contains 5000 new words and “senses” and includes 2200 uniquely Canadian words and “senses.”
Lexicography: Decrypt the Message to Find the Cache
The third of five twelve-letter first-order isograms to appear in order in the preceding six paragraphs is the "key word" for solving the following cryptogram:
GPO EADFP DFA TU PMZFM CW DTLMC WBKBA PUPA MVBUPAZ YBUNOG CDO CWGKJEJ KJCWC PWGC ETQTC VKELSC PKE LSCP FMNDWC KTPNJ CMZJRCY NKMBW GOU KGWLPJZ YKE LSC PGCDO CWGKBUP AZ YJ TWLRUEJ CP JEJKB UNOFM NDWCK T PNJCMZ
Notes
- Please bring your own writing instrument.
- It can be a busy place so be stealthy.
- Please ensure that both tops are on securely.
- No need for a "checker;" you'll know when you've solved the encrypted message.