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In the spirit of the What is a Word™/Phrase™ series started by JLee, a special brand of Phrase™ and Word™ puzzles.

*(ApoloGies in advance, I seeM to be havinG soMe trouble with My Keyboard today.)*

If a word conforMs to a special rule, I call it a KMorG Word™.
Use the followinG exaMples below to find the rule.

KMorG Words™ Not KMorG Words™
bands GanGs
basil thyMe
bawdy ribald
beefy brawny
boars piGs
canoes boats
canto chant
chivy chase
covet abhor
extent ranGe
fiefs lands
Glaze shine
Gnaws chews
Golds Metals
Goths punKs
jived jibed
lithe aGile
lusts wants
Meaty stronG
Micas rocKs
Mower tiller
radii radius
slash slosh
tooth teeth
twerps idiots
unsay recant
usury unfair

And, if you want to analyze, here is a CSV version:

KMorG Words™,Not KMorG Words™
bands,GanGs
basil,thyMe
bawdy,ribald
beefy,brawny
boars,piGs
canoes,boats
canto,chant
chivy,chase
covet,abhor
extent,ranGe
fiefs,lands
Glaze,shine
Gnaws,chews
Golds,Metals
Goths,punKs
jived,jibed
lithe,aGile
lusts,wants
Meaty,stronG
Micas,rocKs
Mower,tiller
radii,radius
slash,slosh
tooth,teeth
twerps,idiots
unsay,recant
usury,unfair

The puzzle satisfies the series' inbuilt assuMption, that each word can be tested for whether it is a KMorG Word™ without relyinG on the other words.
These are not the only exaMples of KMorG Words™; Many More exist.

What is the special rule these words conforM to?
Why are they called what they are called?

 

 

—HINTS—

helpfulness level 0:

There are no fish, red or otherwise, in this puzzle.

helpfulness level 1:

The What is a ... Word™ boilerplate and flavor text is not part of the actual puzzle; spastic capitalization therein does serve a (faintly fishy?) purpose, but can be safely set aside.
In the puzzle proper, case is intentional and relevant.

helpfulness level 2:

With apoloGies to Ferdinand de Saussure and his MaxiM:
TiMe chanGes all thinGs; there is no reason why these lists should escape this universal law

helpfulness level 3:

Why are only certain letters always capitalized? What connotations could those letters share?

helpfulness level 4:

Were I to add here, this puzzle would quite certainly be unsolvable.

helpfulness level 5:

What is the value of a KMorG Word™?

helpfulness level 6:

Today I was on a 10K run, but stopped for a while to see an open house for a property that's been for sale for $950G since MMIX. It was a nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there.

helpfulness level 7:

About helpfulness level 4's hint: the (only) reason is not specified is because, while a lot of words can be ruled out as KMorG Words™ by inspection, nearly all the words listed herein require both awareness of what to do, and a web browser (or equivalent, such as "curl"), to ascertain KMorG Word™ness... but no deep technical arcana or capability should be needed.

Lukas Rotter
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Rubio
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    Is the capitalisation necessary or a red herring? – boboquack Jan 29 '17 at 22:39
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    @boboquack, I'm thinking that hint is an answer to your question. – DyingIsFun Jan 30 '17 at 20:36
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    @CipherRiddle There are plenty of Non- words with no capital letters in theM at all. Surely that cannot suffice as the rule. – Rubio Jan 30 '17 at 20:49
  • It looks like only the letters K,M,and G and capitalized. – suomynonA Jan 31 '17 at 03:58
  • @boboquack Now you have the full answer to your question. :) – Rubio Jan 31 '17 at 09:02
  • Maybe this is related to odd/even. It looks like Not KMorG words only have capitals (K, M or G) in odd positions when: (1) the word has even length (Metals, piGs); (2) there is another capital in even position (GanGs). Also canoes-boat is an odd pair, why not canoe-boat or canoes-boats... canoes is odd in another way as well, because it's the only word with no ascenders or descenders (k, g, m are ascender, descender, neither btw). No idea what to do with all these observations, but maybe someone else does... – Levieux Feb 01 '17 at 12:16
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    Actually the canoes/boat thinG was an oversiGht in editinG (siMilarly twerps/idiot) and will be fixed shortly. That said, the oriGinal lists are accurate: boat and idiot are Non-KMorG Words™. In other news, My new Keyboard hopefully arrives in the next few days. ;) – Rubio Feb 01 '17 at 15:20
  • As for hint 3: why are only K, M and G capitalized, maybe this has something to do with the fact that these letters are used as prefixes for 10^3, 10^6, 10^9. Although k would usually be lowercase then... (but according to wikipedia KB instead of kB is sometimes used to denote 2^10 bytes) – Levieux Feb 06 '17 at 08:29
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    My rooMMates and I have been playinG with ways to assiGn a value to KMG or Non-KMG words for a part of the afternoon... We are perplexed by the lenGth of the words : KM are 5 or 6 letters, and non-KM 4, 5 or 6. Not so Much diversity... We tried position-based conversion, assuMing that those words work like numeric values ; we wonder if 'bails' is a KMorG word. We noticed that : no KMorG has a K,M or G in it, only at the beGinninG ; no KMorG starts with K, though ; many KMorG end with 's' or 'y', as if it was used durinG contructinG theM for fit the rules... How is your Keyboard, btw ? – Lilian Delaveau Feb 11 '17 at 18:57
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    Re: helpfulness level 2 hint.. Does that mean if something is currently a KMorG word then it won't necessarily always be? And vice versa? How weird. –  Feb 11 '17 at 22:49
  • @LilianDelaveau A truly excellent observation about letter counts per word, and you've found a second very relevant property as well (I won't say which). As for your final question, ... the new one is still not here. Alas. I've learned to deal with it pretty well, however. :) – Rubio Feb 11 '17 at 23:19
  • @tilper Great question. If so, what would explain that, I wonder? – Rubio Feb 11 '17 at 23:20
  • Holy crap, this still hasn't been solved. –  Feb 20 '17 at 14:35
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    The latest hint clearly points to the number 1000, I just have no idea how. – F1Krazy Feb 22 '17 at 12:54
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    Rubio has made it clear we need to run a program to solve this. I think a hint developing the use of computers would be useful. – Karan Atree Feb 22 '17 at 14:22
  • @KaranAtree Run one, yes. Write one, no. If you can read this, you can solve the puzzle. – Rubio Feb 23 '17 at 05:01
  • This is really bugging me :) I have to recognize I love how you write your clues :D Well, for what it's worth, the last clue talks about MMIX which is (2009 and) a computer architecture. Either irrelevant or a nested clue. We should run a program but don't write it... Gosh. – Lilian Delaveau Feb 23 '17 at 08:53
  • Converting letters into ASCII, with respect to case, doesn't seem to write a valid assembler program :/ – Lilian Delaveau Feb 23 '17 at 09:00
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    @LilianDelaveau I interpreted the level-6 clue as meaning only "K,M,G all denote 1000 rather than meaning 10^3, 10^6, 10^9 or 2^10, 2^20, 2^30 respectively". But of course that may be a misinterpretation. – Gareth McCaughan Feb 23 '17 at 18:26
  • I actually like the solution, but how long this puzzle lasted for shows there were actually too many fish in the hints (the value of K, M, G would be very difficult to ascertain without hint 6). – ffao Feb 23 '17 at 19:06
  • @ffao As a counterpoint, I heard at least 3 people state the correct interpretation of K/M/G no later than hint 3, which was about what was expected. My hints, in any case, are intended to scale up to usefulness - they've just never had to scale up that far before. (My week away didn't help any either.) – Rubio Feb 23 '17 at 19:12

1 Answers1

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I think a word is a KMorG word if and only if

it corresponds to an image on imgur.

Reason for the name:

"A picture is worth a thousand words".

So, for instance, the first few KMorG words are

bands, basil, and bawdy

and the first few non-KMorG words are (or, perhaps better, would be)

GanGs, thyMe, and ribald.

Some comments on the hints:

Level 1 "In the puzzle proper, case is intentional and relevant.":

Indeed it is, but the fact that K,M,G are capitalized and other letters aren't is (despite the level-0 hint) pretty much a red herring. (Though perhaps @Rubio would claim that the correct criterion is "capitalization follows the convention found in the puzzle, and the result is an imgur image".)

Level 2 "Time changes all things":

Some things that are not presently KMorG words might become such words later as more images are uploaded to imgur.

Level 5 "What is the value ...":

A reference to the "A picture is worth ..." saying.

Level 6 "10K, $950G, MMIX":

Just steering us away from the idea that M=10^6 and G=10^9.

Gareth McCaughan
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    Finally! Well done, @Gareth :) ... ooh, a box has just been delivered - can it be the new Keyboard at last?! – Rubio Feb 23 '17 at 19:01