WORD/*L

As you're probably aware, Wordle is an extremely popular and trendy word game and novel clones keep popping up. Not to let steno be left behind, Plover Discord community member Abby#5422 has created WORD/*L.

A new puzzle every day, you need to enter valid strokes from Plover's dictionary that have 4 or 5 keys in them (because hyphen is included). Then, the app will tell you whether the letter used in the chord is in the solution and whether it's in the right place. The hint keyboard below doesn't differentiate between letters that appear on both sides of the board, so that adds a little challenge.

 

A lovely game of WORD/*L

I (Ted) will certainly be adding this special version of Wordle to my morning coffee routine. Thank you Abby! Try to solve today's puzzle.

Video of the Open Steno Meetup

I had the honor to caption a three-hour meeting with both Open Steno community members and stenographic professionals last Saturday. Our friend Christopher at Stenonymous made a detailed breakdown of everything that was discussed, or you can also just read the transcript, if you'd prefer text to video. It was an inspiring and productive meeting, and I'm so proud of everyone who contributed to make it what it was! Here's to many more great Open Steno meetups, both online and in person, going forward!

2022 Open Steno Community Survey!

With help from the excellent Jen, the 2022 Open Steno Community Survey is now out! Jen writes:

I know we got a massive influx of new Plover users in the past few months, thanks in part to YouTube content by Aerick and Tokaku and the Uni v3 Kickstarter. Please fill this out when you have the chance -- this way we know where to put effort in in terms of new hardware, Plover features, and learning materials.

Can't wait to see the answers! If you're interested, you can also read the responses from the 2021 Open Steno Community Survey.

Typey Type Now Has Progress Charts

The amazing Di, author of Typey Type, writes:

I've coaxed D3 into a React app so you can see pretty charts of your typing speed and steno typos over time.

With Typey Type, I aim to make features specific to steno. So while you can see your typing speed chart on any typing site, the key difference with Typey Type is that you can see your strokes along the way. It tries to identify where the word you've typed has become shorter and longer again to spot typical steno behaviour and show that as its own point on the chart. This makes it possible to see multi-stroke words in progress as well as incorrect stroke attempts. It makes a lot of guesses for this, so it's not perfect, but I hope it helps.

Aerick's Beautiful Explainer Video

Early last month, the illustrious Aerick (a frequent star on this blog) posted this marvelous video demonstrating how steno works using multiple simultaneous visual overlays while captioning himself flawlessly at conversational speeds. It's breathtaking! I've been meaning to post it for a while now, but better late than never! I hope this video spreads far and wide (it's got almost 2,000 views already, so it's off to a good start), because it's the most compelling and concise explanation of steno theory I've seen in quite some time.