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2023 · open round · C · 15 points

Vloxes

Tom McCoy · semantics · morphology · rule discovery

Exciting news: You've gotten clearance to visit Mars! Your job there is to take care of some Martian animals called vloxes. Here are the nine vloxes that you are in charge of:

Nine cartoon Martian animals labeled A through I. Each has a pentagon-shaped body with a stripe across it, a round head, four legs, and some have a horn. They differ in overall size, presence of a horn, the direction the body stripe points, and how darkly the legs are shaded.

Your manager asks you to identify which vloxes fit the following descriptions:

  • The two mellivu vloxes
  • The two mellovu vloxes
  • The two kibb vloxes
  • The two azeltorf vloxes
  • The qliqli vlox
  • The imxo vlox
  • The three ravv vloxes
  • The kibbish-zuff vlox
  • The zuffish-kibb vlox

Unfortunately, many of these words are unfamiliar to you, and you don't have a dictionary! Luckily, you do have an encyclopedia article (below) that uses these words. Even though the article doesn't define the words directly, you can figure out a lot about a word based on how it is used in context. In fact, this basic strategy is an important approach in computational linguistics: When computers need to learn the meanings of words, they do so by analyzing the contexts that those words appear in.

Here is the encyclopedia article about vloxes that you should use to help you understand the unfamiliar words in your manager's descriptions.

Vlox

From Marsipedia, the Martian encyclopedia

The vlox (Vloxis vloxia) is the most imxo species of zoobleporf. Due to its playful disposition, it is a popular pet throughout Mars.

Contents
1 Appearance
2 In popular culture

Appearance

Vloxes occur in two breeds: the polar vlox and the valley vlox. Polar vloxes are usually more mellivu than valley vloxes.[1] Regardless of breed, all vloxes are born completely qliqli. As they mature, they become less and less qliqli. It is believed that all prehistoric vloxes were zuffish-kibb or tezzish-kibb, but modern vloxes display great variety in zlorvitude.

In popular culture

  • In the “Olympus Mons Explorers” comics, Captain Dfdgb's spaceship is called The Mellovu Vlox.
  • The first Martian prime minister, Jzirla Jzirlsdaughter, was often seen with her kibbish-zuff vlox named Klgrdm.
  • In the sitcom “Phobos and Deimos,” the main character Phobos has three imxo vloxes: a kibb vlox named Blorblim, a zuffish-ravv vlox named Qqqq, and a ravvish-womm vlox named Robert.
  • The most popular song by the Bellona Quartet is “Lookin' Like a Nearly Azeltorf Vlox,” which spent seven weeks at the #1 position on the Mercury Top 60 chart.

Notes

1 In a previous edition of this encyclopedia, we said that polar vloxes are more mellovu than valley vloxes. This was a typo - obviously, it makes no sense to say “more mellovu”!

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Questions

0 of 11 correct
C1

Based on what you can infer from the encyclopedia article, fill in the letter or letters of the vloxes that fit each description from your manager. You will need to use some letters more than once. Give letters separated by commas.

The two mellivu vloxes

The two mellovu vloxes

The two kibb vloxes

The two azeltorf vloxes

The qliqli vlox

The imxo vlox

The three ravv vloxes

The kibbish-zuff vlox

The zuffish-kibb vlox

C2

Fill in the blanks to create a description of the youngest vlox in the image, of the form ___(a)___ish-__(b)____. Each blank should be filled in with one of the following words: kibb, womm, zuff, tezz, ravv. You should not use the same word twice.

Blank (a): the word before -ish

Blank (b): the word after the hyphen

Explanation

Try the questions first. Use the Hint button next to any part if you need a nudge.

Reading the explanation costs no XP. Worth 15 points in the real exam.