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about moby-dordle

7,000 of the words in Moby-Dick are used exactly once. Can you figure out where? Guess the chapter in which the word appears.

The game helps you zero in on the right chapter by telling you whether the chapter number you guessed was too high or too low, and eliminating chapters accordingly.

More of the surrounding paragraph is revealed after each guess. You have six guesses.

There will be a new Moby-Dordle each day.

Josh Wardle’s Wordle, John Turner’s Redactle, and Counterwave Games’s OMBY are gratefully acknowledged.

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But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest, quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley of the Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There stand his trees, each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were within; and here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his cattle; and up from yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke. Deep into distant woodlands winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in their hill-side blue. But though the picture lies thus tranced, and though this pine-tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon this shepherd’s head, yet all were vain, unless the shepherd’s eye were fixed upon the magic stream before him. Go visit the Prairies in June, when for scores on scores of miles you wade knee-deep among Tiger-lilies what is the one charm wanting? Water there is not a drop of water there! Were Niagara but a cataract of sand, would you travel your thousand miles to see it? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.
[keep reading chapter ]
1
Loomings
2
The Carpet-Bag
3
The Spouter-Inn
4
The Coun­ter­pane
5
Breakfast
6
The Street
7
The Chapel
8
The Pulpit
9
The Sermon
10
A Bosom Friend
11
Nightgown
12
Biographical
13
Wheel­bar­row
14
Nantucket
15
Chowder
16
The Ship
17
The Ramadan
18
His Mark
19
The Prophet
20
All Astir
21
Going Aboard
22
Merry Christmas
23
The Lee Shore
24
The Advocate
25
Postscript
26
Knights and Squires
27
Knights and Squires
28
Ahab
29
Enter Ahab; to Him, Stubb
30
The Pipe
31
Queen Mab
32
Cetology
33
The Speck­syn­der
34
The Cabin-Table
35
The Mast-Head
36
The Quarter-Deck
37
Sunset
38
Dusk
39
First Night Watch
40
Midnight, Fore­castle
41
Moby Dick
42
The Whiteness of the Whale
43
Hark
44
The Chart
45
The Affidavit
46
Surmises
47
The Mat-Maker
48
The First Lowering
49
The Hyena
50
Ahab’s Boat and Crew. Fedallah
51
The Spirit-Spout
52
The Albatross
53
The Gam
54
The Town-Ho’s Story
55
Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales
56
Of the Less Er­ro­ne­ous Pictures of Whales, and the True Pictures of Whaling Scenes
57
Of Whales in Paint; in Teeth; in Wood; in Sheet-Iron; in Stone; in Mountains; in Stars
58
Brit
59
Squid
60
The Line
61
Stubb Kills a Whale
62
The Dart
63
The Crotch
64
Stubb’s Supper
65
The Whale as a Dish
66
The Shark Mas­sa­cre
67
Cutting In
68
The Blanket
69
The Funeral
70
The Sphynx
71
The Jero­boam’s Story
72
The Monkey-Rope
73
Stubb and Flask Kill a Right Whale; and Then Have a Talk Over Him
74
The Sperm Whale’s Head—Contrasted View
75
The Right Whale’s Head—Contrasted View
76
The Battering-Ram
77
The Great Heidel­burgh Tun
78
Cistern and Buckets
79
The Prairie
80
The Nut
81
The Pequod Meets The Vir­gin
82
The Honour and Glory of Whal­ing
83
Jonah Historic­ally Re­gard­ed
84
Pitch­pol­ing
85
The Foun­tain
86
The Tail
87
The Grand Ar­ma­da
88
Schools and School­mas­ters
89
Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish
90
Heads or Tails
91
The Pequod Meets The Rose-Bud
92
Amber­gris
93
The Cast­away
94
A Squeeze of the Hand
95
The Cassock
96
The Try-Works
97
The Lamp
98
Stow­ing Down and Clear­ing Up
99
The Doub­loon
100
Leg and Arm
101
The De­can­ter
102
A Bow­er in the Ar­sa­ci­des
103
Mea­sure­ment of the Whale’s Ske­le­ton
104
The Fossil Whale
105
Does the Whale’s Mag­ni­tude Di­mi­nish? Will He Per­ish?
106
Ahab’s Leg
107
The Car­pen­ter
108
Ahab and the Car­pen­ter
109
Ahab and Star­buck in the Ca­bin
110
Queequeg in His Coffin
111
The Pacific
112
The Black­smith
113
The Forge
114
The Gilder
115
The Pequod Meets The Ba­ch­e­lor
116
The Dying Whale
117
The Whale Watch
118
The Quad­rant
119
The Cand­les
120
The Deck To­wards the End of the First Night Watch
121
Mid­night.—The Fore­castle Bul­warks
122
Mid­night Aloft.—Thun­der and Light­ning
123
The Mus­ket
124
The Nee­dle
125
The Log and Line
126
The Life-Buoy
127
The Deck
128
The Pequod Meets The Ra­ch­el
129
The Cabin
130
The Hat
131
The Pequod Meets The De­light
132
The Sym­pho­ny
133
The Chase—First Day
134
The Chase—Se­cond Day
135
The Chase—Third Day
Epi
Epilogue