Frivolity

Every day I play a few little games to try and keep my mind sharp. (And by sharp I really mean active.) (And by active, I pretty much mean functional in some way.) This involves various Sudoku puzzles and the Merriam-Webster* word game of the day. If it's one of the fun ones. They have 3 fun ones (Add-Diction, Dictionary Devil, and the spelling bee one), 1 kind of fun one (the synonym falling from the sky one), and one really icky one (Citation). Unfortunately it seems that most of the time they alternate between the icky one and the fun one that requires speakers (spelling bee one) and thus I hesitate to play at work cause, well, people don't need to know that I'm enriching my spelling prowess while at work.

The word games take maybe two minutes each to play, so it's not like I'm spending tons of time doing this. The Sudokus either go quickly as well or I leave them open and play with them here and there throughout the day (if I'm on the phone with you and sound distracted, I'm either working or puzzling out a sudoku. Either way it's not personal.)

Anyway, Dictionary Devil is my most favoritest of the M-W puzzles. The premise therein is that they give you a list of vocabulary type words (one of which is a first letter followed by xs - so it's a hidden word), a scrambled list of definitions with missing words from them, and a pool of words. The idea is that you use words from the pool of words to fill in the definitions and then match the completed definitions with the proper vocabulary word. All of this while the clock ticks down from 2 minutes (See? It's even timed!) and if you can't do it in that time frame then the Dictionary Devil bounces around and sneers evilly at you and your pathetic grasp of the English language.

Most of the time when I play, I dutifully play according to the rules. But sometimes I try to make interesting or funny definitions instead. Even though it means I get the evil sneering.

So - I thought for a little Friday frivolity, I would use the words and definitions from today's DD and open it up for your creativity. Now, if you want to leave the "correct" answer in the comments, that's fine. But what I think would be more fun is to fill in the definitions from the pool of words to make wacky combinations. Whichever you prefer, leave your combination in the comments. Don't make me beg...this is fun, I promise! (Special bonus fun points for guessing the xd out word!)

Vocabulary Words:
axxxxxxx, cab, cocoon, condor, gastronome, prong, roundup, terpitude

Defintions:
a very large American _____ of the high Andes
one of the ____ points of a _____
a ____ in of ____ persons or things
a _____ of agriculture dealing with crops and care of the ____
the part of a ______ that houses the _____ and the controls
any of various other protective ______ produced by animals
a lover of ____ _____
_____ baseness

Word pool:
coverings, inherent, locomotive, vulture, food, branch, good,
engineer, sharp, gathering, soil, fork, scattered

*See, Gwynne, I can spell it right if I want to ;)