The peripatetic Sarah O'Leary issued a late-night challenge to "Stump OS." Read the initiating post here. For a precis of the post --- she suggested entering a search term in the search box above. Any term eliciting 50 or fewer "hits" earns 25 points.

By the way, a search for "Sarah O'Leary" also yields zero hits. What's up with that?

In any case, after suggesting that this should NOT be a cumulative exercise (where points can be earned ad infinitum), I tried "zuider zee."

Any search term that yields no hits becomes worth 50 points under Sarah's rules. I would submit that 50 points is a maximum score. However, in order to earn those points, Sarah insists that a post about the zeroed search term must be supplied.

Herewith...

I recall that I was entranced by the words "zuider zee," or more properly, Zuider Zee when, as a precocious youngster, I read that geographical marker. Absent further research, my mind conjures an artificial lake or canal created by the land reclamation/sea-thwarting efforts of those hearty Dutchpersons (most likely after the tulip-bulb bubble and crash). But most prominent in my memory is that this was a foreign word that I could really wrap my tongue around. As a childhood map and globe nut, somehow the places of Holland (The Netherlands) and Switzerland were the only European venues I had any desire to see.

At my advanced age, I've still never been to either country - although there has been talk of a group migration to the Low Countries if our local government isn't cleansed of corruption. Still, I have fond recollections of the first time I heard of the Zee...and Bern.

For the record, the Zuider Zee, or Zuiderzee, is about 60 miles in length and 30 miles in width, and averages 15-20 feet deep. It was an inland extension, or estuary of the North Sea, and translates as Southern (Zuider) Sea (Zee). Today, the ocean has been blocked and the zee is now essentially a freshwater outlet for the Ussel (sic), a tributary of the legendary Rhine River.

Here's an English-language link to the Zuider Zee museum if you have further interest. Let's hope our friend Nada Holland will contribute local color? I can just imagine us all going fishing in the zee with pole boats. But what would we catch? Colds?

But still and all, that childhood romantic attachment to the words, and perhaps the place, means more than the facts.

And once again, I manage to add to the sum total of trivial, diverting content on the OS. I promise to make a contribution of substance. Really. Someday.