You may have heard of a “Dictionary Attack“, wherein a book of words (i.e. a dictionary) is used to try and ascertain a password, especially within a cybersecurity context.

Well, I am here to talk about something similar, though wholly different; a thesaurus attack.

Years ago, when I was younger and more into providing tech support help for a salary, I found that searching for the solution to troublesome issues was not as straightforward as one might expect. For example, if I was having a hard time finding a solution fro a computer that would freeze during boot time, i might try other words for “boot” or “freeze” or if I knew the specific state (like the Power On Self Test or POST), I would put in some descriptors of that.

Over time, I knew that lots of valuable tech help came from user forums. These are places populated with people like you and me, who don’t know that the RGB port has a specific name. It might be the “video output” or the “15 pin connector”, or whatever. So, though the forums were somewhat helpful, they required a different kind of approach for them to be useful. Understand what I mean?

I got really good at trying these various synonyms in the search boxes, and found that most search functions were boolean AND searches. That is, the more keywords, the fewer results. So, i settled on TWO keywords per search.

POST failure, POST error, boot freeze, POST freeze, etc.

yeah, and if the error page put up an error code, I knew I had the problem on the run: Post error 220456, POST 220456, boot 220456, etc.

The thing is, there is no scientific theory to use here. I could not predict which synonym sequence was going to work, even based on experience. I might put some effective pairs in first, then tweak to make the solution emerge more clearly. You just keep trying searches that consist of two words until you find something that works. I am sure there is a name for the decision process that goes “try until you succeed, then quit”, and THAT is what I was doing.

There is a HUGE problem in this type of ability though… that is, if you keep on trying, you will always be able to find whatever you need. But, what if you are on an exploratory search, where you are not especially clear about what is the “right answer”? And now, we are in the domain where I think that academics have created. The domain where you can call your favored approach or strategy whatever the hell you want. Even if you are talking about “metacognition” and you (in your pride) want to call your idea “Self-mediated learning” or somesuch nonsense.

Now, imagine the eventual outcome (filtered through my own brand of ridiculous extremism), where there are VERY few articles about the THING, and instead a sizable volume of knowledge about the THING, though described in a clumsy and fragmented way. Instead of 100 new articles about “metacognition”, we instad have some new articles on metacognition, some on self-mediated, or self-directed, or brain-centric, or whatever.

Don’t get me wrong. I know I participated in this as a young graduate student. trying to carve out a niche that belonged to me (the precious), but utterly HIDING it due to the obfuscation that I created by not using previously accepted language. And, yeah, you in the back, I know that evolution occurs in fits and starts. Maybe my niche COULD have become the new paradigm. I could have agreed with you if I found something NEW. But, I was just being a prideful and smug SCHMUCK, a YUTZ, a TOOL, a HONYOCKER!

OK, so a thesaurus attack is useful for finding ANY solution, given enough time and effort.