Hspell 0.7 announcement
"Cold Evening"

The original announcement

References

This release done in December 22, 2003, which happened to be (not entirely by chance, of course) the date of the winter solstice. The winter solstice is indeed the shortest day of the year (i.e., the day with least daylight time). Also, while it only formally marks the beginning of winter (in the northern hemesphere, of course), it is certainly associated with winter, and therefore a cold evening, but not (at least in Israel), a snowy evening.

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening is a relatively well-known poem written in 1923 by Robert Frost. This poem is about the darkest evening of the year, which we decided to equate with the winter solstice. We took the poem's structure, but replaced much of the stanzas with spell-checking related sentences.

Here is the original poem, in all its glory:

Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening (Robert Frost, 1923)
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.