See numbers game in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
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"text": "Mr. John Powley (Norwich, South): The hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) was careful to say that at any one time no more than four GLC officers were present in the Committee. He did not say that only four had ever been present. Is it not possible that, through the long hours, relays of four different people at different times have been involved in the argument?\nMr. Martin Stevens: That is what is called playing the numbers game. I do no more than thank my hon. Friend for his kind intervention.",
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"ref": "1987, Jeff Rooker, “Housing and Homelessness”, in parliamentary debates (British House of Commons):",
"text": "I made it clear in a recent letter to the Minister, to which I do not expect him to reply tonight, that we will not play the numbers game of setting targets.",
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"ref": "2002 August 22, Andrea Semple, quoting Trish McDermott, “Love bytes”, in Alan Rusbridger, editor, The Guardian, London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC:",
"text": "If dating is, as Match.com's Trish McDermott puts it, “a number's game^([sic])”, there can be no denying that the numbers are increased online. The speed and affordability of these services are further attractions.",
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"ref": "2013 May-June, David Van Tassel, Lee DeHaan, “Wild Plants to the Rescue”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 3, archived from the original on 14 Aug 2013, page 222:",
"text": "Plant breeding is always a numbers game.[…]The wild species we use are rich in genetic variation, and individual plants are highly heterozygous and do not breed true. In addition, we are looking for rare alleles, so the more plants we try, the better.",
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"ref": "2015 November 22, Felix Salmon, “Is mobile making media all the same?”, in The Guardian, London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC:",
"text": "At the same time, if you’re chasing the mobile pennies that replaced the digital dimes that replaced the print dollars, then the numbers game becomes more important than ever. Mobile publishing is a big-company game, and the big companies playing it are filling their newsrooms with “growth editors” and data scientists and “audience development” experts, all of whom basically have one job: maximise traffic, by any means necessary.",
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"ref": "2018 July 29, Barbara Ellen, “Men, please stop boasting – sex is more than just a numbers game”, in The Observer, →ISSN:",
"text": "Which means that men playing a high-numbers game actually risk being bad in bed because they’re just doing the same things all the time, just with different women and not “developing their repertoire”, as it were.",
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"text": "Much online dating advice describes dating as a numbers game, where you increase your chances of a good match by going out with as many people as possible. Dating is indeed a numbers game, Young agrees – but one about identifying a small, focused number of people.",
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42,
54
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"ref": "1969, Eric Ogden, “Government Departments (Staffing)”, in parliamentary debates (British House of Commons):",
"text": "Is it not as misleading to apply a simple numbers game to the Civil Service as it is to the police?",
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193,
205
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255,
267
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"type": "quotation"
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0,
33
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376,
395
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443
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"text": "Mr. John Powley (Norwich, South): The hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) was careful to say that at any one time no more than four GLC officers were present in the Committee. He did not say that only four had ever been present. Is it not possible that, through the long hours, relays of four different people at different times have been involved in the argument?\nMr. Martin Stevens: That is what is called playing the numbers game. I do no more than thank my hon. Friend for his kind intervention.",
"type": "quotation"
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"bold_text_offsets": [
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125,
137
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"The incorrect use of statistics (numbers) to reflect a desired result (usually misleading)."
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[
57,
70
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"ref": "2002 August 22, Andrea Semple, quoting Trish McDermott, “Love bytes”, in Alan Rusbridger, editor, The Guardian, London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC:",
"text": "If dating is, as Match.com's Trish McDermott puts it, “a number's game^([sic])”, there can be no denying that the numbers are increased online. The speed and affordability of these services are further attractions.",
"type": "quotation"
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39
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"text": "Plant breeding is always a numbers game.[…]The wild species we use are rich in genetic variation, and individual plants are highly heterozygous and do not breed true. In addition, we are looking for rare alleles, so the more plants we try, the better.",
"type": "quotation"
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{
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[
129,
141
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"ref": "2015 November 22, Felix Salmon, “Is mobile making media all the same?”, in The Guardian, London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC:",
"text": "At the same time, if you’re chasing the mobile pennies that replaced the digital dimes that replaced the print dollars, then the numbers game becomes more important than ever. Mobile publishing is a big-company game, and the big companies playing it are filling their newsrooms with “growth editors” and data scientists and “audience development” experts, all of whom basically have one job: maximise traffic, by any means necessary.",
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48
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"text": "Which means that men playing a high-numbers game actually risk being bad in bed because they’re just doing the same things all the time, just with different women and not “developing their repertoire”, as it were.",
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187
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"text": "Much online dating advice describes dating as a numbers game, where you increase your chances of a good match by going out with as many people as possible. Dating is indeed a numbers game, Young agrees – but one about identifying a small, focused number of people.",
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}
Download raw JSONL data for numbers game meaning in English (7.7kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-09-16 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-09-02 using wiktextract (d6fca27 and 65e1673). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.