Tin Types

Well, that was disappointing.  I just set aside time to take the Google/Virgin Day in the Cloud Challenge.  The first question took me to a Google Document.  I solved it in under 30 seconds, but when I went back to the screen to input the answer, the screen that used to be an answer input screen was now a "You scored a total of 0 points.  Thanks for playing!" screen.  Ah well.

In light of this, I categorically vow never to fly Google or use a Virgin search engine.

The following phonetic flat works to my ear, but it misses by 11C standards due to a schwa vs a similar vowel sound.  I thus can't bring myself to submit it to the Enigma, but that doesn't mean I won't foist it upon you good people here.


PHONETIC PASTEOVER (enumeration withheld)
(*HOCKEY = not MW; stress changes)

Once Con is over if anyone's interested
Here's how to spend some more nights:
We'll charter a bus and then (road trip!) we'll taste
Some of Maryland's seafood delights.

We'll have crab cakes in Baltimore, scallops in Silver Spring,
AHI in *HOCKEY (uncooked!),
And trout in Bethesda, continuing west.
Who's with me?  Let's get this thing booked!
=TINHORN, Los Angeles CA

Back less than 5 minutes from a long weekend in San Francisco, which included (1) pizza-fueled Enigma group-solving at Hot's place, (2) playing in the excellent BANG 22, (3) playtesting the excellent BANG 21 [sic], (4) being accompanied (and driven around) by the always delightful Serendipity for all these things, and (5) seeing, albeit briefly, Mystery Hunt teammates Mosayc and Ace.  Tired, achy, and a bit sunburnt, but a great time.

On the flight back, I had the window seat, some guy took the seat in the middle, and soon after a guy sat in the aisle seat of our row.  Middle Guy said to Aisle Guy: "After we take off, would you mind switching with my friend two rows back?  We couldn't get seats together."  Aisle Guy said OK.  Three minutes later, Tall Brunette in a Short Skirt boards and tells Aisle Guy that he's sitting in her seat, which sure enough he was.  TBSS takes over Aisle Guy's seat.  Middle Guy texts something (from a small laugh behind us I think I know to whom), and never asks TBSS if she would switch seats so he could sit next to his friend.

Good call.

Remember the movie Across The Universe from a couple of years ago?  Last night I dreamt that I was living a version of it, except using music by The Rutles.

The "Cheese and Onions" love duet, which took place in a large hotel lobby, was rather touching.

Hail is falling as I type this.  Here in Los Angeles.

Does silverware go into the dishwasher business-end up or business-end down?

The rundown for tomorrow's Attack Of The Show on G4TV (check your local listings) includes the following segments:

MIT Mystery Hunt
Sex advice from Anna David
Most helpful webtools

If you're reading this, you'll probably be interested in at least one of those.

I'll have recappy things to say over the next few days, but for now, please to enjoy the photos you can find here of the tremendously fun and satisfying Escape From Zyzzlvaria Hunt by Evil Midnight.

It was a pleasure solving together, Beginner's Luck.  And now even more fun awaits.

My wife's on the phone, and she just uttered the phrase "Turn over a new leaf on life."  So there's that, then.

Our internet access went down on Tuesday, and because of the New Year AT&T could not (or would not) get anyone out to fix it until today, 3 days later.  Turns out the problem was that somehow our speed had gotten turned up too fast for our modem to handle, which was not anything we did.  I can't tell you how many times during those 3 days I'd be doing something else on the computer and instinctively clicked the browser to look something up, only realizing a split second later I was going to get an error message.

In any event, it's nice to be back.  Happy New Year, all!

The dwarf orange tree we planted in our yard 3 years ago has grown exactly one orange in that time.

I just ate it, and it was delicious.

Well, no.  But we would have if we had been able to correctly count the number of U's in the following paragraph:

"You're a resourceful person, but you don't understand how thoroughly you upset people when you cause trouble.  If you would only use common sense instead of continually -- and quite obviously -- confusing the issue by pushing for useless solutions, knowing full well they could never truly be successful."

The number of U's in this paragraph gave us two of the digits in a phone number.  (The number of U's in other paragraphs gave us the other digits.)  We tried what we thought was the correct number but got what seemed like an out-of-game answering machine.  We recounted everything and confirmed the same numbers for the other paragraphs but one higher for this one.  We tried the new number and got another seemingly out-of-game answering machine.  We tried a couple of other variations, and tried some of the same ones again (since the messages were a bit hard to hear.)  At this point, having seen several other teams arrive before and after us (we had been a little slow in getting out of the box on the endgame before getting the clue leading to the phone number), and deciding to take in the recap, we walked the 10 minutes back to the main game area.

As we approached, however, we heard from competitors that no one had yet won.  Hmm.  We stopped about 100 yards from the main area to recount and try again.  During that process we got the same number as before, but then decided to take it more slowly and really count super carefully (we really mean it this time).  But during that process, we heard the crowd cheer by the main stage -- ah well, someone must have won, so let's go and hear the recap and see what we missed.

After about 20 minutes of recap of the rest of the hunt, it was announced that the organizers would then confer about what additional clues to give because -- no one had yet won!  Wait what?  The cheer had evidently been for some other announcement.  By now, all 3 NPL teams (that I know of) had recongregated.  In a bit, Justin (of http://www.justinspuzzles.com -- go there!) looked at our numbers and said he had gotten a figure of yet one higher on the paragraph.  With very little optimism (but nothing to lose), I dialed it in, and ... it worked!  We all scrambled to comply with what the recorded message told us to do, but a winning team (with 2nd and 3rd following quickly) was announced around that time, and though we knew how to find the turn-it-in location hinted at by the final recording, we were now 8 blocks away from it, whereas when we first started dialing numbers we were only 4 blocks away.

If we had tried "one higher for good measure" when we originally tried putting in phone numbers (all other things being equal), we would have gotten the final recorded message more than 30 minutes before the winners won, and would have needed to walk a mere 4 blocks (we readily deciphered where) to turn the solution in.  But, well, we didn't.

Despite this, I had a tremendously great time the entire weekend, teamed (by random lot the night before) with Trip and Eric for the main event, and generally just hanging out with lots of people who I don't get to see often enough.  And great thanks to Trip and Brian for hosting the fun hunt-eve festivities.

Finally, the test:  Give yourself one minute (no more) to count the number of U's in the paragraph quoted near the top.  Might you have helped us win the hunt?

The first puzzle in the Pencilwise section of the December 2008 Games Magazine is mine.  I don't expect to catch up to many of you out there, but it's a start.

(Side note:  They do edit them quite a bit, don't they!)

500 pics of our recent cruise around Italy (Rome, Katakolon, Corfu, Dubrovnik, Trieste, Venice) can be found here. The final pic is of Rebecca posing with our head waiter, Manny Satisfied (you can make out his name badge if you look closely).

Captions for at least some of the pics will be up at some point, but until then, feel free to make up your own.

Travel is fun, relaxing, and beautiful, but it's also great to be home.

Last night, I was on the Lido deck (top floor) of the Crystal Serenity for the nightly sail-off party as we left Dubrovnik for Trieste, and the second song the (pretty cheesy) live band played was CCW's "Stuck in Lodi."  And I couldn't help thinking:  "LIDO/LODI, metathesis ..."

I expect you'll see a couple of Mediterranean flats in the November Enigma.  My wife has had to live through quite a few bases and bad puns.

Back home in a few days.  Always seems to me like it'll be too long away at the beginning, but then it feels too short at the end.

Going to Rome in a few weeks.  Any suggestions on places to go and things to see?

The Amazing Color-Changing Card Trick is a very nice example of misdirection.  And here is a shout-out to my long-ago friend David Carno, who did something similar one day in summer camp back in the 70's and no one noticed.

(Tip: GeekPress)

Finishing the first draft of your cryptic for BaltiCon:  Priceless.

Most of you reading this will have seen some of these, but few will have seen them all. I thought I'd collect them in one place.


On July 18, we (Mystic Ghosti) submitted our Ghost Patrol application. Eschewing a video, our submission included a cryptic crossword that served as a ghost catcher. It is available, for your solving pleasure, here:

Ghost Net cryptic


The two handout puzzles I had at Conorado 2008 are here:

Colorado Cryptic
Bidiirectional Multicross


My photos from the Con are here:

Dioramas
Other Pix


The diorama by Zebraboy and me, based on a base I had been waiting to use for some time and ZB's tremendous artistic talent, placed second in the voting:

WELDED (WELL, TAPED ACTUALLY) TRANSPOSAL (5 7)





And finally, some video clips from Con are here:

World Series of Wordplay final -- Round 1
World Series of Wordplay final -- Round 2
World Series of Wordplay final -- Round 3
World Series of Wordplay final -- Round 4

Denver Jeopardy -- opening theme
Denver Jeopardy -- omelet round