Tink And Frog

Here's one for Melissa, Jean, and meriko. One of my word podcasts mentioned knitting slang terms frog and tink. The first means to rip out a bunch of rows because of some earlier mistake, and is derived from the fact that you have to "rip it, rip it." The second refers to backing up a few stitches to undo a more recent mistake. And its origin is as obvious as it is witty: knit backwards to tink.

Farrago?

I know most of this blog's readers—and most of my other blog's readers, for that matter—don't get Games magazine or solve cryptic crosswords. Allow me a chance to rant anyway.

The point of a cryptic crossword is to decipher the clues. The answers themselves should be common words. Compare this to a "normal" crossword, in which oleo,ewer, and other unusual words find their way into the grid.

So I'm pissed about the second cryptic in the May 2007 Games. *SPOILER ALERT* One of the answers is farrago. That's a synonym for jumble or hodgepodge, but I couldn't have told you that until last night. I had to rummage through a crossword puzzle dictionary to find a word that matched the wordplay part of the clue. Other examples from this poorly constructed puzzle: unbandanged, rehearing, chancel, and pawn as a synonym for mortgage. There were others, but those were the worst.

I feel like Bob Stigger, the author, broke the cryptic contract with these clues.I say, boo on that.

Battlestar Galactica Season Finale

HOLY SHIT

Go. Watch. Return. Discuss.

Stave Jigsaws

I don't collect jigsaw puzzles. But while defining my puzzle-collecting for an upcoming OWF post, I remembered Stave jigsaws. I'd happily add these to my collection, if they weren't a few hundred dollars more than I could spend right now. Naturally, I prefer the Trick Puzzles line.

My Twitter Account

After pointing to the hi-larious review of Twitter, I figured I should sign up and see if the buzz has substance. Follow my daily antics at http://twitter.com/derricks. Stalk me. Be a voyeur. As long as I remember to update it, you can learn just how banal my life is.

Twitter Review in Twitterspeak

The blogerati are peeing their pants about Twitter, which as far as I can tell is a webified version of instant message status text. You can change it to say things like "eating breakfast" or "posting on OWEE when I should be fixing a performance issue" and your friends—or "friends"—can track you through RSS and other gadgets. Now you can really stalk those closest to your heart.

Ten Zen Monkeys has posted a hilarious review of Twitter, done in Twitter status messages. It's very meta, as the kids say.

via Wired

A Combat Golf Cart Racer?

I don't watch Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and I know very little about them except that one character in it is powerful enough to terrify the Boston Police once it's been around for three weeks.

But I'm very intrigued by the description of an upcoming ATHF game, which describes itself as an "epic, action-adventure combat golf, cart racing game."

Puzzle Articles

Will Shortz writes about the joys of logic puzzles in today's New York Times. You may think of Will as a crossword guy, but as one of the founders of the World Puzzle Championship, he knows his logic puzzles.

Also, an article about the increasing "brain-training" trend in Japan. I don't doubt it's on the rise, but Japan has always had one of the most puzzle-loving populations. The country boasts an army of top-flight designers, and Tokyo has puzzle stores the way Berkeley has bookstores. I've seen the excellent Cast puzzles in a hardware store in Tokyo.

via Bill Ritchie, who posted to Nobnet, a mailing list for mechanical puzzle enthusiasts. (And just to bring it full circle, the Nob in Nobnet is a reference to Nob Yoshigahara, one of Japan's and the world's most prolific puzzle designers until his death a few years ago.)

Really Hard Math Problem Solved

The best thing about this Wired article about a tough math problem that was recently solved is that they don't know how to explain it, either. Instead, they just quote stats about what the proof would look like if you wrote it all out.

Is it worth reporting that a tough problem just got cracked if you can't give your readers any sense of what it means?

Evolution of the Rabbids

Ubisoft has an IGN blog entry about the evolution of Rayman's Raving Rabbids. Have I missed the French Maid bunny? Maybe I just haven't gotten far enough.

James Randi Debunks James Hydrick

It's always a delight to watch James Randi debunk some would-be psychic, even if the video takes 20 minutes. As Randi says in this old "That's My Line" episode, "Whenever a simple, direct control is introduced, the psychic power seems to go away."

Later, Hydrick confessed everything, an unusual move for an exposed psychic.

via boing boing

Perplex City's "Guest Architects"

I'm all for puzzle designers getting proper credit for their designs. The famous puzzle designers I know often mention seeing their best designs, uncredited, in stores around the world.

But one of the Perplex City's author credits pisses me off. Card 68 of Season 2 is a riddle you have to solve. The card lists Michael Fox as the "Guest Puzzle Architect." Fair enough, but look at the riddle:

If you eat it, you will die.

It is greater than God, yet

more evil than the devil.

The rich need it. The poor have it.

What is it?

This is fine as a puzzle, but I'm willing to bet a fair amount of cash that Michael Fox isn't the original author of this riddle. It's one of the best-known of the riddle chestnuts that everyone's seen. Don't give him credit for "Architecting" a puzzle where he probably said, "Hey, we should use this zillions-of-years-old riddle." Maybe Mind Candy should do a bit more research before they slap "Guest Puzzle Architect" on a card. Probably no one knows who first wrote that riddle, but Michael Fox shouldn't get credit for something he didn't really do.

Buffy the Comic

"The thing about changing the world...once you do it, the world's all different."

Comic books based on the Buffyverse have been around for a while, but fans of the vampire slayer have pounced on the latest series from Dark Horse. Joss Whedon himself has taken the writing helm, and has said that the 20-issue comic book series should be viewed as Season 8 of the show.

Except that it takes place one and a half years after "Chosen."

Eighteen hundred Slayers, and counting, roam the planet. Buffy, the Scoobies, and the new recruits run a high-tech SWAT team of demon fighters. Within a few pages, it's clear that Whedon's behind the scenes. The dialog rings true for the characters, and since they're familiar faces, it's not hard to hear their voices in your head. The artwork has a lot of style: Buffy's conversation with Dawn, near the end of the book, has a great flow and a lot of character.

The first issue sets up a couple key premises for the arc: a worldwide demon cult, the government's newfound appreciation of magic, their view of Buffy's global group as terrorist cells. Familiar faces reappear, some in surprising ways, and several other characters get a mention. Whedon's hinted that some of the new Slayers might choose to go after humans they don't like instead of joining the demon hunters. With so many empowered women, it's only natural that some will have less noble hearts than Buffy.

Melissa and I are already ensnared in the colorful pages, and we can't wait for issue 2.

March 17

Mood: sad and wistful.

As promised, today was the last day of videoblogger Ze Frank's "the show." See you soon, Ze. I hope so, anyway.

Link Exchange Email

You know, I give this person credit for being honest. But the site still doesn't get a link on OWF (I assume that's the blog they wanted to link exchange with).

Dear Webmaster,

As an ongoing process to increase the link popularity of my site , I am looking for some good Quality sites to exchange links with my site. I recently came across your site through search And found it beneficial and informative for our site's visitors. I would like to offer you a link Exchange with my site.

?? !!

That was the subject line that my friend Joe used when he sent around the link to this well-done short movie, and I'm hard pressed to improve on it.

http://www.shilodesign.com/shilo_new/assets/qt/shilo_cube.mov

Jeopardy! Three-way

The NPL mailing list has been abuzz about tonight's Jeopardy! episode. In part, this was because an NPL member was the winner going into the final round. But there was a lot of suspense about "something that had never happened before." As many predicted, the surprise ending was a three-way tie. Here's a breakdown of what happened and an analysis of the decisions each player made.

Update: Francis Heaney, a friend of Scott Weiss's and another NPL member, gives the real reason for Scott's decision. He thought, "Wouldn't it be nice if we all got to take home $16,000? Plus, as Melissa points out, Scott gets to come back with known competitors.

Update 2: From the horse's mouth. Not only altruism, but seizing a chance to make Jeopardy history.

Penny Arcade Video Game Trailer

I believe that a critic of any field should strive to gain hands-on experience with that art form. For instance, I intend to make wine as soon as I have space (though I don't consider myself a wine critic but a wine educator).

A similar attitude seems to have overtaken game critics of late. The IGN Wii staff continues to mention a game they're working on, and Tycho and Gabe of Penny Arcade have released a short trailer of their upcoming raunchy steampunk shoot-fest.

Flatland: The Movie

What movies do I want to see this year? Spiderman-3, Pirates of the Caribbean 3, and Flatland: The Movie, based of course on the book by Edwin Abbott.

Martin Sheen and (a very young-sounding) Kristen Bell have contributed voice talent to the movie.

via Ed

Word's Readability Statistics

Jack Hart's A Writer's Coach has been good so far, but one tip jumped out at me this morning (more would, but I've heard him speak and read earlier articles by him, so the book has mostly been a refresher). Microsoft Word has a Readability Statistics pane that gives you average words per sentence, average characters per word, passive voice percentage, and several other useful metrics. The Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level numbers evaluate the relationship of words per sentence and syllables per word, adjusted by constants. As a rule, says Jack, you want to shoot for a grade level of 9. Grade level refers to the average reading level a student has at that grade.

These aren't perfect gauges, of course; just look at the formulae and you'll see they're pretty simple. But they are one more tool to use when looking over some text. Jack points out that just because you have a lower score doesn't mean you're a better writer. It's easy to write flat, lifeless text that gets a low score. But one of his Pulitzer winners routinely clocks in at 7. My Savoie piece scores 9.5, with 2 per cent passive voice, while an article I just finished about Oakland's Chinatown scores an 8.0 with 0 per cent passive voice. 0? Really?

To use the tool, you have to activate Readability Statistics in the Spelling and Grammer tab of Word's preferences (Options, if you're on a PC). Then you have to run a full spelling and grammar check on the document. At the very end, a pane will pop up with your statistics.

Google Earth + US Census Bureau = Hours Of Wasted Time

This is cool. A hard-working programmer has worked to export U.S. Census Bureau data into KML, the XML subspecies that Google Earth uses to plot data on the globe. The result? Far too much procrastination potential.

via Slashdot

Perplex City, Season 2

Though the grand prize has been claimed for the Perplex City card-collecting/alternate reality game, the creators at Mind Candy have created a new series of puzzle cards. I found a store selling packs today and bought some. The cards are similar to the originals: a puzzle on the front (of different levels of difficulty and rarity, just like the original), and a story on the back. Some of these, probably all, are pieces of a metapuzzle. They seem to be smaller stories of the citizens of Perplex City.

From the "Here's what this is" card that comes in every pack—a non-scoring card, grr—it looks as if Mind Candy is focusing more on the puzzle community, allowing forum members to create their own puzzles and put them out for people to solve. Plus, a global leaderboard allows players to gauge their progress relative to their friends, and there's the promise of prizes along the way, though I doubt a $200,000 prize will reappear.

At a casual glance, the puzzles on the cards seem more challenging than their equivalents on the originals, and this is a good thing. (Though one of the difficult purple puzzles in my packs is a simple twist on one of my favorites of the interview brainteasers we gave at my work.)

Visit your local games store for "The World of Puzzles" packs, and visit Perplexcity.com to keep up with the community.

Abba the Hutt

I'd buy the album, if it existed.

via boing boing

Super Doom Mario

Letsa blowa these things uppa! You've played Mario games; you've played Doom. But what if you could play them both at the same time? It might look a bit like this Mario mod for Doom. It's a long video but a fun one. I just wish you could mod the artillery to look like Koopa shells.

Sweet BART Widget

This BART widget for the Mac OS X Dashboard is sweet. Drag the "To" and "From" icons around, drag the time indicator to find different schedules. Lots of features find their way into the widget, which doesn't require an Internet connection (unless you want to fetch the map of the surrounding area).

Apple Launches New Product-Launching Product

One of those few times when an Onion article is as funny as its headline suggests: Apple Unveils New Product-Unveiling Product

Frenzic

I'm not sure if I should thank meriko or curse her for introducing me to Frenzic, a fast-paced puzzle game. It's tempting to mention the Tetris-like quality of placing wedges into circles, but that's a bit glib. You get a colored wedge as your current piece, and you have to place it into one of five circular "bays" within a period of time. You can't rotate the wedge, so it goes in at whatever angle it starts as. If it's pointing straight down, you have to find a bay with an empty slot at the very top of the circle. Put six wedges into a bay, and the bay clears out. Put six wedges of the same color into a bay, and you get lots of game love, often in the form of goodies that can double your score, slow down time, or empty out every bay.

The game has all the qualities of a good addiction: the time to make a decision is short, the options are few, and you always feel as if you could do better with just one more try.

Don't bother with the site if you've got a Windows machine. This is for Mac heads only.

Ray, Meet Ze

A while back, videoblogger Ze Frank discovered a song called "I'm About To Whip Somebody's Ass" sung by someone who only identified himself as "Ray." Ze encouraged his audience to remix the song, and various Sports Racers (as we call ourselves) collaborated on a video. Ze tried to figure out who Ray was, but to no avail, so he called on his audience "You did it...in two days. Creepy, huh? But in this case it was for a good cause." For today's show, Ze visted Ray and talked to him about the song. It's sweet, and a touching episode to help finish off the Ze Frank show.

A Man After My Own Heart

Food bloggers have Jack to keep us honest; Slate has RM "Auros" Harman, who holds the record for most number of Corrections submitted to the publication. This is the guy I wish I could be.

Update: Who didn't see this coming? The Slate article about Harman had some errors. I wonder if they were accidental; if I wrote that piece I'd be tempted to deliberately put in an error.