Went to an excellent talk by Neal Stephenson at MIT on Tuesday.

Got back from BGG.Con yesterday where Susie sweetly picked me up. Had a really nice time although didn't play very many Essen games. On Friday played Poseidon's Kingdom, Hawaii and Dungeon Petz and did enjoy all of them - probably all about 7s.

I am posting though mostly about Hanabi and the Puzzle Hunt. Finally got to play my copy of Hanabi and ended up playing 7 or 8 times and really enjoying, even more than I expected - rating for now is a 9. Many of the games were a bit frustrating as a person didn't do what one thought they should (me included) and then often discussion ensued sometimes interfering with the play - this was fine with me as I was more interested in why things went wrong than in what our final score would be but bothered others. Anyway, I'd definitely like to play this more with a strong consistent group using conventions. This isn't available online is it?

For the puzzle hunt, Peter and I again teamed up and Sean joined us again and then we added Jason and David to round out the team. The hunt this year was run by Ken, rather than the usual team of Dave & Aaron. Puzzles this year were probably not quite as interesting and lacking in the wonderful whimsy factor I think many of Aaron's puzzles have, but were still for the most part very enjoyable and I certainly had a great time. Part of that was definitely due to the format, which I thought worked just GREAT so am going to detail it as I think elements of it could very smartly be reused by others.

Hunt Format:

1) Teams assigned to one of seven starting locations and once you left a location you would not return. Answers checked at your current location. Teams rotate through the locations so from location N you go to (N + 1 mod 7). This avoided the clog of teams all turning in answers at one spot and just generally greatly reduced crowding issues. Did of course require more staffing.

2) Hunt final score was determined as the time you turn in the final answers minus one minute for every bonus point you have. Thus if you took 120 minutes but had 30 bonus minutes, you would be treated as taking 90 minutes.

3) At each location, 5 puzzles of value 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 (15 total). To leave a location you must score at least 10 points but can solve more and extras (points at location minus 10) are treated as bonus points. This was the best thing to me. No single puzzle can be a roadblock - can only get stuck if there are two puzzles you can't solve at a single location. Also allows for variety of puzzle difficulty with total sense - if you have a fun but super-easy puzzle you can use it fine. And finally there is an interesting choice to be made once you get to 10 points. Lets say we have 11 and the 4 point puzzle not yet solved - do we think we can solve it in 3 minutes or so? If so, we should stay; if not move on now. Interesting decision every time we came to it and we went both ways at various stations.

4) Expensive but available and unlimited hints. Hints for any puzzle cost 5 points but you started with 10 points (-10 minutes from final time if didn't use) and could actually go negative. They were thus a horrible idea for competitive teams to use but made it so that weaker teams could use what they needed to get past the 10 point barrier in each room and move on to see the other puzzles when they got frustrated at a given station.

There was also a minor bonus puzzle at each location and a meta-bonus. We ended up being the second team to turn in our final answers by 9 minutes but had 12 more bonus points than the first team so won by 3 minutes.

Oh, the title of this post! Jason was generally acting as our team runner and doing most of the turn-ins (and you could also check answers). We were working on a puzzle called "You can count on it" where the answer was three letters long and we had the right idea with it but hadn't quite gotten the answer and weren't sure anyway of some things. Jason had checked one answer (Bit) for it and Peter was on the phone with him and telling him that he should try Dog and they obviously had a bad connection so Peter was saying "Dog as in Woof Woof, Fido" and I think even another example. I was even joking with Peter that he should start barking as I thought (very wrongly as it turned out) the triple indicating of Dog was over the top. Well, Jason tried an answer and reported it was wrong so we said just turn it in anyway (we had 10 points without this) so we could move on and he did. Well, we had to wait for him to bring the new puzzles and Dog really seemed like it should be right, both based on the title and an actual possible solution, so we asked him when he got back if he had submitted it and he said "Oh no, I thought you said 'Zog'" which we all laughed about (and joked about after), at the same time telling him it was fine. Cost us three points/minutes and Jason felt bad (and went back to try to get the points but they refused, quite reasonably) but it was very amusing. Very glad didn't cost us winning. Would not have bothered me but Jason would have felt awful about it.

Also played three friends' separate but thematically very similar prototypes and liked all three. Congratulations also to Sean and Alex for winning the Tichu tournament. They were my pick to win both last year and this (I played both years but with two different partners who aren't nearly as experienced as I am) and this year they met my expectations ;) .

Had a really good time with friends, old and new, both playing and eating (including two excellent outings to Hard Eight). Particular thanks to Stephanie for grabbing me for a couple of meals and for Deduce or Die and sorry we didn't get in a Hanabi game. Again, is it playable online anywhere?

With finally having a rack for my car to take my kayak, decided a while back that I must get out on the Charles again for the Fourth fireworks. Susie was up for it too and we were initially going to rent a boat for her from Charles River Canoe & Kayak but then thought to ask Bill and Catherine to borrow one of theirs (and paddle and vest) which they were very kind to let us do. This made the logistics a bit more complex as my rack will only hold one boat but I have a foam rack set I bought years ago and never used so we decided to take both cars and use that for the second boat on her car. We decided to put in at Allston/Brighton on Soldier's Field Road for easier parking and live with the longer 3-4 mile paddle down to the barge. I knew I could handle this length but Susie hadn't been in a kayak for a long while but was game for trying it. We picked up the boat at Bill's at around 7:45, took a while to load it on Susie's car and headed to the put in where there was ample parking luckily. Probably got on the water around 8:30.

Paddle down was long but very nice and Susie wisely brought her portable radio to listen to the Pops concert during the paddle. Got nervous when the barge launched a few things at 9:50 and we were between the BU and Harvard bridges but this was just a special thing for one song I guess. Got in place in front of the MIT sailing pavilion around 10:10 where we had a snack of chocolate chip cookies. Had to paddle a bit to keep reasonably in place which was tricky with two boats together and got us both a bit wet but managed it reasonably well. Fireworks started just after 10:30 as scheduled and were just amazing. The 360 degree view from out on the water is just incredible and there were no boats, small or large, at all near us. During the fireworks we drifted close enough to the barge that I am pretty sure we were the two closest non-official boats on the river to the barge and got lightly warned to move back just as the finale started but we just back paddled a bit and didn't miss anything. Just a wonderful show and time for both of us!!! A few photos and a two minute video are on Facebook but wasn't worrying too much about those - just wanted to enjoy the moment.

Paddle back was long but very safe and uneventful (and Susie was a great sport about the long paddle) and great weather for it so even though tiring I found it really fun. We got back, loaded up the kayaks again, dropped Susie's off at Bill's on the way back, and got to bed just before 2.

Not my favorite game but others including David, our host, really like it so have played a reasonable amount of The Resistance lately, which is a new Werewolf style game but much shorter, with some real information to go on, and where I feel I can play fairly effectively on either side without lying. Last night we played two 7 player games, the first time playing with this many, and not using the special cards as we had two new players. David warned us and it seems absolutely correct that the bad guys have a huge advantage with 7. There are 4 good guys and 3 bad guys and 3 failed mission wins for the bad guys. Thus even if every time a mission fails you can perfectly figure out who failed it, which is by no means always possible, you can still lose as each bad guy can fail one mission. Well, I was a bad guy in our first mission and really it went horribly for the good guys. They didn't realize who any of the 3 of us bad guys were and the special fourth mission which with 7 players needs 2 people to fail it caused the end. Thus would have been super-easy for us to fail the 5th mission as it has 4 people and only takes one failure.

Anyway, the reason I am posting was our second game. I was on the good side. The first mission sent Melissa and I out and Melissa killed it. I normally think this is bad strategy for the bad guys but with 7 it may be fine. Even if people figure her out, there are still two more bad guys and two failures needed. I do think most people pretty quickly realized I was on the good side. I didn't say this, as I have a policy of not, but did later end up doing a bunch of thinking out loud that I would not have done as the bad guys - would have felt too close to lying to me. Anyway, I now knew one bad guy but still two more. In mission two David, Karl, and Dave were sent - I voted for this happening after some thought because it didn't include Melissa. Not surprisingly though, with 3 new people of the 5 I didn't know the loyalty of, the mission failed. This is where the game got interesting for me and why I am posting this. I was the next leader and basically felt the situation was nearly impossible. I knew Melissa was bad. I figured ONE of David, Karl, and Dave were bad - could be two with one sandbagging but probably unlikely. And then has to be one of Bill and Matt who haven't gone on a mission. I need to RIGHT NOW figure out two people other than me who are good or basically we are screwed. We'll need to figure out the last good person too by the last mission but can wait on that. Well, I decided that I didn't trust Matt and chose Bill; often have a pretty good read on Matt and decided I had to just go with it. Also decided that I trusted my read that Dave was good too. I thought David was the bad guy but was less sure of that. Anyway, these were all guesses/intuition based on very limited information but I had no choice but to go with them unless someone I thought was good convinced me they had a better read - couple of weeks ago I went with Karl's read in a situation where I had no idea and Karl seemed confident - turned out I was right that Karl was good but Karl was wrong but still felt better than random which would have been my choice. Now became interesting though as the vote went 4-3 against the mission with only the 3 of us on the mission supporting it. This actually really strengthened my belief that I had picked right however, with Karl just for some reason voting against it. I brought up the vote against and Karl mentioned, quite accurately, that he almost always votes no, regardless of side he is on. I had the impression he would reverse that vote if we did the same group again though so with Dave being the next leader, I pointedly reminded him he could send the same group and he did and both Karl and Matt (to sandbag but too late) changed their votes and the mission succeeded. We also then won the last two missions, adding Karl in, but this third mission really decided everything. The combination of me making good reads and then Dave trusting me and my read enough to go for the same mission when the vote failed the first time were both huge and fun; who knows, though - maybe I was just lucky.

On the night I decided to quit WoW, I decided that I would also start exercising more regularly on my exercise bike (which I bought along with my house in a happy sort of accident - not sure I would have bought it myself separately) and outside on weekends and when I could. I figured the regular thing to do would be good if I had any sort of WoW addict cravings and I simply had a bunch of extra time in my days to use - fortunately I didn't have any sort of cravings but I have found I actually am enjoying the bike, whereas I hate gyms. Gives me a nice chance to listen to music which I otherwise rarely do and the combined rhythm of the music and biking is often quite enjoyable and almost never a slog. Bought some small weights too recently but have found those completely mess up the biking as the lifting rhythm is different than the biking rhythm and so I have to really concentrate to do both and that is annoying so only using the weights separately. Started out at first at just 18 minutes per session at level 4 1-2 times a day but am now up to usually 30 minutes at lvl 9, still around 1-2 times a day. Miles have gone from like 25 a week to probably 50 or 60.

Along with this, I decided to try to eat less but hopefully in a completely simple and thus sustainable way. I am not on a 'diet' but my goal is to lose at least 20 lbs and a bunch more would be better. Up to around 13.5 last I checked and it has not been difficult. I basically just try to eat somewhat less (like 2 hot dogs instead of 3 for a simple meal at home and such) and only have desserts and snacks if I really want them. Haven't banned eating anything and am not on any kind of a time line about how long things take. The one most direct change I made to eating (and I don't know if this really has made any difference one way or the other to things) is that I am now eating breakfast most days of one slice (two on weekends as I usually don't eat lunch then) of my Honey Whole Wheat Bread. Used to do this when I made it but am now doing much more regularly. Before I only ate breakfast (but a worse one) on weekends as a regular thing. Am even in the middle of baking more bread right now (writing as it rises).

Coincidentally, a few weeks after I started this I read this post by Neil Gaiman about a sort of similar plan although he is way ahead of me.

Well, this always had to be the first post in this series and is in many ways what inspires it. Will also probably be the longest post. I have had the same Swiss Army Knife since I was a child and it has over time become the thing I own which would hurt me the most to lose. I am not sure exactly when I got it but the most likely time was just before going to Timberlake Camp (part of Farm & Wilderness) in Vermont for the first time in 1979, when I was 9. Ever since I got it, I have carried it in my pocket almost every waking hour of every day of my life. I think the particular knife I have is the Huntsman although mine doesn't have the Hook on the back. I have used my knife for all sorts of things, from whittling & carving to sawing to opening tons of wine bottles, beer bottles, cans, and for so many other things on a nearly daily basis - today I used it to peel an orange for example. I am sure every single tool I have used on at least twenty occasions, even the awl. Just an unbelievably practical and useful item to carry. The only tool mine lacks which I really wish it had is a phillips screwdriver but the tip of the can-opener can often serve as a limited substitute.

By the time I was in college, my knife had started to get beat up and a mess, eventually losing the toothpick and tweezers, having the scissors somewhat messed up and finally having the plastic sides come off it which was the last straw as it made it really difficult to hold and would catch on things in my pocket. Painful as it was, I finally knew I had to do something about it. Victorinox has a lifetime guarantee so I finally sent it back to them in Switzerland, including a note on what it meant to me. Unfortunately, though, I knew it had to be so much cheaper and easier for them to just replace it which is why I had delayed sending it back so long. Amazingly, though, they did repair it and I was thrilled!!! This was the closest I ever came to losing it although on two other occasions I lost it for a week or two. The first time was after staying at a friend's parent's cottage when I was around 16 - came back without it but they found it later and brought it back to me.

The other time that had me nervous was a year or so ago. Following 9/11 and the annoying changes to not allow pocket knives on planes, I bought a modern copy of my knife so that when going somewhere with checked luggage I would bring that instead and so not have to risk checking my real knife. I also made a promise to myself that if I ever had to make a choice between missing a flight and losing my knife, I would miss the flight. This plan has worked well for me but I finally forgot, last year on a trip, to leave my knife at home. Had no checked luggage and noticed my knife in my pocket as I got to the security line so turned back to try to figure something out. Fortunately, they now have a box where you can put an item in a plastic bag and fill out a form to have it sent back to yourself. I was very nervous about this but decided to trust it and I did eventually get it back although it took like 3 weeks during which I had largely given up - I even tried calling the TSA despite the needle in a haystack issue of finding it if they had lost it but with no luck.

I had planned to do this series from the moment I started this blog but never got around to it. With resuming posting here now recently, seems a good time to actually do it. Not really sure the purpose of this other than for me which is probably why I never did it before but I guess that is reason enough.

I am going to write a series of posts on my favorite things, almost entirely things I own but there may be some exceptions. These will range from the quite small to the very large, with the first two posts I plan being at the extremes, and then after that probably most of the posts will be on artistic pieces.

Just watched this on DVD and really an excellent movie. Performances by Firth, Rush, Carter, Jacobi, and the child who played Elizabeth all just wonderful. Quite powerful. For me definitely better than The Social Network or anything else I saw last year. ****

Played this new Friedemann Friese card game on Saturday and I think it is the best new Card Game (as distinct from "Game Played with Cards" like RftG or Dominion or many others) I have played since Tichu. Only played twice but I am pretty sure it will hold up. Initial rating probably an 8.5.

Played Matt last night two player in the new Ubongo card game and got absolutely crushed, losing all 6 rounds by an ever increasing margin of victory. This is almost certainly the worst I've lost at a pure skill game in many years. I was competitive really in only one of the 6 rounds. The way the game works is that each player gets 9 cards with a 3x2 pattern of symbols on each. They must arrange 7 (no benefit at all for doing more) of their cards into a single group such that wherever two cards join, exactly two symbols must match (and no symbols must mismatch).

Anyway, though, the game doesn't work at all as a game, but might be amusing to play as a solitaire puzzle for some. The better player will basically always win but more significantly the worse player(s) will never finish a board as the moment one player finishes the round ends. I still think Ricochet Robot is by far the best of the competitive puzzle games, both because some of the puzzles are quite interesting but also because the timer gives the lesser players a chance to also find at least a solution, and maybe the best one. They are also always shown at the end of the round the best solution found, which helps to teach them to be better next time very naturally. Even when the game was first released and I was playing some naturals who were far better than me, I still really enjoyed playing as well as I could and seeing the solutions they found. Unfortunately, while many more competitive puzzle games have been released since, almost all of them really fall down in some area of play as far as making the game work for both strong and weak players in the same game. Like even in the regular Ubongos, once you solve a puzzle you have nothing to do - in RR you have a solution but maybe can find a better one and for the super-simple ones you can just abort the timer once everyone finds the path.

I wish I played RR much more often but not that many people like it despite its advantages. Did get to play half a game on Wednesday though after finishing a game of High Frontier, which is a game that deserves its own post really - I enjoyed it but am amazed anyone was willing to publish it given its nature - in our game two of the four players dropped out halfway through to start the RR game. This almost never happens and yet I thought was completely understandable in this game for them to do - in a hopeless position after an hour or whatever of play with the game only like 40% over. And their troubles were despite a very strong rules explanation - the game is just too confusing and too unforgiving of small mistakes or misunderstandings.

Well, haven't posted here in forever but seems wrong for my last post to be about World of Warcraft after I have now quit a couple of weeks ago. Enjoyed the game but really glad to have quit and have no desires to go back to regular raiding. Just takes too much time and not enough gain. Been taking advantage of the extra time to get caught up on some things, use my exercise bike, hike, get ready to start kayaking again, and just generally get out more. Also able to go to sleep earlier and try to avoid having a sleep deficit as the week goes on, given my forced 9-5 work schedule.

Only of any interest (or comprehension) at all to World of Warcraft players but on a ICC trash pull last night my fire mage hit over 100K dps for a while and ended the small fight (whelps - just one group oddly, before Sindy) at 53k dps. Was of course burning cooldowns but wasn't watching meters when several people started exclaiming over the numbers I was doing. Fun moment.

This is about just one particular random question and shouldn't spoil watching the episode for anyone.

On Jeopardy! yesterday there was a question about the title of the first Harry Potter book, referring to it being translated into another language. TheDan answered "Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone" and was given credit. Although not surprised they gave him credit, I have to feel this answer is wrong. I can't imagine the translator didn't work from the original source, "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone", and not the Americanized (a change I hated by the way) title (or text).

Simultaneously taught 10 people Tichu just before running a small tournament this weekend. Had known I would be teaching but figured would be more like 3-4 people so although I had printed some cheat sheets, I could have prepared better if had realized this would be the situation. Pretty much the first people I ever taught where I was not immediately playing at least a few hands with right after which changes things somewhat. Still, went quite well and I paired all of the inexperienced teams against a team with at least some experience in the first round. This made it harder for them to win but also made it much more likely that they would end up playing the game correctly, which I thought the more important goal. Was nice to see one pair which lost in the first round of the tournament immediately play two more games.

M & I ended up winning in the final but only because I had upped the ending score for the SF to 1250 and Final to 1500. If had been to 1000, we would have lost, and to a pair who the only time they had played before was a game or two a year ago.

Really enjoyed the Winter Olympics. Hard to see how Hockey could have gone any better than the US winning the early game and then Canada taking both Golds. Was also really happy to see the Canada men win in curling, and the Norwegian pants winning silver was a fine thing too. Lots of amazing performances (Ammann's amazing ski jumping, Sean White's two amazing snowboard runs, the Norwegian comeback for silver in the cross country relay, and many others).

The Sven Kramer thing was pretty amazing. Understandable for an athlete to make a mistake like this with all the pressure and everything but for a coach to demand his athlete, doing the right thing, switch to the wrong lane is just incredible - he just doesn't have that much to do out there and this is so basic and he is overriding what Kramer was doing so he needs to be damn certain he is right and Kramer is wrong to do this - wow!

Well, over the weekend probably watched the two best movies of last year. Saw The Hurt Locker on DVD and then Avatar at the 3D IMAX theater where it was still like completely sold out on a Sunday afternoon, with me arriving twenty minutes early and still only getting a mediocre seat. Thought both movies just excellent and would have a hard time choosing between two such different films for Best Picture.

Don't have a lot to say about Avatar beyond the obvious; story and acting mediocre but the visuals just SO amazing and technically SO well done that just an incredible experience and well worth waiting for the 3D IMAX experience.

The Hurt Locker was pretty much a perfect movie, with excellent acting, plot and great script. The scenes which most strongly affected me were at the end, with James at home in the supermarket and then at home with his son, after experiencing just unbelievable risk and stress and pain and yet I had no trouble at all understanding why he signed up to go back, to do a job which was meaningful, exiting beyond all bounds, and which he is really good at. Ebert's review really worth reading too.

Is a GREAT small movie better than a movie that has flaws but also advances the movie epic a huge leap forward in various ways. Not clear.

Now that the puzzles are online again (albeit no solutions yet), going to write my report on the 2010 Hunt. I felt it was just a great hunt in terms of puzzles, themes, lack of mistakes, and lack of hinting. My only problems of any sort were the interminably long film showing (REALLY should have only shown one version of each movie, determined randomly or by preference) and some arcane answer extractions/phrases but these were both minor issues. Great job Beginner's Luck; your coin is also just gorgeous! Probably best or second best run hunt since I started solving (this was my 10th year, 8th on Palindromes).

Every single puzzle I worked on for a significant amount of time (say 1hr+) got solved, which probably contributes to my good feelings about the hunt. Also, a note that again this year I didn't solo solve any puzzle, always working with teammates. I started the Hunt with Banner Headline. Perhaps because of a mistake in the PDF creation, we got the Marseillaise connection (and some extra odd letters "partresb") in the first few minutes due to trying to select the wordsearch grid so I could paste it into a text file and run my preexisting wordsearch Perl code on it. Getting the category groupings took longer than it should have and then we were being pretty completist about filling them in rather than focusing on the French flag colors/overlay so this took a good while to finish. Of course, if we had ever gotten to the training Meta, we would have needed most of the extra colors anyway so not useless. Anyway, very good puzzle but caused me to barely look at any of the other round 1 puzzles.

We then as a team went on the runaround where I ended up being pretty useful, being the first person to figure out the correction for a wrong turn we made and first to get to the Library endpoint. Also ended up answering the Holy Grail questions (including reading a paragraph of text from a teammate's tiny lcd camera screen) when Eric didn't realize what was going on right away.

In 2009, the only puzzle I worked on significantly was Computer Games but Debby was the only one on the team at that moment with an Athena account and had to leave so several of us tried for a while to do this without an account and gathered some data before deciding to wait for Debby or Kat to be available to finish it, which happened a couple hours later. This puzzle did have the only flat-out mistake (errata'd by email) of any puzzle I worked on but was pretty obviously a mistake anyway so wouldn't have affected us even if correction wasn't sent.

In 2000 I worked on Bits and Pieces and Wacky Poker. Bits and Pieces was fine - I identified about half the German board games right away and then it took us a good while to figure out the remaining half (3,3 was last to figure out). The binary method at the end was nice as well. Wacky Poker was straightforward and we (mostly Mike K.) pulled the answer right away once we did the data collection/analysis.

Only puzzle in 1983 I worked on was Almost Loaded with Foggy and others. Straightforward but I am definitely not the best crossword clue solver so my role was fairly small.

1952/Witch Round I basically completely missed, due to sleeping or whatever. Was also the first Meta we solved (Anderson having the idea and executing it; to order by date of Witch introduction) so pretty quickly wasn't that important. Right after that Meta and knowing what to expect for the others, we also solved two more Metas in about 30 minutes (one in like 5 minutes and the other in a guess of 25).

For 1926, Anderson and I co-solved Queasy Reaction with help from Erik in making the bitmap. Anderson almost immediately figured out the QR code idea and I ran the image through the Google QR solver to get the Minesweeper puzzle. We ended up taking a LONG time to solve the Minesweeper, almost certainly way longer than we should have, and Anderson had to make guesses at several points to push us forward but we eventually got it fine and quickly had the bitmap and answer.

In 1903, the only puzzle I did anything on (due to length of Minesweeper solve) was Safecracking where got a few answers looking over the main solvers' shoulders but didn't stick with it until the end.

In 1871, I was brought in by Jeremy to figure out the "board game" for A Journey to the Center of the Earth and spent some time on that looking at the 10 Days series (despite knowing they had no start space) and Around the World in 80 days games and others without success before googling the flavor text to instantly realize what we wanted was the Mapparium. Unfortunately, the online images weren't great and I decided to leave Jeremy and Gavin to working at solving the path (which I don't think ever happened by the end - we would have sent someone to the Mapparium on Sunday if things had kept going). I went over to help Anderson with the answer extraction step of Tower House. We came up with and worked through about five different methods for this before finally finding the right one. Kind of think several of our methods were better than the used one but it was fine.

For 1804, I looked a bit at Lighten Up with no insights before moving on to the Lost Cities puzzle, Expeditions. Jeremy, Gavin and I co-solved this with a bit of help on one particular thing from I forget who. We were only able to take straight deductions so far before just trying a bunch of things and seeing how it went and adjusting. We eventually got to the answer off one letter due to a misreading of rule 6, thinking that Betty could play any number of sixes. The letter string was good letters but didn't make a lot of sense. However, we did have the "tired" comment in the flavortext which I was sure meant something and when googled to find 'oscit' meant yawning knew we were on the right track. Eventually Gavin decided Oscitances was likely right and made a change to the tableau and hit the call button. I actually kind of tried to stop him as realized that the change he made both made the tableau clearly violate another rule and didn't even change the letter value (went from -1 to +1 which here are equivalent) but then I managed to realize the issue with rule 6 and correctly adjust things to get the -3 we needed. Kind of lame word - page I found listing all sorts of oscit- words doesn't even list this one, but the 'tired' clue helped enough to get it.

Barely saw the 1752 puzzles, and instead moved on to 1710's Bulls and Cows Mastermind variant. Worked on by hand for a few minutes but I am a totally mediocre Mastermind player and seemed that some of them were going to be quite tough to do by hand, given the noisy guess information. I thus decided to write a solver for it. Anderson did solve the first one but left the rest to my solver and was nice to know the answer for one as confirmation for the solver. Solver was pretty straightforward code (wrote from like 1-2:30AM Sunday morning) and worked fine right away for four of them and, with a minor tweak, got the fifth too. We were thinking we would then use these five zip codes with the set of extra letters for each one as guess answers as input to a second level of the game at which point we would use as the answer the town name at that zip code, and still think this would have been a much better scheme. However, when you want to clue "Aphthous Fever", I guess allowances need to be made. I was too tired to figure out the last tricks of this but Asher came over to help and figured out the town length-># guesses mapping and then the letter pulling. Went home to bed right after this so away for last 2.5 hours of the Hunt.

Was great solving with everyone on Palindromes as usual and a big congratulations to Anderson, who as a high school sophomore was almost certainly either our MVP or MVP runner-up this year. Just absolutely amazing solver and his maturity was wondeful as well, like the great job he did working with the young kid on the video game character selection screens puzzle.

Looking forward to the Metaphysical Plant hunt next year.

In response to one of my colleagues having written that she was "allowed only one checked bag per SC travel policy" my question in the work meeting today was "How many travel policies are there?".

Great article in Wired by Lore Sjoberg on categorizing games. Pretty damn accurate. Found via DougO.

So my house warming party went well and my current count is that 46 people came. Spread out over enough time that despite the terrible heat/humidity outside things never seemed cramped though - wow was good that the A/C was working however - thanks Gary! Was sorry that some people couldn't make it but that is inevitable although a number of the people who I am the most in party-karma debt to couldn't make it which was too bad. Had tons of left-over beer as very little was drunk and my brother sent extras. A fair amount of wine was drunk but I still ended with more than I started due to how much people brought. Also tons of left-over grill food.

Huge thanks to my mom for cooking, buying, bringing tons of stuff and thanks to those who brought gifts, a totally unnecessary thing but those that did made great choices.

Well, my guild in World of Warcraft is done as a raiding entity. One thing led to another causing us to not raid a fair number of nights and pretty quickly turned into a death-spiral. Not sure whether I'll switch guilds (and possibly servers) and keep raiding or quit the game/turn very casual. We had existed since MC days so a pretty long and successful run.

Jeff was in town from LA prior to the Bridge Nationals and so I at kind of the last minute invited him to stay at my place Sunday night and invited a bunch of people over for gaming during the day. Was fun and despite almost everyone being a 'maybe' we always had enough to play and about a dozen people stopped by, although a few just to get the house tour while nearby. I'm not currently well set up for having too many people at once (not enough chairs main issue) but for small groups works nicely.

Also think my decision to have one bookcase of A+ games downstairs in the main space was the right call. Not overwhelming as the shelves of games have been in my prior places but also not hiding all the games away in the upstairs walk-in closet room. Will also I think get those games played a bunch as they are the most in view which is great since they are mostly chosen to be there because are my favorite games - a few are there for somewhat different reasons like Carcassonne (gateway/popularity), Shear Panic (the bits!), and Elfenroads (grail type of game).

Find myself pretty powerfully affected by the combination of the 40th anniversary and Cronkite's death, which go pretty well together given Cronkite's interest in space and his coverage of the landing being one of his iconic moments. Interesting emotional mix from the two. Although his most important moments were from before I was born, I definitely do remember his amazing voice and delivery from when I was a kid. He, Murrow, and Ted Koppel are the three tv journalists I have always been most impressed by.

Well, now own a house in Framingham, and since I rarely make resolutions nice to achieve one I did make (buy a house by Nov 2009). Closing went fine yesterday. Moving in tomorrow and spending some days getting settled. Will end up needing lots of stuff, particularly outdoors stuff (lawn mower, grill, deck chairs, etc...) and to get used to home maintenance stuff. Should be interesting. Am hopeful the commute will be alright - think in the morning it will - much less sure of the evenings.

Will have a house warming party but maybe not until August.

Had a really fun weekend gaming in NH at Brian's event. I think, amazingly, I only played one new game (Black Sheep - pretty bad) and also only one game that I rate less than an 8 (obviously Black Sheep again). Played lots of Tichu, Dominion, and Crokinole but also got in games of Titan, Race for the Galaxy, Merchants of Venus, Spinball, and St Petersburg, and won a 9 person poker tournament. Was really happy with this, as most events end up dominated by the 'cult of the new' and, honestly, most games aren't really that great.

I ran a small Tichu tournament which went very well with Brian and AaronW beating Nate and I in the 1500 pt final in an incredibly close game. My Grand on the final hand which would have won it for us was hurt badly enough by Brian's King call with a 1-6 straight for them to stop me and win. However, given I had called it with only Phx KK, can't complain too much (ended up with DPAAKK) and overall they played really well, while I definitely made mistakes, like losing track of the Phoenix not being played on the first hand and thereby giving them a 1-2.

Also helped AaronW run a small puzzle event which ran just the right length and which 3 of the 7 teams finished all of the puzzles for, only one of them meaningfully early. He is amazingly good at judging the lengths of these things, something I really don't understand how he does.