Sunday 24:06 (22x21)
I used to complain that Sunday puzzles don't take long anymore. I think I'm just getting better. Some people think some of today's video games are too easy, but in truth we're all just better than we used to be. The best games mitigate this with some extra challenges for the completionist - Weapons in Final Fantasy, or all 120 Stars in Super Mario 64, when you only need 70 to win.
Saturday, July 27, 2019
Thursday, July 25, 2019
Thursday 13:59
Friday 21:16
Friday's puzzle managed 6 Zs in the grid, most bunched together in BUZZ, FUZZY, and JAZZ.
You know what bothers me about The Matrix? It's small because that movie is close to perfect (ugh, the sequels), but it's this. Neo sees a cat walk by, and then sees it again, and comments "Whoa, déjà vu." Every freezes, because déjà vu is "a glitch in the Matrix" when the machines change something. This would be kind of cool, an explanation of déjà vu as a glitch in this computer-generated fantasy world, since the phenomenon is still poorly understood.
Yet that's not what déjà vu is like. It's not seeing the same thing twice in a row, it's seeing or experiencing something just once, and imagining you've seen/experienced it before. When I get déjà vu, it's very compelling, even more so than when I was younger. I feel like it's a stimulus that gets lost on the way through my brain and ends up in the wrong part of my temporal lobe. So a glitch, but an organic one.
I bring this up because I was on shrooms yesterday. I've only done them once before, and it was quite pleasant. I acquired these with the intention of sharing them with my buddy Jon. He's a nerd, but generally open to experimentation. He has struggled with depression, and I thought the euphoria that accompanies a mushroom trip might be good for him. But he wimped out, so I shared them with my friend Jaret, who was with me the first time I used them (don't use drugs like this alone). I divided the eighth in what looked equal halves, but I think I overdid it.
Before I pitched to Jon, I did some research. Effects mentioned alongside hallucinations was time distortion, especially thinking more time has passed than actually has. I didn't recall this effect from my first experience, but you often bring to a trip what you expect. My first trip was exactly like I thought it was going to be. In this one, the time distortion was real.
We were watching Into the Spider-verse, which Jaret had never seen. The visual hallucinations made some scenes look really neat, as if the characters were reduced into crude polygons. But I was also having continuous déjà vu. Of course I've seen the movie before, but there were comments made by Jaret, and I knew some factoids about the movie, so we'd sometimes pause and talk. I was certain I had heard and said it ALL before, while watching this very movie, and my responses were just repeating what I'd already said some other time (verbalizing things was challenging enough without the nagging feeling I was repeating myself). Recall Jaret was seeing this for the first time, and this was the first time I'd watched it with anyone else. When the weed delivery came, I was sure I'd met the driver and been though our exact exchange before (I've never used this delivery service).
Still, it was a positive experience. On the other hand, I'm kind of glad Jon wasn't my partner as I'd advertised more of a fun walk in Wonderland, and I wouldn't have made much of a sitter in my state.
Friday 21:16
Friday's puzzle managed 6 Zs in the grid, most bunched together in BUZZ, FUZZY, and JAZZ.
You know what bothers me about The Matrix? It's small because that movie is close to perfect (ugh, the sequels), but it's this. Neo sees a cat walk by, and then sees it again, and comments "Whoa, déjà vu." Every freezes, because déjà vu is "a glitch in the Matrix" when the machines change something. This would be kind of cool, an explanation of déjà vu as a glitch in this computer-generated fantasy world, since the phenomenon is still poorly understood.
Yet that's not what déjà vu is like. It's not seeing the same thing twice in a row, it's seeing or experiencing something just once, and imagining you've seen/experienced it before. When I get déjà vu, it's very compelling, even more so than when I was younger. I feel like it's a stimulus that gets lost on the way through my brain and ends up in the wrong part of my temporal lobe. So a glitch, but an organic one.
I bring this up because I was on shrooms yesterday. I've only done them once before, and it was quite pleasant. I acquired these with the intention of sharing them with my buddy Jon. He's a nerd, but generally open to experimentation. He has struggled with depression, and I thought the euphoria that accompanies a mushroom trip might be good for him. But he wimped out, so I shared them with my friend Jaret, who was with me the first time I used them (don't use drugs like this alone). I divided the eighth in what looked equal halves, but I think I overdid it.
Before I pitched to Jon, I did some research. Effects mentioned alongside hallucinations was time distortion, especially thinking more time has passed than actually has. I didn't recall this effect from my first experience, but you often bring to a trip what you expect. My first trip was exactly like I thought it was going to be. In this one, the time distortion was real.
We were watching Into the Spider-verse, which Jaret had never seen. The visual hallucinations made some scenes look really neat, as if the characters were reduced into crude polygons. But I was also having continuous déjà vu. Of course I've seen the movie before, but there were comments made by Jaret, and I knew some factoids about the movie, so we'd sometimes pause and talk. I was certain I had heard and said it ALL before, while watching this very movie, and my responses were just repeating what I'd already said some other time (verbalizing things was challenging enough without the nagging feeling I was repeating myself). Recall Jaret was seeing this for the first time, and this was the first time I'd watched it with anyone else. When the weed delivery came, I was sure I'd met the driver and been though our exact exchange before (I've never used this delivery service).
Still, it was a positive experience. On the other hand, I'm kind of glad Jon wasn't my partner as I'd advertised more of a fun walk in Wonderland, and I wouldn't have made much of a sitter in my state.
Tuesday, July 23, 2019
Tuesday 6:27 (narrow 14x15)
Timeline Trouble
When covering comic book movies, I said Fox had managed to fit all the X-Men films into a coherent timeline, but that's not quite true.
X-Men has three series, in a sense. The original Patrick Stewart series (a), the McAvoy series (b), and the Wolverine solo series (c). I counted Days of Future Past in both (a) and (b). Chronologically they would go:
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (this overlaps somewhat with First Class through Apocalypse) (c1)
X-Men First Class (b1)
Days of Future Past (past) (b2)
X-Men Apocalypse (b3)
Dark Phoenix (I haven't seen this yet but reviews were bad, so I'll wait for the video) (b4)
X-Men (a1)
X2 - X-Men United (a2)
X-Men - The Last Stand (a3)
The Wolverine (c2)
Days of Future Past (future) (a4)
Logan (c3)
Here's the problem. Assuming "present day" plot, The Wolverine begins in 2013, with Logan haunted by the death of Jean Gray as well as Scott Summers and Charles Xavier from Last Stand, to the point where he's living alone in the woods (although Last Stand is 2006, so he's taking an awfully long time to get over it). Then he's whisked away to Japan for the main plot. The post-credit scene finds him at an airport two years later (2015) (there's a cute tease with an ad for Trask Industries on an airport TV), when suddenly Magneto (presumed powerless) appears accompanied by Xavier (presumed dead). Magneto says "dark forces" are leading to a weapon that will "destroy us all." Fade to black.
Then comes Days of Future Past. The movie starts in "the future, a dark, desolate world." Since the plot involves sending Wolverine back 50 years, we can infer it's 2023. In that future, legions of Sentinels have wiped out most mutants, and the ones that remain are constantly on the run. Many humans have died also, and you see a dump truck unloading heaps of bodies in the opening sequence. But that's not where the last movie left off. Mutants may still be feared at that point, but the whole war and genocide are years away. So how are Xavier and Magneto there to ask for Logan's help in advance like that? When they show up in DoFP they already have a time-travel plan to prevent the war before it starts, but what happened in the intervening 8 years? Even a mutant who could foresee the future doesn't explain the delay. Most of the X-Men would be around in 2015 and they could have done all of that stuff before the Sentinels are killing everyone.
I get it. You probably didn't have the whole next movie worked out when you wrote the post-credit scene (although they only came out a year apart). But Marvel doesn't make that mistake. They had the movies planned out years in advance, and even if scripts weren't all done at the same time they had Feige making sure everything worked. They knew what they were doing with the Avengers, especially with Thor and Captain America. The post-credit scenes in those movies were pointing directly at the team-up. Even without a full script, they knew the Tesseract was going to be the MacGuffin, and Loki was going to be the villain, so those were the only things they referred to.
In the post-credit scene for The Last Stand, Xavier is shown to not truly be dead, and Magneto has not truly lost all his powers. But they needed something more, so they put them in the post-credit scene of The Wolverine, working together, but wrecking the timeline. Not every post-credit scene needs to point so hard the sequel, either. See Guardians of the Galaxy (Vol. 1).
But y'know, it's just a movie.
Monday, July 22, 2019
Monday 5:46
It can feel like a waste to cover Monday puzzles. This one was by Lynn Lempel, who is well-known for her Mondays (she did one just last month, and last December, and last August, etc. She's been around since the Maleska days). Light and easy, dense theme, good fill. A pregnant pause on a couple of clues kept me from a record, but under 6:00 is a good time. Not sure I've ever solved another day in under 6.
I had a whole bit on being the best, but I have errands in the morning. Perhaps another time.
It can feel like a waste to cover Monday puzzles. This one was by Lynn Lempel, who is well-known for her Mondays (she did one just last month, and last December, and last August, etc. She's been around since the Maleska days). Light and easy, dense theme, good fill. A pregnant pause on a couple of clues kept me from a record, but under 6:00 is a good time. Not sure I've ever solved another day in under 6.
I had a whole bit on being the best, but I have errands in the morning. Perhaps another time.
Saturday, July 20, 2019
Saturday 26:45 (no Google, but see below)
When bored online, generally late at night, I bounce around my bookmarks aimlessly, hoping to get inspired enough to stay in one place for a spell. One of them is Rex Parker's popular crossword blog. Right at the top of each article is the latest puzzle's completed grid. These usually go up around 9-midnight the night before the paper release or early the day of, since the puzzle is available earlier online, and I usually do them early as well.
Except on Friday. I tend to get home later because of Friday Night Magic. Sometimes I bring home beer on Friday, print out and solve the Wall Street Journal Saturday variety puzzle, watch Real Time, whatever. I might get to the Saturday puzzle, but I sometimes leave it for the morning. But before getting to it tonight, I was bouncing around and hit upon Rex Parker. Seeing it was Saturday''s solution, I quickly closed it, but not before seeing the answer for 1-Across. It was a difficult clue, "Junk dealers?" for SPAMBOTS. It's hard to unring that bell.
Did I cheat? The time wouldn't suggest so. I didn't just enter 1-Across; I tried to solve it "fair" from crosses, but it's hard to not see what you know. It turned out to be the trickiest area of the puzzle, so any cheating doesn't even help much (I used the P to solve Nebula winner Frederick POHL, but I could have Googled it), and I think 1-Across ended up as my last entry. Seeing "Settlers of Catan" as a grid-spanning answer made me smile, as well as JANK, a formation which Rex Parker was unfamiliar with ("janky" is the more common parlance but the internet shortens everything). The benefits of Magic-playing. Not the first time it's come up, like the word SCRY.
When bored online, generally late at night, I bounce around my bookmarks aimlessly, hoping to get inspired enough to stay in one place for a spell. One of them is Rex Parker's popular crossword blog. Right at the top of each article is the latest puzzle's completed grid. These usually go up around 9-midnight the night before the paper release or early the day of, since the puzzle is available earlier online, and I usually do them early as well.
Except on Friday. I tend to get home later because of Friday Night Magic. Sometimes I bring home beer on Friday, print out and solve the Wall Street Journal Saturday variety puzzle, watch Real Time, whatever. I might get to the Saturday puzzle, but I sometimes leave it for the morning. But before getting to it tonight, I was bouncing around and hit upon Rex Parker. Seeing it was Saturday''s solution, I quickly closed it, but not before seeing the answer for 1-Across. It was a difficult clue, "Junk dealers?" for SPAMBOTS. It's hard to unring that bell.
Did I cheat? The time wouldn't suggest so. I didn't just enter 1-Across; I tried to solve it "fair" from crosses, but it's hard to not see what you know. It turned out to be the trickiest area of the puzzle, so any cheating doesn't even help much (I used the P to solve Nebula winner Frederick POHL, but I could have Googled it), and I think 1-Across ended up as my last entry. Seeing "Settlers of Catan" as a grid-spanning answer made me smile, as well as JANK, a formation which Rex Parker was unfamiliar with ("janky" is the more common parlance but the internet shortens everything). The benefits of Magic-playing. Not the first time it's come up, like the word SCRY.
Saturday, July 13, 2019
Saturday 22:41 (1 Google)
Oh my stars, New York Times! Maui Wowie as an answer in your crossword puzzle? Think of the children! I have noticed that the last time they used a marijuana strain (the more general KUSH) was also on a Saturday. That's also an awkward enough collection of letters that you really had to really want it in the grid. Yet really good fill, nothing felt forced. Almost no proper nouns either.
Oh my stars, New York Times! Maui Wowie as an answer in your crossword puzzle? Think of the children! I have noticed that the last time they used a marijuana strain (the more general KUSH) was also on a Saturday. That's also an awkward enough collection of letters that you really had to really want it in the grid. Yet really good fill, nothing felt forced. Almost no proper nouns either.
Friday, July 12, 2019
Friday 21:29 (1 Google)
1-Across: Means of interstellar travel, 9 letters. Easy WARP DRIVE, right? Nothing clicked in that corner right away from those crosses, so I moved on and didn't get back to it until the end. I finally looking up the RCA Dome when warp drive wasn't working. The answer was star ships. Eh, sure, I guess. Technically, warp drive is a Star Trek-specific thing, and it would have to be clued as such. There was also an Ad ___ clue, where anyone would put HOC. Luckily, I discovered HOC was wrong right away, but hadn't really ever heard of the right answer REM. Geez, that's some Saturday-level stuff. There are friendlier ways to clue REM than that and still keep it challenging.
I've been having moderate success with Izzet Phoenix on MTG Arena. Magic 2020 rotated in, but all I did was swap some sideboard cards into Fry. But I don't see Teferi everywhere anymore; it seems like everyone is playing Elementals. Rising Reef, Nissa, Krasis. I've seen uncommon Chandra, Living Twister. Some play Growth Spiral, some don't. There are many options. But Phoenix is actually pretty well-positioned against it. You have ample removal for early Elves or Reefs, and you can hopefully pressure Nissa with Phoenix or Drake and burn so things don't get out of hand. If they can't land a huge Krasis, they can't deal with your fliers any other way. Post-board, you get Entrancing Melody for Krasis, or sometimes an animated land. I bring in 2 Kefnet as well, and they really have trouble with that.
Yet I found a new toy. You can read about it here. I've only played a few rounds, but this deck is fun as heck, and I wanna play it. I just got to Gold, and I'm going to a least try and get to Diamond this season. It's heartbreaking that Teferi is not the place to be (actually, 3-mana Teferi is kind of a beating vs. Simic), but I like this style of never tapping out. An opponent had used Narset to find Negate while I was pressuring with a couple of guys including a Cutthroat. He drew out a Sinister Sabotage with a Vraska's Contempt. then the next turn, confidently played Ritual of Soot with Negate up...right into Frilled Mystic. There is no way to express a smirk online, but I bet he could feel it all the same.
1-Across: Means of interstellar travel, 9 letters. Easy WARP DRIVE, right? Nothing clicked in that corner right away from those crosses, so I moved on and didn't get back to it until the end. I finally looking up the RCA Dome when warp drive wasn't working. The answer was star ships. Eh, sure, I guess. Technically, warp drive is a Star Trek-specific thing, and it would have to be clued as such. There was also an Ad ___ clue, where anyone would put HOC. Luckily, I discovered HOC was wrong right away, but hadn't really ever heard of the right answer REM. Geez, that's some Saturday-level stuff. There are friendlier ways to clue REM than that and still keep it challenging.
I've been having moderate success with Izzet Phoenix on MTG Arena. Magic 2020 rotated in, but all I did was swap some sideboard cards into Fry. But I don't see Teferi everywhere anymore; it seems like everyone is playing Elementals. Rising Reef, Nissa, Krasis. I've seen uncommon Chandra, Living Twister. Some play Growth Spiral, some don't. There are many options. But Phoenix is actually pretty well-positioned against it. You have ample removal for early Elves or Reefs, and you can hopefully pressure Nissa with Phoenix or Drake and burn so things don't get out of hand. If they can't land a huge Krasis, they can't deal with your fliers any other way. Post-board, you get Entrancing Melody for Krasis, or sometimes an animated land. I bring in 2 Kefnet as well, and they really have trouble with that.
Yet I found a new toy. You can read about it here. I've only played a few rounds, but this deck is fun as heck, and I wanna play it. I just got to Gold, and I'm going to a least try and get to Diamond this season. It's heartbreaking that Teferi is not the place to be (actually, 3-mana Teferi is kind of a beating vs. Simic), but I like this style of never tapping out. An opponent had used Narset to find Negate while I was pressuring with a couple of guys including a Cutthroat. He drew out a Sinister Sabotage with a Vraska's Contempt. then the next turn, confidently played Ritual of Soot with Negate up...right into Frilled Mystic. There is no way to express a smirk online, but I bet he could feel it all the same.
Friday, July 5, 2019
Saturday 35:14 (3 Google)
No records here. Pablo Casals? Ina Claire? Yikes. (The third Google was Dane Cook who was clued via an album I know nothing of.) Some things you learn by doing enough puzzles, such as bygone opera diva Maria CALLAS, "Family Ties" mom ELYSE, song "Goodnight, IRENE," Supreme Court justice ELENA Kagan, both names of ALAN ALDA. A mine opening? ADIT. Indigo dye source? ANIL. If you want to go real deep into the archives, you'll learn AMAH (Asian nursemaid) and ESNE (Anglo-Saxon slave), although Will Shortz hates that kind of crosswordese (if it ever really can't be avoided (and the rest of the puzzle had better be worth it), ESNE is often derisively clued as "slave to crosswords"). Unfortunately, while something as useful as INA is the sort of name you might expect to pick up from experience, I've never seen it clued as a name. It's always "___ flash!" or something. It ought to be, if it can, of course. Crosswords need to be careful balancing such things. Sure, a computer will figure out a cellist and a 1939 film actress no problem, but solving other clues take a human touch, too. And you don't always need to know everything. I got all 11 letters in DARLENE LOVE entirely from crosses.
No records here. Pablo Casals? Ina Claire? Yikes. (The third Google was Dane Cook who was clued via an album I know nothing of.) Some things you learn by doing enough puzzles, such as bygone opera diva Maria CALLAS, "Family Ties" mom ELYSE, song "Goodnight, IRENE," Supreme Court justice ELENA Kagan, both names of ALAN ALDA. A mine opening? ADIT. Indigo dye source? ANIL. If you want to go real deep into the archives, you'll learn AMAH (Asian nursemaid) and ESNE (Anglo-Saxon slave), although Will Shortz hates that kind of crosswordese (if it ever really can't be avoided (and the rest of the puzzle had better be worth it), ESNE is often derisively clued as "slave to crosswords"). Unfortunately, while something as useful as INA is the sort of name you might expect to pick up from experience, I've never seen it clued as a name. It's always "___ flash!" or something. It ought to be, if it can, of course. Crosswords need to be careful balancing such things. Sure, a computer will figure out a cellist and a 1939 film actress no problem, but solving other clues take a human touch, too. And you don't always need to know everything. I got all 11 letters in DARLENE LOVE entirely from crosses.
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