More Photos and On Being An Introvert

I've added some photos taken by my teammates during coed astronomy's leisurely mini-Game to the gallery. They're basically photos that flesh out our experience and, oddly enough, have me in them (sorry).

Speaking of fleshing out, I have been working on a detailed writeup of our experiences during the mini-Game, mostly so I can remember them come six months from now. But once again I find that being an introvert keeps me to about 1.5 paragraphs per day. I need to get into frame of mine where I can concentrate on one specific thing (writing) without fear of interruption. My daughter doesn't like this and will often climb all over her Daddy-Jungle-Gym(TM) to try and hijack my attention.

It usually works.

SF Mini-Game Pics

Pictures from the coed astronomy's puzzle hunt on April 26 are available to anyone who wants to see them. Team members have promised to send me their pictures to add as well, but who knows when that will be?

On a side note, I just noticed that the full-screen slideshow option is not working for some strange reason (it claims a file that isn't missing, is). Not that I, nor anyone else (probably), has attempted to use it before, but my apologies if anyone has.

Excellent Leisurely Feelings

In The Smoldering YAKs debut puzzle hunt yesterday, hosted by coed astronomy in San Francisco, set at a liesurely pace (although I did see more than one team running between clue sites), I have to say... we had a blast! I think Andrea summed it up best when, as we walked from the final clue to the pizza joint, she said, "I'm almost sad it's over!" Much thanks to Yar, who took a while to wind down his puzzle creating spirit after No More Secrets (something I can relate to) and to his team for refining the puzzles, making them playable ;) and putting it all on. My only complaint is... that atoms are now divisible. Seriously. Read up on it.

So I'm in a great mood this morning. And I plan to take advantage of it by playing with my daughter (who is facinated with this triangular object made of Legos for some reason), rototilling the garden, and hanging out with my brother, sis-in-law, and nephews.

It's a good day.

Sick Again

A few weeks ago, I caught a cold from my daughter just before Midnight Madness, but luckily, I was fully symptom-free a few hours beforehand. With less than 24 hours until coed astronomy's mini-Game, she's gone and infected me again. I'm now desperate to stop this rhinovirus.

There are several remedies out there for shortening the common cold's duration, some of them kind of weird:

• Increased rest and fluids, the old standby
  
• Saline nasal rinses
  
• Megadoses of vitamin C
  
• Salt-water gargles
  
• Increased exposure to sunlight, to boost Vitamin D production
  
• Cool mist humidifier
  
• Zinc lozenges
  
• Increased garlic intake
  
• Pouring hydrogen peroxide into ear canals
  
• Honey lemon tea
  
• Herbs such as ginger and echinacea
  

I'm tryin' 'em all.

Single word vs. directions solves

Last night, Given's ear infection kept him from joining Andrea and I for our Wednesday night session of Agon. Deciding not to waste puzzling time, she and I enjoyed some practice for the SF Mini-Game by working on BANG 12 clues, picking up where we left off after The Smoldering YAK's practice session on Sunday.

One thing I noticed from both sessions, apart from how much fun we had and how well we worked together, was how much more satisfying it felt to solve puzzles to a single word, as opposed to a directional message (monoverbum vs. polyverbum?). I'm not quite sure why this is; all I can say is that in the former case, the clue felt truely solved while in the latter (admitedly only taken from my experiences in Midnight Madness: Back To Basics and a few other practice puzzles) didn't have that feeling of closure. I suppose this could be due my experiences at the Google and Microsoft Puzzle Hunts, where puzzles often solved to messages that told you how to re-solve the puzzle.

Interestingly, it seems clues in SF Mini-Game will do both, solving first to a location and then to a solution word.

Almanac, Don't Fail Me Now!

I gave in a few days ago and bought my first almanac. That's right, I've never had one before. Sure, I used to read World Book Encyclopedias from cover to cover as a teen ("Hmmmm, let's see what 'M' has to say today") and get lost in a Wikipedia time-warp stupor from time to time these days, but I've never owned or, I dare say, opened an almanac before.

And then Coed Astronomy decided to host their mini-game. And suggested that an almanac just might be a good idea to bring along because, let's face it, trying to find an public hotspot while riding MUNI doesn't seem like it will be worth the fun on lugging a laptop around.

Last Saturday night, Karina and I finished our dinner at La Gare, we headed to Kmart to pick up a gift for our babysitter, despite the fact that she was dressed in a black cocktail dress and heels and me almost as dressed up. While there, a huge pile of almanacs presented itself on sale, so I grabbed one, figuring it's cheaper than paying off my library fine. (We got the babysitter chocolate.)

Since then, I've been thumbing through it from time to time, getting a feel for what's in it and how it's organaized. Not as exciting a read as, say, the World Book Encyclopedia, but definitely interesting.

Then comes Tuesday. While working on one of Thomas Joseph's daily crossword, I come across a clue that I can't quite nail down: "ISLE OF _IGHT" for island off of England's southern coast. Having solved all other clues (save the cross-clue of course) and tried at various points over 24 hours to remember hearing of an Isle of Night, Light, Right, Fight, etc., I decided it was time to look it up. Instead of Wikipedia, though, I decided to try out my abilities with the new 2008 Almanac.

The index only has one entry for "Island": "see also specific island". This is interesting because "see also" implies that there should be multiple sub-entries for "Island" (there aren't), but you may want to consider looking them up by name. But there are no index entries beginning "Isle of...", nothing on the maps, and no islands listed on the England or U.K. information pages, so I thought my new almanac had let me down.

This morning, I decide to try and find it again. On a whim, I look up "United Kingdom" in the index (instead of looking at the page dedicated to the country) and happen see an entry for "Island area". Not knowing if this island is important enough to be listed (i.e. I doubt that all the Greek isles have their areas listed), I turn to page 701 to find a page entitled "Important Islands and Their Areas". (I guess nobody thought that that would be a good listing for the "Island" index entry.)

And there in the Atlantic Ocean subheading is "Isle of Wight, England - 147".

Trash Talkin' Teams

We had so many teammates and friends interested in participating in Coed Astronomy's leisurely mini-game, that we decided to enter two teams of five instead of trying to worry about keeping ten people together for the day. After finally coming up with team rosters that everyone's happy with, I was surprised learned last night that certain people are trading barbed (but good natured) comments across the net over which team is better, The Smoking GNU or The Smoldering YAK. To try and put an end to that, I went and figured out which team is better.

For the nine of the ten players that I have witnessed in puzzle-solving action, I assigned a graded scale to each of their abilities (A+ =10, F=0, no plusses or minuses for Ds and Fs). Using the average of his teammates grades for the one player I haven't seen in action, I came up with the following scores:

The Smoking GNU: 35
The Smoldering YAK: 30

This doesn't take into effect other aspects such as who has the better navigator (YAK), which team has better symbiont solvers (GNU), or which team has more experienced players (about even, leaning towards GNU).

So if this were not a leisurely puzzle hunt, you would probably find the GNU placing ahead of the YAK.