Ten little reminders that I've been off work for six months.
1. I keep typing the date as "2010"
2. Someone else is using my "reserved" mug
3. My shirts are still nicely pressed
4. My data filing system is utterly kaphooft
5. People I already know reintroduce themselves
6. I don't know where they keep the spare teabags
7. My keyboard lacks a familiar layers of grime (and still has most of the letters)
8. People that were at my level are now my superiors
9. The office has a deficit of masticated pens
10. I'm actually enjoying data entry
I'm back.
Wednesday, 15 June 2011
Tuesday, 1 February 2011
Crossword Time: More Anagrams
Enthusiastic and inspired by your successful navigation of that first anagram, you go searching the grid for others, but identifying an anagram indicator, it turns out, is not as easy as you might think. Thankfully, the setter is hovering over your shoulder and points out two more anagram clues, just to stop you having to think too much. This is supposed to be fun, after all. First up, the erstwhile setter points to 15 down...
Flourished to rivet HD tuner (7)
I'll admit it, it's an ugly clue, because the surface meaning if just a bit too much of a stretch. If I wanted to grammatically correct, it would probably be more like "Flourished to rivet a HD tuner" or something (still ugly, but better), so the odd sounding sentence structure is your first clue that something fishy is going on. Combine this with the fact that 'rivet HD' has 7 letters and 'tuner' has some vibes of static and change associated with it, and you can be pretty confident that here you have another 7 letter anagram that means 'flourished', and you can understand why I've let my prized grammatical correctness slip for a little while.
Also on our little list of anagram clues is 6 down:
Philosopher is all about tea hour (7)
Tea time, yes, tea break, even, but tea hour? No-one takes a whole hour to drink a cuppa. Again "all about" is looking an awful lot like an anagram indicator, so we're on the lookout with a philosopher who shares his letters with 'teahour'. This is not to say that anagrams are always able to be found by looking for gramatical weridness, but it certainly gives us a nudge in the right direction.
In this case, the philosopher in question is Mr. THOREAU, whose theories have THRIVED greatly since his death. Not being a philosopher myself, I can't say I've read any of Mr. Thoreau's work, but if the letters fit the letters fit, and I couldn't really resist chucking him in, philosophers are classy and erudite, after all.
Flourished to rivet HD tuner (7)
I'll admit it, it's an ugly clue, because the surface meaning if just a bit too much of a stretch. If I wanted to grammatically correct, it would probably be more like "Flourished to rivet a HD tuner" or something (still ugly, but better), so the odd sounding sentence structure is your first clue that something fishy is going on. Combine this with the fact that 'rivet HD' has 7 letters and 'tuner' has some vibes of static and change associated with it, and you can be pretty confident that here you have another 7 letter anagram that means 'flourished', and you can understand why I've let my prized grammatical correctness slip for a little while.
Also on our little list of anagram clues is 6 down:
Philosopher is all about tea hour (7)
Tea time, yes, tea break, even, but tea hour? No-one takes a whole hour to drink a cuppa. Again "all about" is looking an awful lot like an anagram indicator, so we're on the lookout with a philosopher who shares his letters with 'teahour'. This is not to say that anagrams are always able to be found by looking for gramatical weridness, but it certainly gives us a nudge in the right direction.
In this case, the philosopher in question is Mr. THOREAU, whose theories have THRIVED greatly since his death. Not being a philosopher myself, I can't say I've read any of Mr. Thoreau's work, but if the letters fit the letters fit, and I couldn't really resist chucking him in, philosophers are classy and erudite, after all.
Sunday, 30 January 2011
Crossword Time: Anagrams
For the benefit of Mr. 5000, there will be a show tonight on crossword theory. Though the gentleman (and others) insist that they understand how the game works, I like messing about with crosswords and pretending that I know more that people about things, so it's time for a lecture on cryptics.
Returning to our grid from last week, let's start with the basic explanation that I'm sure none of you need. A cryptic crossword clue is a little puzzle, and each little puzzle fits with the others to form the grid. Each puzzle is one of only a few different types of puzzle, the idea behing each is easily learned even by mere humans like you and me, and once we work out what kind of puzzle it is, the answer is just a short jump away. In (almost) all these types of puzzles, the clue has two parts, a 'straight' section that is the word's definition just as in a regular crossword, and a wordplay section where things get a little bit crazy. The best way to understand this is to jump right in, so what are you waiting for?
First up is 20 down, the clue that Alethea says that she's solved (and indeed those of us familiar with her formidable intellect and puzzling bent have no reason to doubt her). Which reads:
"Resets Doom's infamous city... (5)"
Being the computer game fan that you are, you naturally are aware that Doom takes place on the moons of Mars rather than in any particular city, infamous or not, so instantly your spider-demon senses are tingling. This crossword can't possibly be asking for a city that's not named, so what is it asking for? Which part of this clue is the 'straight' part, and which is the wordplay? This clue is looking for a synonym of 'resets', or for a city that may or not be infamous (we know that the 'straight' part of this clue has to be at the beginning or end, because them's the rules, and no self-respecting cruciverbalist would break the rules, right?), though it's hard to say which.
But...the word 'resets' is enough to have any cryptic crossword fan swinging from building to building, as it is an anagram indicator, a word which transmits enough muddling, transforming morphic energy to power a teleport gate to hell itself. After all, at wouldn't be fair of the setter to just throw in a clue like:
Dog deity (3)
...and expect you to realise that you need to shuffle some letters around, so we drop little hints that someone needs to re-deal the letters. A more reasonable clue for the same might be:
Rabid dog deity (3)
...where 'rabid', with its connotations of madness and befuddlement, is the anagram indicator which, when applied to a canine, leads us naturally to a devine conclusion. In the same vein, 'resets' is an anagram indicator, probably re-setting the letters of "Doom's" to give us an infamous city. There are plenty of different words that could be anagram indicators, shaken, stirred, fried... anything that gives a feeling of disorder, but since "Doom's" has 5 letters and so does the infamous city we're looking for, we're beginning to see the light at the end of this particularly mad little tunnel.
A quick dip into the back-end of Genesis (actually it disappears in chapter 18, but why let biblical accuracy ruin a terrible pun?), reveals SODOM, a city that along with her sister Gomorrah, according to Biblical tradition, pretty much set the mould for infamy (and happens to share the same letter as the pluralised form of a popular first-person shooter).
Whoolah! We've done it, cracked the first part of the puzzle and all it took was a little re-arranging of some letters and a bit of general knowledge. Inspired by our early success, we knuckle down again, looking for some more of those tell-tale anagram indicators...but which clue do we tackle next?
Returning to our grid from last week, let's start with the basic explanation that I'm sure none of you need. A cryptic crossword clue is a little puzzle, and each little puzzle fits with the others to form the grid. Each puzzle is one of only a few different types of puzzle, the idea behing each is easily learned even by mere humans like you and me, and once we work out what kind of puzzle it is, the answer is just a short jump away. In (almost) all these types of puzzles, the clue has two parts, a 'straight' section that is the word's definition just as in a regular crossword, and a wordplay section where things get a little bit crazy. The best way to understand this is to jump right in, so what are you waiting for?
First up is 20 down, the clue that Alethea says that she's solved (and indeed those of us familiar with her formidable intellect and puzzling bent have no reason to doubt her). Which reads:
"Resets Doom's infamous city... (5)"
Being the computer game fan that you are, you naturally are aware that Doom takes place on the moons of Mars rather than in any particular city, infamous or not, so instantly your spider-demon senses are tingling. This crossword can't possibly be asking for a city that's not named, so what is it asking for? Which part of this clue is the 'straight' part, and which is the wordplay? This clue is looking for a synonym of 'resets', or for a city that may or not be infamous (we know that the 'straight' part of this clue has to be at the beginning or end, because them's the rules, and no self-respecting cruciverbalist would break the rules, right?), though it's hard to say which.
But...the word 'resets' is enough to have any cryptic crossword fan swinging from building to building, as it is an anagram indicator, a word which transmits enough muddling, transforming morphic energy to power a teleport gate to hell itself. After all, at wouldn't be fair of the setter to just throw in a clue like:
Dog deity (3)
...and expect you to realise that you need to shuffle some letters around, so we drop little hints that someone needs to re-deal the letters. A more reasonable clue for the same might be:
Rabid dog deity (3)
...where 'rabid', with its connotations of madness and befuddlement, is the anagram indicator which, when applied to a canine, leads us naturally to a devine conclusion. In the same vein, 'resets' is an anagram indicator, probably re-setting the letters of "Doom's" to give us an infamous city. There are plenty of different words that could be anagram indicators, shaken, stirred, fried... anything that gives a feeling of disorder, but since "Doom's" has 5 letters and so does the infamous city we're looking for, we're beginning to see the light at the end of this particularly mad little tunnel.
A quick dip into the back-end of Genesis (actually it disappears in chapter 18, but why let biblical accuracy ruin a terrible pun?), reveals SODOM, a city that along with her sister Gomorrah, according to Biblical tradition, pretty much set the mould for infamy (and happens to share the same letter as the pluralised form of a popular first-person shooter).
Whoolah! We've done it, cracked the first part of the puzzle and all it took was a little re-arranging of some letters and a bit of general knowledge. Inspired by our early success, we knuckle down again, looking for some more of those tell-tale anagram indicators...but which clue do we tackle next?
Thursday, 20 January 2011
Come Back Again
This is, without a doubt, the best crossword I've ever written, which isn't really saying much, but there you go. It contains some dud entries, but for the most part writing it made me happy, and left me with plenty of ideas for next time, too.
As faithful readers of my uneventful blog you guys can be its first victims/beta testers, before I decide whether or not to submit it to a local magazine or something, just for the fun of collecting rejection slips. If you'd like an across lite version of the puzzle, drop me an email.
The idea came to me last night and before the sun rose it was complete. Have fun, and don't be worried if you can't get anywhere, it's pretty tricksy, if I say so myself.
As faithful readers of my uneventful blog you guys can be its first victims/beta testers, before I decide whether or not to submit it to a local magazine or something, just for the fun of collecting rejection slips. If you'd like an across lite version of the puzzle, drop me an email.
The idea came to me last night and before the sun rose it was complete. Have fun, and don't be worried if you can't get anywhere, it's pretty tricksy, if I say so myself.
Wednesday, 10 November 2010
Wednesday Quiz in Exile XI: Location, Location, Location
The penultimate week of the first season of the Wednesday-Quiz-in-Exile is a game of photo-identification. Below are 12 sets of three photos, all taken in or of one of Australia's World Heritage Areas. All you have to do is name the location (or the World Heritage Area, where it has a different name (two ways to win!)) to score the points.
Name that place.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
Please leave your answers in 300x200px format in the comments.
Name that place.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
Please leave your answers in 300x200px format in the comments.
Monday, 8 November 2010
Council Elections 2010
I had intended to make this a big long post about the relative merits of all the candidates in my local council election, another satisfying brick in the wall of my blog of things that nobody actually cares about, but a few things stopped me:
1. They're all so darn similar that it would make for mighty boring reading. They all say they want steady council rates, the garbage collected, etc. etc. (Considering the "trenchant" nature of my Senate posts, when I say boring, you can believe that I really mean it).
2. Finding any even moderately interesting information is incredibly difficult due to the new restrictions in place this council election on online information. Mail-outs are better, but I've got post from only a few candidates, so I can hardly give a fair picture.
3. Turns I that I don't care either.
I find this all terribly depressing given my usual rabid enthusiasm for elections, and especially considering that this is the last one I'll get to be a part of for a few years unless I join my local bowls club or the Federal Labor government collapses, but there you are. I really wanted to get excited about this election too, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, my local council (City of Burnside) has been in the news over the last few years for all the wrong reasons, and the community is crying out for change.
More importantly, though, local Council elections are the only ones in our three-tier government system in which you don't have to vote. I can exercise my faith in the democratic system with enthusiasm and freedom, not just because I have to if I don't want to be fined. It makes me feel lke a real voter, not just one of the sheep.
So I've collected my junk mail, scoped out my candidates, put down all my preferences and sent my little cards in by mail, but I really don't care enough to blog about it. I do care enough to blog about not blogging about it, which I am tempted to call zen but suspect is really just insomnia.
1. They're all so darn similar that it would make for mighty boring reading. They all say they want steady council rates, the garbage collected, etc. etc. (Considering the "trenchant" nature of my Senate posts, when I say boring, you can believe that I really mean it).
2. Finding any even moderately interesting information is incredibly difficult due to the new restrictions in place this council election on online information. Mail-outs are better, but I've got post from only a few candidates, so I can hardly give a fair picture.
3. Turns I that I don't care either.
I find this all terribly depressing given my usual rabid enthusiasm for elections, and especially considering that this is the last one I'll get to be a part of for a few years unless I join my local bowls club or the Federal Labor government collapses, but there you are. I really wanted to get excited about this election too, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, my local council (City of Burnside) has been in the news over the last few years for all the wrong reasons, and the community is crying out for change.
More importantly, though, local Council elections are the only ones in our three-tier government system in which you don't have to vote. I can exercise my faith in the democratic system with enthusiasm and freedom, not just because I have to if I don't want to be fined. It makes me feel lke a real voter, not just one of the sheep.
So I've collected my junk mail, scoped out my candidates, put down all my preferences and sent my little cards in by mail, but I really don't care enough to blog about it. I do care enough to blog about not blogging about it, which I am tempted to call zen but suspect is really just insomnia.
Sunday, 7 November 2010
Vignette: Marriage
A young couple are walking back to their car after dinner in town, pleasantly ignorant of the world moving around them as only young couples can be, when arising out of the dark comes a hulking figure, gaunt and unshaven and smelling never-so-slightly of alcohol.
The look on her face was just priceless.
"Arg, why don't you two just get married?"The lonely figure disappears into the darkness again, no doubt in search of other people to accost, leaving our two young heroes to their thoughts. After a short moment, the gentleman turns to his partner:
"Laura, hang on a sec...ah..."
The look on her face was just priceless.
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