GC XXVI: The proof will carry conviction

The whole 'weekly blog post with homework' format of our ongoing Great Conversation project is a strange beast. Usually I end up delaying the blog post because I need more time to read the books, but this time around I had the opposite problem; despite finishing the 'weekly' readings in mid-November, I've found the actual writing of the post itself to be the bit that's slowing down the process, and now here we are at the end of March, with the readings in the distant past, and if I was grasping for something interesting to say about them back then I have Buckley's Chance now. So, apologies for the limited review section, but it's time to get this show back on the road. It's almost Blapril, after all.

Unfortunately, the Adelaide eBooks site that I've been using as the main source for most of the links throughout the series has now disappeared from the internet, so all of the past links are now irretrievably lost. I guess that's what happens when your seven-year project starts hanging around past its used-by date. This also means that we have to revert to the project Gutenberg translations, which in many cases are inferior, but in the absence of learning ancient Greek and Latin I suppose that they'll have to do. More importantly, though, it means that I can't easily link directly to chapter headings any more unless Gutenberg have included direct links, which is about 50/50 so far. To get around this I'd hope to be using the Text Fragment Anchor flag available in the current version of Chrome. If you use Chrome you would can go here to turn that feature on for now to allow you to scroll straight to nominated places in the document, which wouldn't help readers on other browsers, but would have been a start. Unfortunately, my experiments with getting it to actually work have hit a dead end, and so I've abandoned it for now in the interests of actually getting this post up, so for now we're flying blind and if you want to read the chapters I'm reading I'm afraid you're going to have to do your own scrolling.

The Week That Was:

The History of Herodotus

Book VIII

As Herodotus winds down somewhat anticlimactically after the highs of book seven, I'm mostly just left with the general impression that it's really a wonder that the Greeks ever listen to oracles about anything at all, given how many examples we've been given lately of them being just straight up paid to lie about things. You'd have thought they'd learn something at some point.

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

Chapters XVIII-XX

If the reader was looking for some kind of conclusion out of the last few chapters of Crusoe, they're in for a rude shock. Once the mutineers have been dealt with, Crusoe returns home having learnt more or less nothing. Of course this is all just set up for the next book, and this being pretty much the first English-language novel the rules of how to write them aren't exactly codified yet, but I want closure, dammit!

All in all, I enjoyed reading Robinson Crusoe. I feel like it's aged pretty well when you consider just how old this novel is, but I think it falls just a little bit short of inclusion in my own personal canon. And I have absolutely no interest on reading anything at all about Crusoe's further adventures.

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo 

Volume III - Book IV

The various characters of the ABC all seem like a lot of fun, but as usual when it comes to French names I have absolutely no hope of keeping them all straight when it comes to the action. Hopefully Hugo will hold my hand a little when we eventually come to that stuff, or I am going to be so lost.

Republic of Plato

Book I

It's a whole new book, but Socrates continues to do Socrates things. As usual we're supposed to think he's so clever, but like Thrasymachus I find myself wanting to bop him on the nose. Rather smartly. If the rest of the Republic goes on like this it's going to be a long book.

The Sand Reckoner by Archimedes

Perfectly transparent

I found this one surprisingly easy to grasp and Archimedes chain of logic relatively easy to follow in comparison to Euler's, and was pleased to find that I could more or less able to nod along with all of his steps, so I was perplexed to find out that Archimedes model of the solar system was way, way off. Despite having a pretty good guess at the size of the Earth, it comes down one of his base assumptions being an order of magnitude off causing the measurement of the distance to the sun to be comically, tragically underestimated, but there's nothing wrong with the logic. Give me Archimedes over Socrates any day, is basically what I'm saying.

Some Numbers: 

This week we passed 3000 pages read during the project, which feels like a pretty significant milestone for someone who really hasn't read an awful lot in the last few years. It doesn't count all the Harry Potter fanfiction, either.

Pages last week: 106
Pages so far: 3021

Readings for Week XXVII

The only new book on the list this week is a return to Shakespeare with the Tempest, otherwise we're jsut continuing to power on through with bite-sized chunks of Hugo, Plato, Dicken, Bacon and our last dose of Herodotus. There's a few mid-sized readings and a couple of teeny-tiny ones, hopefully there's a little bit of something for everyone, so do join me by picking up a book or two ready for this time next week. Unless you only like things written since 1900, I guess, if so, you're bang out of luck.

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo 

Volume III - Book V (12 pages)

#non_gbww #imlit #novel #french

Republic of Plato

Book II (17 pages)

#gbww #pandt #philosophy #greek

The Tempest by William Shakespeare

(25 pages)

#gbww #imlit #play #english #oneshot

The History of Herodotus

Book IX (32 pages)

#gbww #mands #history #greek

The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

Chapters XIV & XV (18 pages)

#non_gbww #imlit #novel #english

Sphinx by Francis Bacon

(2 pages)

#ggb #pandt #essay #english #oneshot #short

What a difference a month can make

For my day job, I work as the building and bookings administrator for my local church.

Four Sundays ago, about 160 members of our church met together as usual in our building on the main road of our town for worship and kids groups followed by a chat over a cup of tea. I visited the church every day, both to give access to the various community groups that use the building and to work in the office.

Three Sundays ago, we had a big squirty box of hand-sanitiser on the door, a couple of members who'd just come back from trips to Asia stayed at home, but it was more or less business as usual. A couple of my co-workers attended our weekly staff meeting by Skype, but I was still around and letting people in and out of the building. Most of the people I talked too couldn't find toilet paper anywhere, but were just trying to get on with life as usual.

Two Sundays ago, we asked people who had someone unwell in their house, who were in a vulnerable group or who didn't feel comfortable coming to church to stay at home. We had about 70 people there and struggled to get enough adults to care for the various kids groups during the service, shared communion handed out by tongs, and tea and coffee after the service was carefully doled out by someone in kitchen gloves. We cancelled all large gatherings in the building, but some community services judged essential continued, perhaps not as usual, but at least they happened.

Last Sunday, the church building was closed on a Sunday morning, and people gathered around laptop screens around the city at 10:30am to watch a service that had been prerecorded by the musicians and speakers in the church building over the course of the week. At tea and coffee time we met together in small groups via Zoom or by phone from our respective lounge rooms. The building closed entirely, and I set up the table downstairs as my office desk, even though it's not exactly clear what my job is these days when we the building doesn't really need a lot of administering.

This Sunday, the YouTube service was spliced together out of bits and pieces recorded in different members homes. Some members contributed songs, others prayers, others preached or led communion made of whatever bread and liquids members had in their houses (our consisted of pepper crackers and apple cider). It has been a rollercoaster of change, but I've been greatly encouraged by how well people have been adapting to some significant changes, especially by how well some of the elderly and more technologically challenged have leapt right in. It might no look that much like church looked just a month ago, but it still looks a lot like church, and in a time of upheaval and uncertainty, that's a pretty big deal.

Let's wait and see what the next month throws at us.

In Blapant Disregard of Tradition...

Yes, the people that brought you Blaugust have done it again and renamed a month with wanton abandon, to their own doubtless nefarious ends.

In this time of mass cancellations and a sudden emptiness in all of our social calendars, the good folks that bring us the annual blogging festival hitherto known as Blaugust have chosen to bring forward this year's event to fill the gap caused by all this social distancing and mandatory quarantining that's going on. Thus I'll be planning to get back to something approaching a regular posting schedule for the month of April, which is something I was planning to do anyways (to be fair, I'm always planning on getting the Leaflocker rolling again, just with differing degrees of urgency;but at least this time I'll have some friends to bounce ideas off of and to be inspired by).

It's looking to be a quieter affair so far, with just over 20 participants signed up so far rather than the 70-odd that we had last year, but given the enormous wodge of time that attempting to keep up with reading all those blogs took out of my schedule (time that I was supposed to be packing to move house) maybe that's a good thing after all. If you're looking to fill your dates a little in this current climate let me encourage you to join us, as writing a regular blog is a rewarding activity and the Blaugustines (Blaprilites?) are a friendly and enthusiastic bunch.

I'm not quite sure what sort of things I'm likely to come out with during the month, but it's probably not going to be the MMO focused material of most of my comrades-in-blarms. Since this leopard doesn't change his spots except under duress, though, the chances are high that it will be the same old Leaflocker miscellany of rambling about books and board games. Personally, I'm hoping for some good crossword content too.

I hope you'll join me during the month, either by joining the blogfest or just by stopping by and leaving a comment or two as I go along, as a little bit of encouragement goes a long way. If you'd like to join the festival proper, do check out Belghast's post on the topic for more details and info about the discord channel and other ways that you can make the month a little more interactive.

Until next time, keep on Blarching on.

Clue Review: LC2 (Down)

"In the next couple of days months"

This post is part two of the clue review for my most recent crossword. You can read part one here.

DOWN CLUES

1 Male with vocal following gives the lesson (5) 
lesson = MORAL ~ M (for male) + ORAL (vocal)
I'm not really a big fan of the way that many crosswords tend to rely very heavily on the one-letter shortenings of seemingly any word, but I feel like male and female are shortened to M and F on forms or toilet doors and the like that they're probably fine. They're so common that they make for very easy to solve clues. I liked the 'following' here, which doesn't strictly do anything in the clue since oral was naturally going to follow the M anyway, but it just makes the surface reading of the clue so must nicer.

2 Digital scanner hitch (5) 
THUMB ~ Double definition (Digital scanner / hitch)
Ha! Digital. I crack myself up.

3 British PM to shout out loud (5)
 British PM = BLAIR ~ blare (shout) homophone (out loud)
I toyed with a bunch of options to avoid using yet another homophone for this one, but in the end none of the things that I could come up with worked as well. With the combination of a very obvious straight clue and a simple homophone like this, I'd be surprised if this wasn't the very first entry in most solver's grids.

4 Degenerates fire ultimate projectiles (4)
Degenerates = EBBS ~ last letter (ultimate) of fir(E) + BBS (projectiles)
I feel like ebbs is one of those answers that you just see in crosswords a lot, but that could just be my overexposure to American-style crosswords, where that sweet E _ _ S shape is so very useful. I really enjoy when a definition has an utterly different alternative that you can meld with the wordplay so nicely to so effectively misdirect the solver. I wasn't completely confident that one spells the projectiles from a BB gun like this, half expecting beebees, which wouldn't have worked, but apparently this is fine.

5 Capital built out of parts of its predecessor (5)
TOKYO ~ Anagram of KYOTO.
Another not very cryptic clue, in that you have to effectively know the answer in order to reverse engineer it. It's a nice little piece of trivia, I suppose, but I'm not very happy with it in my crossword.

6 Cabin with energy load (5) 
load = CARGO ~ charade of CAR (cabin #for a ferris wheel, maybe?) + GO (energy)
Frankly a little disappointed that I couldn't come up with a classical reference to Jason and the Argonaut's here, but there'll be another opportunity some time. I also would have liked to have the surface hint towards load as a verb rather than the noun definition for an extra little bit of misdirection.

7 Abuse slandering take-out diner (5) 
abuse = SLANG ~ subtraction (take-out) of DINER from SLA(-nderi)NG
So you take out the letters of diner from slandering to get slang. Simple enough, but since there's not an indicator to say that you take out the constituent parts and not just some synonym for diner it just feels a little sloppy.

12 No news about known town brownnose (6) 
brownnose = KOWTOW ~ subtraction of Ns (abbr. of news) from K(-n)OW(-n) TOW(-n)
As soon as I'd written the words 'known town brown' on my page I knew that I had to make them work together somehow, and the joy of doing so was enough for me to get over my dislike of using words to clue single letters like I've used 'news' here.

14 Bar from exploring otherwise (5) 
Bar = INGOT ~ hidden in (from) explorING OTherwise
Gotta have a hidden clue or two in there, if only for how frustrating it is to stare at a clue for ages only to realise the answer has literally been staring you in the face the whole time. Never gets old.

15 Boredom regarding Nintendo console announcement (5) 
Boredom = ENNUI ~ homophone (announcement) of 'on' (regarding) and 'wii' (Nintendo console)
I will never get sick of using 'wii' in crossword clues. I think this is the third time that I've done it, but it's the first time that I've used it as a homephone and I'm really pleased at how this one turned out.

16 Orange, bumbling ass... (6) 
ass = ONAGER ~ ORANGE anagram (bumbling)
I was going to use the siege engine rather than the equine for this one, but when I realised the orange connection there was only ever one way this one was going to go.

18 ...moons First Lady unrepentantly, necessarily arousing ridicule (5) 
moons = LUNAR ~ Heads (first) of (L)ady (U)nrepentantly (N)ecessarily (A)rousing and (R)idicule
Another example of  a case where the surface reading of the clue drew an interesting enough picture that I was okay with the definition being a little unorthodox, especially given that it's an easy clue. One can't really have 'moons' for 'lunar', or 'first' instead of 'firsts', but I'm happy to give myself a pass here.

19 Now following up a German relative (5) 
relative = NIECE ~ EIN ('a' in German) vertically (up) + CE (now #abb. common era)
Always a bit wary of using things like ein/eine and le/de given that there's multiple options for them, but finding new ways to clue the exceeding common crossword clue of 'niece' is never easy. I wouldn't be surprised to find that multiple constructors have already used this exact clue.

24 Paperback skirting father's paroxysm (5) 
paroxym = SPASM ~ reversal of MS ('paper' back) containing (skirting) PA'S (father's)
Does anyone actually call their dad 'pa'? It's one of those crosswords things that we all pretty much accept, but it feels like a usage that you just don't hear these days. Papa, sure. Pa? Anyways, I liked using 'paperback' like this, even if it's yet another thing that makes the Ximineans frown at me. People who like cryptics like wordplay, what could be wrong about adding MORE wordplay?

25 Steal more work for automaton (5) 
automaton = ROBOT ~ Rob (steal) + OT (more work #OverTime)
I had some objections to using OT for overtime, and I have to admit it's a less common than I thought. Annoying, because I clue construction like this works a lot better than trying to shoehorn the old testament in there.

26 Endemic blatant insiders rise up (5) 
Endemic = NATAL ~ middle (insiders) of b(LATAN)t reversed (rise up)
Natal is a great word that I have always enjoyed wrapping my mouth around since I first met it in a Christmas carol. I generally have a bit of a weak spot for good reversals, so I was glad when I notied this one.

28 Font is in a cave to the north (5) 
font = ARIAL ~ A + LAIR (cave) reversed (to the North)
I know, I know, it's a typeface. You knew what I meant though, right?

29 Tool practice (5) 
DRILL ~ Double definition (Tool / practice)
I was a bit dubious about finishing the crossword with three double-definitions in a row, but hopefully most people don't solve puzzles by running through all the acrosses and then all the downs, so maybe it wasn't so obvious to people actually solving the puzzles. There were probably too many double definitions in this one, but when they work, they work.

30 A fraction of the last Tim Tam (5) 
NINTH ~ Double definition (A fraction / the last Tim Tam)
I was right chastised for this one, given that I'd forgotten that not ALL packets of Tim Tams have nine biscuits, as the plainer flavours still have eleven. I could have gotten away with it too, if I'd only added a 'fancy' into the clue. Gotta have some specific Aussie knowledge in their somewhere but in this case I was hoist on my own petard.

32 Get on the table and blend (4) 
MELD ~ Double definition (Get on the table / blend)
A reference to the game of canasta and similar games here that would have been tricky if you don't speak the specific language of those games. We could all do with a friendly game of cards at the moment, I think. I wonder if there's a decent online canasta server...

Thanks for dropping by. I'm hoping to spend a little more time here in the next few weeks instead of spending it all mindlessly scrolling social media, so hopefully the next post isn't months away again.

Clue Review: LC2 (Across)

Thanks to all the readers who've taken a swing at the cryptic crossword that I put up a couple of weeks ago, I've greatly appreciated the feedback and just getting your reactions to it has been a lot of fun. This post is (the first part of) a run-through of the various clues and their answers, which will hopefully include some explanations for anything that you weren't sure about and will also help me identify the puzzle's weak points so that I can improve in future. That obviously means that it will contain SPOILERS, so this is your last chance to go back and do the puzzle.

I'm not planning to go into a lot of depth here about how cryptics are supposed to work, but if you are interested in learning about that, I do recommend the 31 part series that Mother Owl put together back in Blaugust 2016.

ACROSS CLUES

1 It can be changed or possibly silenced (7) 
MUTABLE ~ Double definition (It can be changed / silenced[?] )
Double definition clues are always the first thing that I look for in a crossword, as words with two simple meanings like the answer to 29 down can be any easy way to get a foothold in the grid and the short clues are often easily indentifiable. Clues like this one, with one 'normal' definition and one slightly playful one (using mutable for 'able to be muted' isn't really proper English, after all), can be a bit trickier to notice, but hopefully the addition of the 'possibly' helps prepare the solver that I'm being a little sneaky here.

5 Folds away picked up evening wear (5) 
Folds away = TUCKS ~ 'Tux' (Evening wear) homophone (picked up)
This is the first of an unusually high number of homophone clues in this crossword, which caused me to dig deep in my limited supply of good indicator words (I am pretty rusty at this, after all). I think 'picked up' is a nice definition for 'received' to indicate a homophone, though at last one solver didn't like it. It could be a little bit naughty to have the indicator slap bang in the middle of the clue where it's not obvious if it affects the folding or the evening wear, but since 'tux' doesn't have five letters I think it's fair enough.

8 Briton gives odd introduction (3) 
Introduction = BIO ~ Regular letters (gives odd) from [B]R[I]T[O]N
It's always the short ones that get you. I found this one surprisingly difficult to clue without resorting to the usual double meaning clue. I'm not very happy with this one since 'gives odd' doesn't really imply multiple letters, it should have been something about 'gives odds' but I couldn't make it flow as nicely.


9 Method's missing from Mother Hubbard's  unconventional recipe for pie fruit (7) 
Pie fruit = RHUBARB ~ Anagram (unconventional) of MOTHER HUBBARD with the letters of METHOD subtracted (missing)
Pretty much everyone who solved this got into contact to remind me that rhubarb isn't actually a fruit, which is an excellent point. Let's just pretend I'd make the straight part of the clue 'pie filling' so that we can just sit back and enjoy the anagram, shall we?

10 Buddhist principle proclaimed greater peace (5)
Buddhist principle = KARMA ~ 'calmer' (greater peace) homophone (proclaimed)
I know that with many accent calmer and karma aren't pronounced the same, but with my Aussie drawl they're pretty close. I'm not completely content with using 'greater peace' to mean 'calmer' when something like 'more peaceful' would have worked better, but I couldn't get it to scan into the surface meaning properly. I feel like this one is a clue that I would have reworked if I'd given myself more time to work on the puzzle.

11 Ask yourself introspectively "What is up?" (3) 
What is up = SKY ~ Container (introspectively) for a[SK Y]ourself
The 'straight' definition for 'sky' here being "What is up?" is probably pushing it, too, but throwing a question mark in there hides a multitude of sins, and I can't imagine too many folks getting stuck on this three-letter word because of it.

13 Progressive loses final 2-0 to volleyballer (6) 
Volleyballer = LIBERO ~ subtraction (loses) of AL (final 2) from LIBER(-AL) (progressive) + O (0)
I was a bit worried that this one was a little on the hard side, given that libero is a pretty obscure sports word from a relatively obscure sport, but it seems like people enjoyed it. I like the way that the clue is able to extremely specific about taking 2 letters away and adding an O all in one neat little package.

17 Love all and desire tea (6) 
Tea = OOLONG ~ Charade O-O (love all #in tennis) + LONG (desire)
This was lots of people's favourite clue of the crossword, which I have to put down to the Leaflocker audience's love of tea generally, as I personally thought that the surface of the clue was pretty weak. It was fun to get people to translate love all to the tennis score 0-0 for the double-O on the start, and I think it helps that I was able to use 2-0 in the clue before to warm people up to the idea.

20 Won out this time (3) 
This time = NOW ~ WON anagram (out)
Pretty common anagram-type clue. I'd be very surprised if this exact form hadn't appeared in other puzzles multiple times before.

21 Masterplan for gag order after a period (6)
Masterplan = AGENDA ~ NDA (non-disclosure agreement) after AGE (period)
How common is usage of NDA? I feel like it's on the border of common parlance, but probably seen in the wild often enough that it can be used in a simple charade clue like this. I wouldn't want to try and clue it as indirectly as 'gag order' if I were doing anything weird with it, but for these purposes I feel like it worked.

22 Coalition without a mandate is rudderless (6) 
Coalition = TANDEM ~ Anag. (rudderless) of M(-a)NDATE missing (without) A mandate.
Not completely confident that this one is fair, as not only is tandem a bit of a weird definition for coalition (something that you do 'in tandem' could also be done 'in coaliation' but they don't really mean the same thing standing alone), but the wordplay is a bit sloppy, as it requires you to read 'without a mandate' as 'mandate without an a', which I suppose you could, if you squint. I'm also not completely sold on rudderless as an anagram indicator, but in the end I decided to let this one slip through just because the surface reading seemed like fun. Would 'coalition is rudderless without a mandate' have been fairer? Or should I have gone with something else entirely? What do you guys think?

23 Slime is just part of baby talk (3) 
GOO ~ Double definition (slime/part of baby talk)
Babies say googoo gaagaa, right?

24 Insert gobbledegook and let's call it a dialect (6) 
Let's call it a dialect = STRINE ~ Anag. (Gobbledegook) of INSERT
Is Strine a dialect? Sort of? I tried to convey that almost-kinda vibe with the clue and I think it worked out relatively well, although I feel like there should have been a good way to really punch this one up a bit.

27 Officer study subsequent to conflict (6) 
Officer = WARDEN ~ DEN (Study) after WAR (Conflict)
Another pretty straightforward charade clue where I ended up cluing the last part first and then working my way back in order to try and have the surface reading be a little more interesting. I think it more or less worked, but having a word like 'subsequently' in there really telegraphs the wordplay too much and makes for an easy clue.

31 A handy place to fortify (3) 
ARM ~ Double definition (A handy place / to fortify)
Another double definition with one punny meaning, handy places bringing back shades of groanworthy jokes about Napoleon. This one got an ! in the copy of the filled in crossword that my parents sent me, but I hope that was a 'ha ha' ! and not a 'see me' !

33 He has priors! (5) 
ABBOT ~ Cryptic Definition
One of the things that got me writing this crossword in the first place was the over-reliance of my local paper on punny single-definition clues. This is the sort of clue that isn't really properly cryptic, as it doesn't have any wordplay element, the sort of thing that I'd expect to see in an American style crossword, or in one from before cryptics evolved into their current form, but I feel like they're fine in moderation, especially if the surface meaning really pops. I like this one a lot.

34 Release auditor's reckoning (7) 
Release = EDITION ~ homophone (auditor's) of 'addition' (reckoning)
I couldn't resist the idea of an auditor as one who both plays with numbers and listens. Another clue with the indicator just dropped in between the elements, but since 'addition' is one letter too long I feel like most folk will stumble across this one pretty quickly.

35 Tallest test cut out everything (3)
Everything = ALL ~ TALLEST with TEST subtracted (cut out) (-t)ALL(-est)
Have I said yet that I hate cluing short words? Subtractions are a good way to do them but I feel like they can be hard to pitch at the right difficulty level. This grid originally had another big open space to the left of the first letter of this one, but in the end I cut it because it didn't reduce the number of three letter words I had to clue and was very constraining.

36 Iron Maiden and others (5) 
Iron = METAL ~ M (abbr. of maiden in cricket) + ET AL.
I am in two minds about this one. You can't really get away with cluing a class of objects (metal) by one of it's parts (iron) in the way that can the other way around. In the end I decided to keep it just because I could sort of justify is as almost an &lit.clue, since 'Iron Maiden and others' are indeed fully metal and the clue is just a popper, but I don't feel good about it.

37 Hide 35 devastated by notorious stylist (7)
Notorious stylist = DELILAH ~ Anag. of HIDE and ALL (answer to 35 across)
The other clue that got an ! from my parents, but I think 'notorious stylist' works for the biblical character of Delilah, and has the nice extra bonus of including a red herring word like 'stylist' which just screams anagram indicator.

That's it for the across clues. This post is already getting pretty long, so I think I'm going to cut it off here for now and come back some time in the next few days to talk about the down clues. Please let me know in the comments if there's anywhere that I haven't explained things well or where you disagree with my assessments, as I really do want to make crosswords more often and I'm sure you all have some good advice to impart.

What I played on my holidays

Whoops, this thing was sitting unfinished in the drafts folder, where it has been languishing for almost a month now. Be free, my pretty, be free!

I've just gotten back from three weeks spent home in Australia over the Christmas break. It was a precious, refreshing time for Mrs. Owl and I to check in with friends and family, have some good discussions, share many good hugs with people that we love and miss, and to look forward to a time when we won't be living so far away, if indeed such a day will ever come.

It was also a good time to sit down and play some board games. I'm not going to say they were needed quite as much as the hugs, but I have been sorely missing my board games in the last few months since moving to Southampton, and spending time around the table with old friends was balm for this gamer's soul. Along with a few old favourites, I got my hands on a bunch of new games, and thought it might be fun to share my first impressions.

Perudo

This classic dice-rolling bluff game was a staple at the Oxford gaming club and is one of those games that always seems to happen somewhere around me, but that I've somehow managed to avoid having to partake in for years. My streak finally came to an end during a League catch-up, and as is my wont for push-your-luck games, I was first eliminated and went to make the tea while I waited for everyone else to finish. While it's fine for what it is, especially given that it's two hundred years old, I can't help but feel like I'd rather pull out Love Letter than this one any day of the week.

Century: A New World

Having played and enjoyed Century: Spice Road for the first time just a month or so ago (I have a draft blog post about it sitting around somewhere that this one is going to relegate to the bin), I was keen to partake in the maiden game of this part of my father-in-law's Christmas gift horde so that I could compare the two entries in the series. I was pleased that New World keeps the central resource-chain mechanic that I'd liked from Spice Road but that the interaction with other players on the worker-placement board adds a satisfying level of complexity that makes it a more meaty game, at the cost of only a little unpredictable gristle. If I had to choose just one of them to add to my collection, it would definitely be New World, but I'm not rushing out to door to buy either, just because they feel like the sort of games that will feel a little overly-mechanical once the shine has worn off them. Guess the only way to find out for sure is to play them a few more times, and I'm looking forward to doing just that just as soon as I can find a friend or friendly cafe that has copies.

Dragon Castle

Unsurprisingly, the game that stuck the most in my head during the trip was one introduced at a Nerd Club gathering. Dragon Castle is the solitaire mahjong game that I was first introduced to on Windows 3.1.1 as Taipei, re-imagined for we board game hipsters by introducing some neat little tile-placement and point-scoring mechanics. As soon as I saw it I knew that we were in for a good time, it just looks fabulous and plays unlike anything else I've met without being at all complex or difficult to pick up.

I was slightly annoyed by the way that despite being very clearly inspired by Mahjong, the creators seem to have gone out of their way to make the game unplayable with a normal Mahjong set (or at least one without a horde of extra tiles). The stuff that you get in the box is definitely enough to encourage people to buy Dragon Castle, but it just feels so close that the slight changes feel like they don't think their game is good enough for people to buy if they could just play it with their old family mahjong tiles, which just rubs this old chess variants aficionado the wrong way.

So once I got home I cracked out my tiles and used them to home-brew a version of the solitaire version of the game (yes, a solitaire version of the multiplayer variant of a solitaire version of a multiplayer tile game). It worked pretty well for someone familiar with mahjong tiles, but having done it I can see that a custom set that more clearly differentiated tiles would be a good idea, especially if you were trying to introduce the game to newer players. I used the 1s of each suit as replacement dragons, the dragons and blank tiles (also known as the good white dragons) as the replacement flowers, the 2-7 of each suit as the basic tiles and the 8s and 9s (turned vertically) as the shrine caps. I might try it again sometime if I'm with a mahjong crowd that just want to try something different, just to see if other people enjoy it as much as I did.

Imhotep

The end of 2016 and beginning of 2017 was just about the time that I was moving from an open gaming group where people regularly bought and brought new games and into a smaller one that I ran where we had a smaller, stable collection of games, so I never got a chance to enjoy Imhotep when it was all the rage.

Thankfully, I have friends that own it, and we finally sat down to a game years down the track. I was truly awful at it, and when you've got a very tight limited-action game like this one in which you have very little control (because in an action you can either load or unload a boat, but not both, so you're at the mercy of your opponents) and you're playing against people who have a better understanding of the rhythms of the game that's a thing that's going to happen. I'd love to play this one again and see if I can get the hang of the flow, as it seems like a game that has real potential to be an interesting puzzle for two, three or four players. It also has perfect information, so it's the sort of thing that we could play over the internet with friends back home in Oz, so that's a big positive.

The Bloody Inn

In Imhotep, I enjoyed the tightness of having only a few options and a limited number of opportunities, but in The Bloody Inn I found myself drowning in all the different things that I could do, but starved of turns in which to do them. Each turn you only get two actions, but it takes multiple turns to work up the resources to be able to do anything useful, and you just don't get that many turns.

I love the murdering-visitors-to-your-country-hotel-and-burying-the-bodies theme, it definitely appeals to me as an idea, but even though it clearly worked as a game mechanically and the final scores were all relatively close, I just spent so much time second-guessing and regretting my decisions that it just felt too much like work. Perhaps having played it a few more times would let it soak in, but I honestly can't imagine that I'm likely to give it a chance unless I'm in company of folks who really want to play as murderous innkeepers for the night.

6 nimmt!

I've actually played the classic card game 6 nimmt a bunch of times over the years, but for some reason I've never logged it over on boardgamegeek. Either that's because I actually haven't played it in the four years that I've been logging games, or more likely it's just something I missed. 6 nimmt! is the kind of forgettably simple card game that, while enjoyable when you're playing, just doesn't stick in your head.

Camel Up

Another day, another bunch of games. This one was spent at the new local board game café that has opened up in our home town while we've been away. First up was the lovely new edition of Camel Up, complete with pop-up palm tree and 'crazy camels'. I've admired this one from afar before, but never had a chance to play it, and I was keen to give it a go. 

I was pleasantly surprised by how unpredictable the camel race really is, despite the rules of the game being so simple. Of course, there wouldn't really be a game if the outcome was clear, since the whole thing hinges on betting on the outcome of the race, and it's nice when things just come together as nicely as they do in this game. I can just imagine the grin on Steffen Bogen's face when he came up with the mechanics, and I can only assume that it was joined by maniacal laughter when he devised the joy that is the chaotic element of the crazy racers that run backwards and disrupt the race. The little camels are just so cute when they're jumping on each other's backs, too! All in all it's an excellent little package, and while I'm not going to be rushing out to get a copy, I can see why folks might want to and fully endorse the idea of playing it again some time.

Yoz

Next up was the only game that I encountered on my trip that I've never heard of apart from Dragon Castle, but unlike that gem, there's a clear reason that I'd never heard of Yoz. We were attracted by the very lovely wooden chest that it comes in, but as soon as we grabbed it we were warned by the proprietor of the café that "it was a kickstarter". Foolishly, we took no heed. Even his demand to see the cards "so that I can take out a bunch of them" didn't warn up away sufficiently, so we sat down to generic a co-op swords and sourcery adventure game that turned out to commit both of my cardinal board games sins, being a truly frustrating combination of the 'pray and roll some dice' and 'turn over some cards and see what random crap happens to you' mechanics. About ten turns in I turned up the "go back to the start" card, closely followed by the "everyone go back to the start" card. Ugh.

Needless to say, we lost. But hey, there were smiles on our faces anyway, so maybe it's not all bad.

Clank!: Gold and Silk

Finishing up the gaming extravaganza was embarking on an expansion to Clank! with the in-laws. I'd not enjoyed Clank! the one time that I'd played it in the past, but figured that if they enjoyed it enough to invest in an expansion then the least that I could do was give it a second chance.

Clank! is a deck-building dungeon crawl game in which the players try to steal as much treasure as possible and get out before they all get eaten by the monster. I employed a fast in-and-out strategy, that I was informed was unlikely to yield results, trying to grab a tiny bit of treasure and then bring on the end of the game before my opponents had a chance to escape with theirs. I feel like the strategy went pretty much as flawlessly as it possibly could have, despite a couple of near-misses, and yet two of my three opponents managed to get themselves out, both with more than twice my haul.

This probably encapsulates my feeling about the game. If going fast isn't a viable option, then the only workable strategy is to delve as deeply as possible and come back heavy laden and risk your chances against the draws from the bag of doom, and if everyone is doing essentially the same thing, then the difference between them just comes down to luck. That said, if you like that sort of thing Clank! is a pretty, well executed game, and this expansion is a cool variation on the theme, it's just that I guess it's just not my cup of tea.

All in all, Christmas 2019 wasn't such a bad little haul on new plays, including some games I definitely want to come back and revisit sometime. If you look at this to this handy graph from Friendless Stats, it looks like I tried only 9 games compared to 12 during our Christmas 2017 visit home, but last time actually included 5 games that I'd played in pre-history (I only began the somewhat obsessive recording of board game plays in 2016), compared to only 1 this time around, so they turn out about the same.

Hopefully, our next biennial trip back to Australia will see us playing just as many games with as many old friends. With any luck that trip will mark our moving back home for good, though, so we won't need to cram all our gaming into such a short frenetic period, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Leaflocker Cryptic 002

I'm a little rusty, but in the last couple of days I wrote a crossword. I am filled with admiration for people who somehow manage to pump one of these things out every day. Enjoy, and let me know how you get on.

This crossword is also available in AcrossLite and printable PDF.