What's two down and four across?
Maribeth wrote a Christmas crossword for all to enjoy. Copies of this were supposed to go out in Christmas cards, but they mostly didn't, because I am lame.
Right click and save
the puzzle, then open it with the
Across Lite crossword program.
Paper copies available on request.
We built the Wall, we built the pyramids
I've been doing a lot of crosswords lately, ever since we saw the documentary
Wordplay on DVD. Subtitles often annoy me, but with special irony for a movie all about words and spelling, there were an especially large number of mistakes in the subtitles on this DVD. Of the many, the one I remember is Will Shortz talking about all the mail he receives from "sobbers" (i.e. solvers).
Maribeth reminds me that that they were talking about words that have the letter
Q without the letter
U, for example the country
QATAR, and the subtitles said "quitar," oblivious to the point of the conversation.
Also, Bob Dole is identified in the subtitles as "Man." No wonder he didn't win the White House, if someone subtitling a documentary on crosswords doesn't even know who he is. Although I believe he did a Visa commercial with a similar premise.
Yesterday's New York Times puzzle asked for "Actress Jessica"
ALBA. Coincidentally we sat next to
Jessica Alba when we went to the Omelette Parlor with
Daniel on Saturday. Omelette Parlor now has a Monte Cristo sandwich; I tried it; it wasn't good enough to have again. It's hard to find a good Monte Cristo sandwich.
"Jeopardy whiz" and blog linkee
KEN Jennings was in the New York Times crossword puzzle on Monday before last.
Recent reading:
The Sea Wolf by Jack London. I had not read anything by Jack London before, nor did I know that Jack London was gay, but
The Sea Wolf has a gaydar cross-section of 100 dBsm. Fighter jets could potentially dispense canisters of
Sea Wolf paperbacks to jam enemy gaydars. Just saying.
Also:
The Great God Pan by Arthur Menchen. Premise: Scientific experiments create woman who is part offspring of Pan, the unmentionable horribleness lurking underneath normal reality; hordes of Victorian gentlemen kill themselves one after another as result of associating with her. Mostly pretty terrible. Funny, in that most of the horrible queerness that outrages the conscience seems to consist of respectable people being seen in seedy London neighborhoods. The satanic experiences that might drive one to take one's own life otherwise aren't articulated. People have a mark of startling evil stamped on their visages and that kind of thing. Interesting ripped-from-the-day's-headlines references to the Whitechapel murders, and to wireless telegraphy.
Long ago somebody left with the cup
As most people have heard by now, we were unsuccessful in this year's DARPA race. We got cut on the last day of qualification trials. Here are
some videos of our performance including a crash that burst one of the front tires.
DARPA didn't cut us just for the crash. It was more complicated than that. The crash probably didn't help.
I don't feel like talking about it
too much, but I do have to relive it all in order to put together a final report on it this month. It appears that DARPA will pay us $250,000 on receipt of said final report, which is better than a kick in the teeth.
Mondegreen of the Day: I was going to title this post "Keep your dream, just give me the money," but it turns out I was mishearing the song. The real lyric is "Keep your drink, just give me the money!" Not the same thing at all.
