16 April 2007

Powerless Day

medium_april2007stormbackyardpond.jpgElectrical power (and cable and landline phone) went out at 9:20 a.m. today in the middle of our Nor'easter, which was all heavy rain and high winds today after an inch of snow last night. The power just came back on at 8:15 p.m., almost 11 hours later.

 

 

In the meantime, I finished all the crossword puzzles I had printed over the last couple of weeks, read some Economist magazines (but not even close to being caught up on those), read all of the month of April in Anthony Frewin's The Book of Days: What To Celebrate Today (not as gala as it sounds -- lists saints' days, global national holidays, important historical events, and who was born and died on this day), snuggled with the dog, and was mighty glad for propane (and propane accessories) to heat the downstairs and to cook with -- mostly, to make tea with. Also for city water and sewer instead of our old well and septic with electric pump.

 

medium_april2007stormwaterfrontporch.jpgSpouse came home at 12:30 to ingeniously siphon water from the basement, and we grabbed pizza at a place on the other side of town that never lost power. We were playing a 5th or 6th round of Boggle by oil lamps when the furnace kicked on and the mechanical things resumed their familiar clicking.

 

  

 

medium_april2007stormflag.jpgI took some photos of the torrential rains and wind but couldn't capture how strong both were, especially because I didn't want to get the camera wet. I'm posting a few here. The first is the backyard pond, the second is water pooling on the front porch, and the third is a neighbour's spring-motif flag whipping in the wind.


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29 March 2007

Cryptic Crosswords

I work on solving cryptic crosswords most days, either from the NYT (in the archives) or from The Herald, and occasionally in The Atlantic (Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon are two of the best cryptic creators). Cryptics are crosswords in which every clue "must offer two routes to the solution word, including at least one straight definition" and in which the clues can contain no extraneous words (sometimes they do, though, and then we shake our little fists). 

 

The puzzles may seem ... puzzling ... and a bit over-challenging at first, especially the British ones with Brit references, spellings, and slang (don't start with those if you're not a Brit unless you are a masochist), but they're also really fun to figure out, and since the answer can be reached in at least two ways, intuition -- that flash of insight that bridges the two clues without the mind understanding why -- comes into play much more often than in a regular crossword; I sometimes know the right answer and have to work back to see how the clues lead to it -- and I always do work back because the mechanics of the clues is the art of the puzzle. Each clue is its own little word puzzle. It's also fun to make cryptics, once you're thoroughly familiar with the types of clues.

 

Which (quel segue!) brings us to the types of clues. Cryptic clues are not straightforward definitions like most crossword clues are.

 

 

TYPES OF CLUES 

 

The most common clue in many puzzles is the ANAGRAM, which is flagged with words that suggest change, disturbance,  confusion, reworking, frenzied movement, chaos or order. Wikipedia lists a boatload of these; some of the most common are poor, break, mix, dance, corrupt, change, transform, reform, remodel, monkey with, fool with, switch, convert, mutate, disturb, upset, doctor, messy, new, novel, odd, organize, questionable, strange, weird, and any word starting with re-. Example: Pleasant tumble in gale (6) = GENIAL. Genial means pleasant; in gale was "tumbled" to create genial.

 

The PURE CRYPTIC CLUE, also sparsely scattered in some regular crosswords, is one in which the clue, strictly speaking, hints at the answer but obliquely, requiring an out-of-the-box reading. The Wikipedia example is good: The flower of London? (6) is the clue. The answer is THAMES, a flow-er of London. Get it? :-)  Another example: The present time (9) = CHRISTMAS, which is a time for giving a present.

 

&LIT ("and literally") clues seem to me a sub-category of pure cryptics; these clues are not in two parts, as are all other cryptics, but consist of one phrase or statement that can be interpreted in two different ways.  You read the clue completely through once to get the wordplay and then again literally to get the straight definition. Example: It can get you routed a different way! (6) = DETOUR. A detour re-routes you, and DETOUR is an anagram of "routed," so it can get you "'routed' a different way." These are some of the easiest, most-accessible-to-intuition clues to solve.

 

CHARADE wordplay is part of many, perhaps most, clues. Here the solver joins the answers to two separate parts of the clue together to form the final answer. Example:  Nagging about small French particle (10) = REPETITION . To nag is to repeat; about = RE + "small" (in French) = PETIT + particle = ION.  Example: Feeling transported by a medical specialist = SENTIENT. Feeling is sentient; transported = SENT  + "a" = "i" (a, i and one are interchangeable in these puzzles) + medical specialist = ENT. Example: Round invalid like Humpty Dumpty = OVOID. This is the kind of answer you can guess without understanding how you got it. OVOID is "like Humpty Dumpty;" "Round" = O (similar to one = I) + "invalid" = VOID.

 

DOUBLE-DEFINITIONS are generally short sentences in which there are actually two clues, both of whose answers are the same word. Example: Boa to eat ravenously (5) = SCARF. A boa is a scarf, and to eat ravenously is to scarf. Example: Run up debts without interest (9) = INCURIOUS. Incurious means "without interest;" and to "incur IOUs" is to "run up debts." Note that you might spend some time on this last example thinking that it's a reversal because of indicator words "run up." Tricky!

 

CONTAINERS insert one clue answer inside another. Indicators of a container clue could be holds, boxes in, clutches, carries, embraces, has, squeezes, encompasses, inside, includes. (It's the little, common signal words like has that are so easy for the solver to overlook.) Example: Litigant eats very soft meal (6) = SUPPER. Meal is supper; Litigant = SUER, "eats" signifies a container clue, very soft = PP (in music), so PP is inserted into, or eaten by, SUER to give SUPPER. Example: Conclude about Brazilian resort: 'of second-rate quality.' (8) = INFERIOR. Inferior means "of second-rate quality." Conclude = INFER + ("about" indicates it's a container) Brazilian resort = RIO, so RIO is held within INFER, so INFE/RIO/R. This is a tricky clue because "conclude" could be a signal word for a deletion at the end of a word.

 

DELETIONS occur when the clue word or the clue answer starts out as a longer word, then parts of it -- could be the beginning, end, or internal parts -- are removed for the final solution. Most common is to have a final or initial letter(s) removed. Tip-offs in the clue might be words like beheaded, unfinished, without end, endless, headless, leaderless, beginning to, end of, without, drops, losing, disappears, heartless, lacks. Deletions can look more like additions, as in the Example: Gunmen ultimately miss owls (8) = SHOOTERS. Gunmen are shooters; "ultimately" is a signal word for a deletion of the end of a word, in this case "miss," whose "S" is cut off and added to + owls = HOOTERS, to make S/HOOTERS.

Deletion Subgenres: A special category of deletions might be diminutions or nicknames, which are indicated by 'little' as in Little Stanley = STAN. Another sub-category is initials, in which just the first letters of words in the clue are taken to create the answer. These are indicated usually by exactly that word, "initially," although similar words might be used. Example: Common people loved Arbuckle's zany antics ... initially (5) = PLAZA. The initials of People Loved Arbuckle's Zany Antics form "p-l-a-z-a"; a plaza is a 'common.'

 

 

REVERSALS, which require solving the clue and then reversing the word when entering it in the grid, are signaled by words like: comes back, returns, turns around, to the left, backwards, back, mirrored, rises up, arises, uprising, and up.   Example: Drive off colony member from the East (5) = REPEL. To "drive off" is to repel; a colony member might be a LEPER, and "from the East" indicates, for a horizontal clue, that it changes direction.  Example: (This is both a container and a reversal): Part of a hammer left in philosopher's knickers (4,5) = KNEEPANTS. Kneepants are knickers; Part of a hammer = PEEN, "left" in a horizontal clue means that it's reversed, so NEEP + ("in" means contained within) a philosopher's = KANTS, gives us K/NEEP/ANTS. 

 

HIDDEN WORDS are not as common as the solver would like; they're the easiest to solve because the answer is embedded in the clue, spread amongst one or more clue words, and can be found without knowing anything about the clue content. Indications of hidden words clues are: part of, inside, between, interior, at heart, and within. Sometimes hidden words are reversed. Example: (hidden word with a twist): Flipped part of computer-generated bird (5) = EGRET. An egret is a bird; "part of" indicates the hidden word, found in "computer-generated," though it's actually reversed ("flipped") and has to be read backwards.

 

HOMOPHONES are those in which both sections of the clue are answered by words that sound the same but are spelled differently. They are signaled by listening and phonetic words such as hear(d), listen, sounds, declared, attend to, heed, aloud. Example: (Charade and homophone)  Unexpected gentleman is nosy, we hear (8) = SURPRISE. Unexpected is surprise; "we hear" tips us off that this is a homophone. "Gentleman" = SIR + "is nosy" = PRIES. The homophone is SUR/PRISE. 


Some of the trickiest are clues involving ABBREVIATIONS. These can be baffling. Any proper name can become a single letter (Wilson might become W), as can any word that's capitalised in the clue, and certain other titles and words that one could find abbreviated in some instances  might also: king might become K or R, hospital, hot or hour might become H, pastor might become P, and so on. Other common abbreviations, as in life, are eg for for example, ie for that is, etc for and so on, c for about (circa).  Another oddity is that the word one in a clue might signal that part of the answer is "a," or it might as easily mean that part of the solution is "i" (where the alphabetical i stands in for the numerical 1).  Similarly, zero, nil, nothing, round, circle, and the like might denote an "O" in the answer. Some common abbreviations are listed here. Fortunately, since these kinds of clues yield only one or two letters, they're often not key to figuring out the clue's answer.

 

Others less-used clues include SPOONERISMS, almost always signified with the words Spooner or Rev. Spooner; ROMAN NUMBERALS (M, D, C, L, X, V, I) as part of the answer (the word Roman or Rome is usually part of the clue); and  PALINDROMES, signified by phrases like both ways, from both ends, backwards and forwards.

 

Often there is more than one type of wordplay in a single clue. A couple of complex clues that employ multiple or unusual wordplays:

 

Nag overweight president in Grand Rapids, at first (3,5) = GET AFTER. Obviously, to "get after" is to nag. Overweight president = TAFT, who is "in" (contained by) .... hmmm ... GEER? How do we come up with that? I think it's because a "Grand" is a "G" (Gee) + the first letter of Rapids is "R" (deletion/initial clue), which gives us GE/TAFT/E/R.

 

Michelangelo sculpture of two characters from Greece (5) = PIETA. This is sort of a charade, but it's unusual because the two answers that are joined together come from a single clue, not two. PI and ETA are Greek alaphabet characters, which joined together form the name of a famous sculpture by Michelangelo.

 

Underhanded prosecutor's appeal ultimately entered late (9) = DASTARDLY. This one has some of almost everything: container, abbreviation, deletion, and charade. Underhanded means dastardly; "Prosecutor's" = D.A.s + "appeal ultimately" means cut off and use only the last letter of "appeal," which is L + "entered late" = enter the "L" into a word meaning "late," which is TARDY. So: DAS + TARD/L/Y.

 

 

Here are some TIPS FOR SOLVING CRYPTICS:

 

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15 March 2007

Pop Maven Update

Love pop culture.

 

Here's what I'm grooving to lately:

 

  • Snow Patrol's Chasing Cars ... "Let's waste time Chasing cars Around our heads // I need your grace To remind me To find my own // If I lay here, If I just lay here, Would you lie with me and just forget the world?"  
  • Daniel Powter's Bad Day ... Just this: "Where is the passion when you need it the most ... "
  • The Gin Blossoms' Hey Jealousy: "The past is gone but something might be found, To take its place... If you don't expect too much from me, You might not be let down. Cause all I really want is to be with you." Also Allison Road. OK, and Found Out About You.
  • Rihanna's SOS  ... My kind of dance music. [video starts with brief ad]. And Will Smith's Switch.
  • Gnarls Barkley's Crazy ... "Ha ha ha, bless your soul, You really think you're in control!  Well, I think you're crazy... I think you're crazy... I think you're crazy...Just like me."
  • Pink's U + Ur Hand: "I'm not here for your entertainment, You don't really want to mess with me tonight."
  • The Killers' Mr Brightside: "I just can't look, it's killing me, And taking control ... Jealousy, turning saints into the sea."
  • The Perishers' Pills (with Sarah McLachlan): "One may think we're doing fine, But if I had to lay it on the line, We're losing ground with every passing day We're not ok. But that's one thing I would never, One thing I would never, that's one thing I would never say to you."

 

And watching on TV:

 

  • ESPN's Pardon the Interruption, a couple of nights per week. Love Mike, like Tony. But now that it's mostly basketball, I watch a lot less than during baseball and football seasons. Also catch Around the Horn from time to time.
 
  • NASCAR races on the weekends -- the season has begun! Wouldn't say I'm a NASCAR fan -- I don't know much or care much about the competitors -- bu I like to watch the cars go round and round.

  • Golf on the weekends
 
  • HGTV's House Hunters once or twice a week. Usually the re-run at 7:30.
 

 

Bad stuff that happens:
  • Tons -- maybe literally -- of perfectly good clothes are thrown out. Hopefully, they're actually given away, but because the clothes are stuffed and thrown into a metal trash can, I'm not confident that they are donating these clothes so others can reuse them.

  • Women who look perfectly fine are told they're lacking somehow because they're not wearing trendy clothes or clothes that are feminine enough. As a good friend taught me long ago, whatever a woman does is feminine, because she's female. Period. Pointy-toed shoes and flouncy skirts are optional.
 
  • No woman is told not to wear makeup; all are made up with cosmetics to some extent. For whose benefit is this?
 

The good stuff is that sometimes women learn how to dress their particular bodies, how to emphasise what they like, how to live with their bodies so that every trip to buy clothes doesn't end in tears and self-recrimination -- and that can be empowering.

 

The show featuring Seattle gal Rita Marshall (Mitchell?), 34, was an example of the good stuff and some of the bad. She looked perfectly fine before they transformed her; she was beautiful and somewhat androgynous in clothing, shoewear, hairstyle, and minimal makeup.( Her newlywed husband apparently nominated her because he was "eager to draw out her feminine side." Hello! She's a woman -- she's all feminine!) She didn't need a makeover, IMO, but she in the process of being made over, she seemed to learn a lot about how to fit clothes to her body, which increased her pleasure in finding clothes and in wearing them. And they didn't do anything too elaborate to her hair or face, nothing that required much everyday maintenance, whew. 

 

 

And watching on DVD:

 



Into online:

 


  • The Morning News headlines (3 times each weekday)
  • CNN Internatonal Edition
  • Cryptic Crosswords (premium NYT service)
  • Godblogs like open source theology, Velveteen Rabbi, Preaching Peace, Coming to the Quiet, scott... diagonally parked in a parallel universe, James Alison, Bending the Rule, Priestcraft, Experimental Theology, Young Anabaptist Radicals, Ekklesia blogs, Ktismatics. (All links available here under 'Faith')
  • whatever James Alison offers (in English, that is)

 

Reading

 

  • Books and articles: The usual crime novels, either the latest series titles or re-reads. James Alison. Re-reading Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby for bookgroup. Not much else offline. 
  • Magazines and newspapers: Only two offline: The Economist and Living Etc.  A Wall St. Journal when I can find one lying around the coffee shop.

 

 

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29 January 2007

RIP Barbaro, 29 April 2003 – 29 January 2007

medium_barbarocover.jpg"Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro was euthanized Monday after complications from his breakdown at the Preakness last May. 'We just reached a point where it was going to be difficult for him to go on without pain,' co-owner Roy Jackson said."

 

More at USA Today.  Eventually, Univ. of Penn's website will be back up with more details. Also at Philly.com, the AP, the Baltimore Sun.


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15 January 2007

Ah, the rivalry of sports

Anyone else see the Chargers-Patriots postgame interview yesterday, when the NFL's MVP, running back LaDainian Tomlinson (aka LT), spoke? His Chargers has just lost a hard-fought battle to the New England Patriots, with the Chargers looking like the better team for most of the game, and then some of the Pats players mocked and taunted the losers in a dismaying display of gloating. (Some of the postgame on-field action and some of LT's postgame interview is on YouTube for the moment.)

 

With stunning mimetic rhetoric in which he distanced himself from such behaviour, LT commented on his opponents' mimetic action, then blamed their action on their imitation of their coach, for an amazing Girardian trifecta.

 

First, the Patriots, when they had won, egregiously mocked their opponents, the Chargers, by doing a version of Chargers linebacker Shawne Merriman's routine little dance on the field, the one he does whenever he gets a sack. That bit of imitation, along with other taunts and nose-rubbing by the Patriots, inflamed LT and led to his striking out briefly at moving towards one of the Pats players before being held back, then walking off the field highly offended (scandalised). Then LT got on the news and said he would "never, ever" do something like that, because he has class.  [That's a tip-off that something unconsciously mimetic is in the works, that automatic defense we often have of 'I would never do that!']. Then LT went on to accuse the Patriots of having no class, explaining their lack of class by their imitation of their head coach, Bill Belichick, in effect accusing Belichick of having no class. (He didn't mention Belichick's shoving of the camera man on the field last week, but that's at least one -- and the most recent -- underlying reference.)

 

Now the media is trying to figure out who to accuse, blaming LT for going too far in his reaction, blaming the coaches, and blaming the Pats players for inciting him with their gloating. Many of the columns are quite catty and hyperbolic, which mght indicate that the Pats' and LT's rivalrous reactions aren't theirs alone. Similarly, the comments of sports fan on blogs (and here), which even include pointing fingers at Merriman, who wasn't centrally involved in the incident but who is a convenient scapegoat due to his steroid suspension in the Fall.

 

To complete the circle, LT, while claiming higher ground, was in fact unconsciously imitating those he sees as having "no class," as he cast aspersions at others with that virtuous feeling that comes from feeling disrespected, scandalised, offended, and victimised. 

 

And to really complete the circle, I was sitting on the sofa in amazement, thinking, "Whoa-ho-ho, LT -- Listen to what you're saying!" making me feel all one-up on him!

 

Ah, sports! We're all winners!

 

Update: LT said more about this at a press conference today. 

 

Update: Anti-Patriots backlash? 

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