Current mood:	chipper
Entry tags:	logorrhea, puzzles

Puzzle Past and Future (&c)
Happy 2009!  Mine's been pretty good, I hope the same can be said for youse guys.  Already I've had more alcohol-induced making-out than all of last year!  As one might imagine, that had something to do with New Year's Eve itself, but hey, I'll take what I can get.

I've been getting back into lifting weights, having skipped essentially all of 2008 with some sort of shoulder issue.  What's the issue?  Dunno.  Did it prevent me from playing softball?  Not really.  Has it affected my lifting?  I've avoided all shoulder activity, and focused on some chest-specific stuff, biceps/triceps, back, and legs.  And belly, of course.  Getting back to that "legs" business...wow, I guess the hamstrings don't like being put to significant use after having it easy for 13 months.  I was hobbling for the three days after I did one lousy hamstring routine.  I'm hoping the worst is behind me.

I'm set to get the shoulder looked at by medical professionals sometime in the next couple of weeks.  I'm certain there's something wrong with me, but it may just be that I'm a hypochondriac.  Among many, many other things, of course.

The OAPC came and went -- mostly joyfully, certainly when compared to the Forsmarts 6th Anniversary thingy from last month.  I never ever got it rolling on that one, and on this one...I really felt like I was doing that much better.  I completed 31 of the 40 "regular" puzzles -- didn't attempt the Tanks or Laser, and only got the first three Tetroscopes.  The optimizer thing...nothing doing.  I'll second the thoughts of motris who likes optimizers with attainable "theoretical" maxima.  I think another way of achieving this would be...just to tell people "Best possible score is X" and leaving it at that -- or to consistently make puzzles that attain the top score.  I mean, right?

One thing of note from the OAPC was -- I would make runs at complete solutions for puzzles much earlier than I normally do.  That is to say, instead of trying to find the next logical step, I'd...have a go at, say, putting all the tetrominoes down or trying to get that snake to the finish line via a series of full-length attempts.  I understand this is part of my huge weakness when it comes to Nikoli Number Link (on which I suck hard...to clarify: even though it always seems to work out that way, you do NOT have to draw a line through all the empty squares, right?) -- that I'm too busy trying to be perfect instead of just taking a stab at it.  I don't think this counts as turning over some sort of new leaf or anything, but I was pleased to get through some puzzles pretty quickly through intuition, and may attempt to do so in the future.

Speaking of attainable top scores...I really really really coulda sworn that a Scrabblegram from late December had something of a screwup.  An answer of "WEASEL" with a "2nd Letter Triple" comes up worth less than "AWES".  I may have gotten the tripled-letter wrong (everyone had disposed of their newspapers with the recycling by the time the answers came around), but it clearly wasn't the 1st, and the 3rd would still see SAW come up worth more.  Maybe it was 4th/5th/6th and I just misread it.  I sniffed around on the web for others with the same issue and...came across Eric Berlin's funny note about the infamous "SUBTEXT" Bingo.  Wow, Bingo indeed!

The other puzzling of note lately involved the Nikoli Kakuro Puzzle Championship of this past Friday.  I could tell things weren't going well (enough) rather early, and I didn't really feel like I got much into a groove the whole way.  I mean, for pete's sake, it took about a minute just to get my first digit down!  It turns out the puzzle was extremely difficult, and the 24:50 I got was actually good for 2nd.  Which is still worthless (especially after losing to the winner by a ridiculous 4:41), but at least doesn't crush the spirit quite like...I dunno, losing to a bunch of people by that much?

I took on the recent Hard Kakuro tonight and -- not only did I beat H.Jo by about 2.5 minutes (he appears to have made a screwup -- his number of steps was far above the number of squares), but I even beat the guy who appears to do the puzzles by hand before actually registering his first "attempt".  We'll take it.  It's still not as good as actually beating H.Jo at one of the Kakuro Championships (which didn't even happen last July for that matter), but it's better than nothing.

Up next is a huge Masyu, at which I somehow got 4th the last time one of those Championships came along, and...heck, what else am I gonna be doing at 6am on a Friday, eh?

Hmm...also up next is the matter of this Mystery Hunt thing-a-majig.  I'll be remote hunting for the second time in three years for the Metaphysical Plant team, who appear to be pretty good.  I'm sure it's all a moot point for this particular year (if the Beginner's Luck murmurs I hear are any indication), but I still anticipate having a pretty darn good time.  I have a feeling that this year's Hunt is going to be to the Hunt what the Beijing opening ceremonies are to Olympics opening ceremonies.  I'll leave it to youse guys to figure out what I mean by that...

As evidenced by about eight straight cryptic status updates on Facebook -- I've still got the New Pornographers on the brain.  I even popped Twin Cinema into the car CD player tonight...despite having listened to it about a week ago, having them currently in random on the WinAMP, and having them on the current list on the ipod.

Anyhow -- tonight at trivia I was schmoozing with the table near ours with two likeable gals (and no discernable male presence).  We made some sort of plans to play together next Sunday (I'll believe it when I see it), but my attempt at getting the phone number of the more talkative of the two was...blunted, if not outright rejected.  All of which is to say: right now if I want the Jessica numbers, I'll have to listen to the NPs.

(If anyone can figure out why every listing of that song in concert on YT lasts 40 seconds or less, let me know.)

More posts to come -- but not tonight.  Also, go Cardinals!