For those who are just tuning in, this is the sixth of a series of posts occuring once every two weeks. In these posts, I show how long it takes for me to do a Sudoku puzzle with the additional restriction of having to fill in the numbers in top-to-bottom, left-to-right order. Hence the name TBLR Sudoku.

Here are the times for the last two weeks, shown with the difference between the time and my personal best for that level of difficulty.

3/11/10 – 4-Star Sudoku in the Star-Tribune, top-to-bottom, left-to-right, 45:58, 17:06 slower than my personal best (PB+17:06)
3/10/10 – 3-Star, 30:23, 1:23 improvement over previous PB, 1/20/10
3/09/10 – 2-Star, 33:29, PB+13:05
3/08/10 – 1-Star, Fail. Again, not really sure what that was about.
3/07/10 – Didn’t do the puzzle
3/06/10 – Didn’t do the puzzle
3/05/10 – 5-Star, 40:22, PB+2:43
3/04/10 – 4-Star, 46:16, PB+17:24
3/03/10 – 3-Star, 46:09, PB+14:24
3/02/10 – 2-Star, 27:13, PB+8:49
3/01/10 – 1-Star, 28:06, PB+9:53
2/28/10 – Didn’t do the puzzle
2/27/10 – Didn’t do the puzzle
2/26/10 – 5-Star, 35:13, 2:26 improvement over previous PB, 2/12/10

Here are the updated personal bests:

1-Star: 18:13, 11/23/09
2-Star: 20:24, 1/12/10
3-Star: 30:23, 3/10/10
4-Star: 28:52, 2/18/10
5-Star: 35:13, 2/26/10
6-Star: 45:09, 2/13/10

Technorati: Sudoku

Whatever is real cannot be threatened;
Whatever is not both mobile and social does not exist.

By “mobile,” I mean “able to be both accessed and interacted with, by means of an app on a mobile device like an iPhone, Droid, etc.” An instance of this is the Powerline Mobile App, mentioned in February 2010.

John Hinderaker writes:

We’ve designed mobile applications that allow you to access Power Line directly on your iPhone or Blackberry, specially formatted for the small screen. Now you can read PL posts wherever you go. Our mobile app includes, along with our own posts, a breaking news feed from Breitbart.com, so, wherever you might be, you can always stay up to date on the latest news.

I’m here to tell you that the next blogging platform will have a mobile-app-constructor, where you will decide what kinds of things should be included in your blog’s mobile app (news feeds, cool blog feeds, social media feeds, etc.). Like the Powerline app, the blog mobile app of the future will be available on multiple platforms (iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Windows Mobile). If you don’t like this, or find it too complicated, you had better get used to having a relatively small influence in the world.

By “social,” I mean “leveraging social media to sell one’s products, make the case for one’s ideas, or advocate for one’s causes”

By “leveraging,” I mean “Skillfully taking advantage of existing networks of relationships and communities.”

By “social media,” I mean “any platform that allows people to quickly build relationships based on common interests.” There are quite a few social media platforms out there, but a “Big Four” seems to have emerged (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and YouTube), and anyone who is not using all of these sites is leaving influence on the table.

After some rummaging around, I have discovered that the Minnesota Organization of Blogs (MOB) prefers Twitter as a social media platform. I’m not particularly shocked by this. Twitter fits the MOB demographic. I found all of 3 MOB members of Facebook. When I was doing the rummaging, I was only looking for Twitter accounts, but on further, review, I should have looked at all of the Big Four. If you want to be influential, you have to get over your social media preferences.

Here is the MOB on Twitter, as of March 2010.

@echozoe – έχω ζωη
@toni100 – Bear Creek Ledger
@mrclm – Because I Said So
@bradley0569 – Brad Carlson
@Anokaflash – Centrisity
@conradzero – Conrad Zero
@douglasbass – Crossword Bebop
@PainterPancakes – Faithmouse
@ChadTheElder – Fraters Libertas
@bspward – Brian “Saint Paul” Ward, Fraters Libertas
@Atomizer77 – Atomizer, Fraters Libertas
@Sisyphus_in_GP – Sisyphus, Fraters Libertas (also at Nihilist In Golf Pants)
@Nihilist_in_GP – Nihilist, Fraters Libertas (also at Nihilist In Golf Pants)
@DerekBrigham – Freedom Dogs
@FreschFisch – Fresch Fisch
@GOPMommy – GOP Mommy
@EdMorrissey – Hot Air
@LadyLogician – Ladies Logic
@marketpowerblog – Market Power
@martyandrade – Marty Andrade
@MplsCrime – Minneapolis Crime Watch
@mbrodkorb – Minnesota Democrats Exposed
@Nihilist_in_GP – Nihilist In Golf Pants, (also at Fraters Libertas)
@LearnedFoot – Learned Foot, Nihilist In Golf Pants
@Sisyphus_in_GP – Sisyphus, Nihilist In Golf Pants (also at Fraters Libertas)
@DavidStrom – David Strom, Our House
@mmarteen – Margaret Martin, Our House
@plar – Peace Like A River
@dirtymushroom – Rambling Rhodes
@AAARF – Residual Forces
@scsuscholars – King Banaian, SCSU Scholars
@mitchpberg – Shot In The Dark
@LookTrueNorth – True North
@truthvmachine – Truth v. The Machine
@davegj – Uncommon Sense

Where was I? Oh, yes. By “does not exist,” I mean “has no discernable cultural influence.” You may not like this future, but I’m afraid it doesn’t care. It’s something any blogger worthy of the name will want to at least contemplate.

I hereby declare that as Minnesota’s conservative media federation, the MOB is behind the curve regarding social media. I’m looking forward to having a few chats with some MOB members about this at the MOB Party on March 13.

Technorati: Minnesota Organization of Blogs, social media, Twitter

The Poetry Slam in St. Paul, and the Poet’s Groove in Minneapolis, serve two different tribes. The Poetry Slam is an actual competition, with a winner at the end. The 3-minute upper bound is strictly enforced, with poets losing points for running over (more about that in a moment). No props, no costumes, no music, just you, the mic, and the audience. The audience is divided up into 5 judges, and everyone else. The judges score the poems from 0 to 10.0, and are explicitly instructed to pay no heed to the rest of the audience. The rest of the audience is explicitly instructed to do everything in their power to influence the judges. I was sitting quite close to one of the judges, and I thought that the judges were thinking about how a particular poem was playing in the room, as well as how it was playing with them personally. The top and bottom scores are eliminated, and the sum of the remaining three scores is the score for the performance. Therefore, 30 is the score to which every poet aspires, but very few attain.

I was nervous that there were just going to be a few people there, but there were about 40 people shoehorned into the Artist’s Quarter on Monday, February 1. The gentleman running the Slam is Matthew Rucker, who I know for his paintings. My children have seen his paintings at two different art shows. This picture is from the 2007 Fall Art Crawl…

The poets who wished to compete put there names in a hat. The custom is to start with twelve, cut down to six on the basis of score, then three, then one. I was not one of the twelve names drawn. I want to think that Matthew remembered the happy conversations he had with my children. He said “I’m going to add two more names to the list.” I was one of the extra two names drawn.

The spoken-word blog Minnesota Microphone has a very nice after-action report of the February Slam by Cole Sarar with pictures of the performers, and videos of the finalists. I took notes of the poems in the first round, and I think looking at my comments side-by-side with Cole’s might give a good picture of the proceedings.

Sam Cook was the emcee for the proceedings, having won the January slam. It is the custom for the winner of the last slam to be the host of the next slam. It’s part of the job of the host to make sure that the scores are recorded for the purpose of determining who advances to the next round.

Sam instructed the judges to refer to Homeless Ryan K as the “calibration poet.” They were to give him whatever score they thought best. If someone did better, they were to give her a higher score. If someone did worse, they were to give him a lower score. I didn’t mark down the scores, but I seem to recall Homeless Ryan K’s scores in the 7’s and 8’s.

Em was the first poet. All I wrote down for her in my notes was that she had a score of 23.3. It should also be noted that I was the third poet to speak, chosen by random selection. I also think I was just getting the idea that this is a great place to go for poetic inspiration, great lines to steal, etc. Em did not advance to the second round. One thing that Sam Cook did after every performance that I really appreciated, was to get people’s minds off the score by yelling “Come on people, **** the score, applaud the poet!”

Shane Hawley rocked the audience with the poem which should be titled “I wanna love you like that!” I’m standing on the ramp behind the stage, waiting to go on, and I’m laughing my head off at Shane’s poem, with it’s running tag line, “I wanna love you like that!” There was a little train of thought in my head saying “Oh, dear, he’s knockin’ em dead, and I have to go on after that! I have to poke through the charred remains of a burned down stage and explain to the Fire Marshal that it was all Shane’s fault! Great! Just great!” Shane not only advanced to the second round, but won the whole shabang, and is thus the host for the March slam on March 1. Later on I would say to Shane, “Is it all right if I blame my crummy score on you?”

I did “America Is Thinking To Itself Today.” My original plan was to recite Love-Dogs by Rumi, but the rules stated it had to be one’s own composition. I added a few lines both to make some implied references more explicit, and to fill up three minutes. I might have been a little fuzzy on the delivery because of that. The lowest score was 5.something, and the highest score was 7.6. The total score was 20.3. On the one hand, this turned out to be an inadequate score to advance to the second round. On the other hand, since 0 was the minimum and 30 was the maximum, being given a score of two-thirds of the maximum was a very nice score indeed for the first time of doing this sort of thing.

Michael Lee had a poem with a running line I loved: “My gloves feel guilty at the sight of your naked hands.” For reasons I don’t really understand, running lines seem to work in slam poetry. The listeners’ minds take comfort in a certain amount of rhythm, of familiarity.

Nilsea had a poem with the opening line “I am the Bone Queen” I wrote “She scares me,” but at some other time I might enjoy that poem more. She was one of two poets who used a music stand for their poetry. Neither poet who used a music stand advanced to the second round. I consider it pointless to wonder whether one is going to advance or not. But on the other hand, if one is going to attend a slam, one should have three poems prepared, in the event that one advances to the second or third round.

Chadword had a poem about the last time he competed in a slam. I loved the line: “I’m a nervous guy, but being nervous reminds me I’m alive.” Chadword didn’t advance to the second round. He was encouraging to me after the first round.

“The Derbs” from Mankato was waxing lyrical about anesthetizing himself from the pain of a separated existence. I loved the final line “I’m a child of the 90’s. What do I care?” I’m certain some people in the room thought “What’s up with wearing shorts in February in Minnesota?!?” I believe he was the only poet to be penalized for going over the time limit. But even with the penalty, The Derbs advanced to the second round.

Neil Hilborn was thinking of the animals rising up and slaying their human oppressors. I recall a little vocoded bit from “Animals” by Pink Floyd as I recall his poem.

When cometh the day we lowly ones,
Through quiet reflection, and great dedication
Master the art of Judo,
Lo, we shall rise up,
And then we’ll make the bugger’s eyes water.

Bleating and babbling we fell on his neck with a scream.
Wave upon wave of demented avengers
March cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream.

The line from Neil that I remembered the most is “We’ll take Alabama, because no one will notice!” Neil did not advance to the second round. I don’t get it. The audience loved him more than the judges.

Cole: The tone took an abrupt turn when Jason Raymon struck up an erotic tone with his piece “Aftermath”, a quiet poem read with a soft a.m. radio voice that would undoubtedly fare better at an erotic slam.

Jason Raymon was the other poet who used a music stand. What he was providing just wasn’t what the room was here for. I wrote down “ZZZZZ” as he was performing, and I feel horribly guilty for doing so. Jason didn’t advance to the second round.

Dylan brought back a familiar poem from last season, garnering a communal groan of happiness from the audience at the suggestion of the “sound of a redwood slamming shut”. He has found a comfortability in the poem that emanates in his performance.

Dylan had a poem with an opening line I loved: “God, we don’t know how to comfort You.” Dylan advanced to the second round.

I grasped from Dave Beck’s performance that emotional breakthroughs are a no-no for slam. I grasp stand-up is a little bit more interactive than slam poetry. Dave gave a lot of appreciation for the poets, but he didn’t advance to the second round.

Xena had a poem about the strength and magnanimity of her mother, and the potential downsides. I told Xena after the first round that a martyrdom intervention was a tricky business. She might have thought I was being a smart-aleck. I hope not. Xena did not advance to the second round.

Alice had a poem about searching for a cure for death, among other things. As I heard Alice’s voice, sweetness and thoughts of ways to serve others came into my body. Thoughts that maybe I should try really hard to be less of a jerk. What was her poem about, again? She mentioned mayflies in her poem, and she appreciated it when I told her about Richard Wilbur’s poem about mayflies. Alice advanced to the second round.

The room found Rob Weekend’s poem about losing his virginity to be hilarious, as sex kept squirting out the logical categories Rob, and all the people in his world, kept trying to put it in. Rob advanced to the second round.

I probably should have paid more attention to Jenn Sparks’s poem about the life and times of a queen bee, but my mind was buzzing with lines and poems and poets and buzzes and flows. Jenn advanced to the second round.

I left after the first round because I didn’t make the cut, and I was also catching the 74 Bus from downtown St. Paul to my Highland Park neighborhood. But there was a short break in which I could chit-chat with the other poets, express appreciations for lines I was going to steal I liked, etc. Cole goes on to cover the second and third rounds in her post. The slam was videoed, and I believe the video will be shown on the St. Paul Neighborhood Network. I say that because the January slam was aired seven times during the month of February on Channel 15.

Technorati: Cole Sarar, Matthew Rucker, Poetry, Poetry Slam

For those who are just tuning in, this is the fifth of a series of posts occuring once every two weeks. In these posts, I show how long it takes for me to do a Sudoku puzzle with the additional restriction of having to fill in the numbers in top-to-bottom, left-to-right order. Hence the name TBLR Sudoku.

2/25/10 – 4-Star Sudoku in the Star-Tribune, top-to-bottom, left-to-right, 52:37
2/24/10 – 3-Star, 34:17, Personal Best +2:31
2/23/10 – 2-Star, Fail. Not really sure what that was about.
2/22/10 – 1-Star, 25:06, PB +6:53
2/21/10 – Didn’t do the puzzle
2/20/10 – Didn’t do the puzzle
2/19/10 – 5-Star, 40:02, PB +0:04
2/18/10 – 4-Star, 28:52, 5:05 improvement on previous PB
2/17/10 – 3-Star, 44:13, PB +11:27
2/16/10 – 2-Star, 37:31, PB +17:07
2/15/10 – 1-Star, 25:46, PB +7:33
2/14/10 – 5-Star, Fail
2/13/10 – 6-Star, 45:09, 8:29 improvement on previous PB
2/12/10 – 5-Star, 37:39, 2:19 improvement on previous PB

Here are the updated personal bests:

1-Star: 18:13, 11/23/09
2-Star: 20:24, 1/12/10
3-Star: 31:46, 1/20/10
4-Star: 28:52, 2/18/10
5-Star: 37:39, 2/12/10
6-Star: 45:09, 2/13/10

I do these puzzles to build up my skill for contemplating the puzzle of my existence.

Technorati: Sudoku

This is my first time to attend an event at the Minnesota Humanities Center. The $5 admission price was quite reasonable. The event was held in a large room filled with chairs and couches. I had a comfy chair, a cup of coffee, and a cookie. I was ready to go. All I was missing was a laptop and some wi-fi.

A lady gave a brief chat about how the purpose of the Minnesota Humanities Center was to develop a thoughtful, literate engaged society. There was a little bit of introduction of Heid E. Erdrich, talking about her work in preserving the Ojibwe language, her work with educators in using Native American literature authentically, and her association with Birchbark Books (run by her sister, Louise Erdrich, an award-winning author in her own right).

Heid E. Erdrich started out her talk with some plugs for other books. I appreciate that she handed out a book list before the talk, and then made comments on the books on the list. I had heard of Sherman Alexie, and I had heard of The Repatriation Reader, but only because Erdrich had mentioned them in the notes to National Monuments. But I had never heard of any of the other books or authors before.

Erdrich read poems from National Monuments, then brought up various websites from a nearby computer (Kennewick Man, NAGPRA, etc.)

Some time ago, I wrote that Langston Hughes wrote “I, Too, Sing America” as a snappy comeback to Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing.” On further review, I grasp that part of a poet’s job description is to write snappy comebacks to other poems. I learned that “The Theft Outright” by Heid E. Erdrich is a snappy comeback to “The Gift Outright,” recited by Robert Frost at President Kennedy’s Inaugural.

The evening actually didn’t last that long. She started slightly after 7:00 and finished around 8:15, so there was plenty of time for shmoozing afterward, and checking out the book table.

During the talk, my mind wanted to know more about the Ojibwe. I’ve seen the name spelled Chippewa, Ojibway, Ojibwa, Ojibwe and Ojbwe. The Ojibwe call themselves Anishinabe in their own language, which means ‘original person.’

A young lady behind the booktable told me that the Ojibwe once lived in what is now Quebec. They had a prophecy that they should move west until they found food that grew on the water. That food they found was wild rice in Minnesota. I can just imagine the Dakotas saying “Oh, you had a prophecy! Well sure, just come and take our land. Not!”

But because of this westward migration, there is now an Ojibwe diaspora, with bands as far west as Montana, as far east as Quebec, and as far north as southern Canada.

Heid E. Erdrich is a member of the Turtle Mountain Band. The young lady behind the book table is a member of the Red Lake Band. I felt like the racist of the world when I asked her if she was an Ojibwe.

Heid mentioned that there were somewhere between 70,000 and 100,000 Ojibwe speakers. Ojibwe was pictographic for a long time. A system for using the English alphabet for writing the Ojibwe language was developed in the 1950’s, and I believe it is being used in the blurb by Margaret Noori on the back of National Monuments:

Heid Erdrich bkaan wii zoongimshkwendamoan kchitwaa kinoschiganan. Aki gda’noondawaanaan ginaajwanan mazanaaikidowinong miidash gaashkozyang.

Some people might think that the preservation of the Ojibwe language isn’t the best use of people’s time and energy, but the heart language of people is a big deal. Anything in nature will reveal its secrets to you if you love it enough, and the Ojibwe language has secrets that are yet to be revealed to the world.

As I thought about the Ojibwe, I recalled the book Bruchko by Bruce Olson, missionary to the Motilone of Columbia. There was a part of the book where the Motilone believed Jesus was one of them. I wonder what the Ojibwe think of Jesus. Heid read the poem “Mahto Pata, Bear Butte” about Christian motorcyclists who want to build a church in a spot sacred to a number of tribes, so I think she thinks Christians are colonizers and desecrators.

I am generally against the idea of hyphenated Americans. I do not refer to myself as a Scottish-American, for example. I believe it goes against the American ideal of “E pluribus unum” The Ojibwe challenge that view for me. One the one hand, I think they might be better off if they became full-blast Americans, and dropped any special status. But that doesn’t seem quite right. On the other hand, things staying as they are doesn’t seem quite right either.

Even with all of the awkward moments and unasked questions, it was still a rewarding evening for me.

Technorati: Heid E. Erdrich, National Monuments, Poetry

Twin Cities spoken-word high priestess Desdamona has been mentioned in this space before, but I never heard any of her poems until about three weeks ago at the Poet’s Groove. This can be found on her latest release, Inkling

I’m sharing this particular poem with you because this is Desdemona telling her story.

Sometimes I rhyme slow
Sometimes I rhyme quick
You thought I was nice and smooth
But I’m really just slick Rick I
Tick and tock with my biological clock
And I crawl when I can’t walk.
I’ve seen joy and pain, and realized
That there’s always sunshine after the rain
I’ve got it made
Got everything from cotton to suede
Seen the ledge from the edge
Wanted to be a leader of the new school
But ended up in special ed
They told me I was too short and too Vanilla Ice
Said I shouldn’t rock the mic because I wasn’t too hype
They called me MC Lyte
(And it wasn’t because I was skinny)
See I thought P.E. stood for physical education
I called in a request, and they said I had the wrong station
I drifted from the Pharcyde until I saw the De La of my soul
But the beat kept passin’ me by, so I decided to let it go
I found the honeycomb and that’s where I met A Tribe Called Quest
But the Killa Bees chased me out of the nest
See, I just wanted to be part of the Goodie Mob
But they told me I was just an Outkast, and that I would never, ever last
So I went down to the Lords of the Underground
But they told me not to bust a rhyme, they said
“Common sense will tell you that it’s just not the right time”
I went from Biggie to Smalls to find lyrics that fit
And then they asked me if I was ready to be a true fooshnit
They showed me the M.E.T.H.O.D. and the treacherous techniques
They blessed me with the rhythm, but I still couldn’t find a beat
They scribed heiroglyphics and traced it back to the roots
I saw the show, and then I got juiced
I met this cat named Eric B. and I asked him to listen
But he told me I didn’t rock him, and he started dissin’
I put the needle on the record, and thought the sound was Mos Def
Went to the store with 50 Cent and bought some Eminems
I passed out on the way back to my house
My mom found me on the sidewalk with water she doused
She said “Are you concious, daughter? Or should I call Dr. Dre?”
And I said “No no, it’s ok, I just need a tall glass of LL Cool J”
That night, I dreamt of black stars and jazzy Digable Planets and it made me feel high
Then I saw little red men floating in the sky
The Beastie Boys who lived next door woke me up, the little creeps, and they said,
“If you’re gonna be an MC, don’t sleep”
I thought these Souls of Mischief have got to be alcoholics
Because they took my bottle of Brass Monkey and then they stole my wallet
That’s when I realized that this hip-hop thing just wasn’t for me
So from then on I called on my rhymed poetry

And the rest, as they say. I give you R.hythm A.nd P.oetry by Desdamona

Click here

Technorati: Desdamona, Inkling, R.hythm A.nd P.oetry

For those who are just tuning in, this is one of a series of posts where I show how long it takes for me to do a Sudoku puzzle with the additional restriction of having to fill in the numbers in top-to-bottom, left-to-right order. Hence the name TBLR Sudoku.

Here are the times from the past two weeks.

2/11/10 – 4-Star Sudoku in the Star-Tribune, done filling in the numbers top-to-bottom, left-to-right, in 46:06, nowhere near my personal best, but any completion is good.
2/10/10 – 3-Star, Fail. I got some numbers switched around in my mind.
2/09/10 – 2-Star, 35:29
2/08/10 – 1-Star, 26:07
2/07/10 – Didn’t do the puzzle, was preoccupied with the Super Bowl
2/06/10 – 6-Star, completed the puzzle but didn’t time it. It just didn’t seem right to tell a hungry child “Can’t you see I’m working on this puzzle, and timing it?”
2/05/10 – 5-Star, Fail. It had something to do with getting alternative possibilities mixed up in my head.
2/04/10 – 4-Star, Fail. My previous fail before this one was on January 15, so I had a nice run of puzzle success.
2/03/10 – 3-Star, 1:09:20. At many times the opportunity to just make a choice and see if it works presented itself, but I resisted temptation.
2/02/10 – 2-Star, 29:57
2/01/10 – Didn’t do the puzzle, not really sure why. I believe I did it, but somehow didn’t record my time.
1/31/10 – 5-Star, 57:21
1/30/10 – 6-Star, 1:05:00
1/29/10 – 5-Star, 51:50

There were no new personal bests this week, so the personal bests are unchanged from the last post.

1-Star: 18:13, 11/23/09
2-Star: 20:24, 1/12/10
3-Star: 31:46, 1/20/10
4-Star: 33:37, 1/28/10
5-Star: 39:58, 12/11/09
6-Star: 53:38, 1/23/10

I’m hoping that someone will read these posts, and realize that I’m occasionally capable of a certain degree of concentration.

Technorati: Sudoku

One could think of the MOB as the bench of the Northern Alliance. One could think of the MOB as Minnesota’s conservative media federation. Crossword Bebop is a proud member in good standing of the MOB.

The MOB isn’t merely a Twin Cities organization, as there are a number of members in the St. Cloud area (SCSU Scholars, Psycmeistr’s Ice Palace, and View From The Cloud). There are also some expats such as Bear Creek Ledger (Tennessee) and Ladies Logic (Utah) who moved from Minnesota after joining the MOB.

The MOB has made Keegan’s Irish Pub in Minneapolis its hangout of preference, having once biannual (twice a year), but now only occasional parties there. The last one was in March 2009, chronicled here.

If you look at the top, there is now a page called “MOB.” That page contains the roster of the MOB, and a search engine for searching the blogs of the MOB.

If you want to find out more about the MOB, I suggest you visit Mitch Berg’s excellent blog Shot In The Dark. Mitch is writing a series of blog profiles of the members of the MOB. He will always have a happy place in my heart for his kind words about the Cypriot Syllabary Sudoku:

Eclectic? Heck yeah; you think posts about Sodoku written with archaic Cypriot syllabic alphabets grow on trees?

Technorati: Minnesota Organization of Blogs

One of the clues was “Otto in England, possessing fine vision” “Vision” was the thing we were supposed to get. The answer was “eyesight,” but I didn’t get how the answer was constructed. Peter Biddlecombe offered a helpful comment:

6D: “otto” is Italian for eight – “in England” should arguably be “in English” but that would spoil the surface reading. “yes” and “fine” are both words for “I agree”. possessing is the containment/embedding indicator, and “vision” is the definition.

I was stuck on “fine” being a synonym for “good” on this clue. I was also stuck on “otto” being a name instead of a numeral, so I was trying to translate from German instead of from Italian.

Why should you care what Peter Biddlecombe has to say about a cryptic crossword clue? Because he’s been solving cryptic crosswords in the Times of London for 30 years (with a five-year gap when he was solving puzzles in the Guardian). He was the Times Crossword Championship Winner in 2000 and 2007, and in the final 6 other times in a total of 14 attempts. He is currently editing the UK crossword group blog Times for the Times. I grasp from a quick visit to Times for the Times that it hasn’t changed substantially from when I wrote a profile of Times for the Times in August 2007.

Getting back to the NYT cryptic, another one of the clues was “Feel sorry about alien in group of attendants.” “Group of attendants” was the thing we were supposed to find, and the answer was constructed by putting “et” (for alien), and “in” inside the word “rue,” thus yielding the word “retinue.”

The word “about” in this case means “around.” I’m recalling the Psalm written when then-King David was temporarily fleeing from the rebellion of his son Absalom. David wrote “I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people, that have set themselves against me round about.” (Psalm 3:6, KJV). Peter again writes:

There are some words which you really need to watch out for in cryptic clues, and “about” is one of them. It can indicate embedding, reversal, the letters RE, and like any word often used as an indicator, can be worked into a definition to lead you off the scent.

In between August 2007 and now, I’ve noticed that Times for the Times offers more explanation as to how the answers are constructed. As part of the charter of Crossword Bebop to blog about crossword puzzles throughout the Anglosphere, I plan to visit Times for the Times when I get thrashed by puzzle in the Times.

Technorati: Peter Biddlecombe, Cryptic crossword, Times for the Times

For those who are just tuning in, this is one of a series of posts where I show how long it takes for me to do a Sudoku puzzle with the additional restriction of having to fill in the numbers in top-to-bottom, left-to-right order. Hence the name TBLR Sudoku.

My strategy has given higher priority to looking for six numbers in every row, column and 3 x 3 box before I start my regular scan. Furthermore, whenever I get six numbers in a row, column, or 3 x 3 box, I interrupt my scan and see if I can finish that row, column or box. If I can’t, then it’s a sign I need to do more scanning.

Here are the times from the last two weeks:

1/28/10 – 4-Star Sudoku in the Star-Tribune, done filling in the numbers top-to-bottom, left-to-right, in 33:47, a new personal best for a 4-Star, an improvement of almost 5 minutes on the previous personal best.
1/27/10 – 3-Star, 41:25
1/26/10 – 2-Star, 27:19
1/25/10 – 1-Star, I was interrupted by some friends, and I didn’t want to say “Can’t you see I’m doing a puzzle?!?” No time recorded for this day.
1/24/10 – Didn’t do the puzzle
1/23/10 – 6-Star, 53:38, a new personal best for a 6-Star, an improvement of over 8 minutes on the previous personal best
1/22/10 – 5-Star, 40:08
1/21/10 – 4-Star, 1:00:44
1/20/10 – 3-Star, 31:46, a new personal best for a 3-Star, an improvement of almost 10 minutes on the previous personal best
1/19/10 – 2-Star, 26:34
1/18/10 – 1-Star, 26:48
1/17/10 – Didn’t do the puzzle
1/16/10 – Didn’t do the puzzle
1/15/10 – 5-Star, Fail after 90 minutes

The personal bests are as follows:

1-Star: 18:13, 11/23/09
2-Star: 20:24, 1/12/10
3-Star: 31:46, 1/20/10
4-Star: 33:37, 1/28/10
5-Star: 39:58, 12/11/09
6-Star: 53:38, 1/23/10

The interesting thing about doing these puzzles this way is learning how to not suffer when I don’t have enough information to fill in a square, to realize I need to just keep looking.

Technorati: Sudoku