Jaws, Teeth, Mess

Analysis forthcoming? Maybe.

Mineses, in no particular order

First, the NAST

UN(D)ERACT 76
LEEWArd 76
TRa(I)NMEN 67
THALWEG 82
(S)kELETON 66
STUNTED 68
RUINATE 87
OUTRIDE 79
(F)UNkIEST 83
RE(G)AINER 72

Main Event:

UNDREST 72
KoRUNAS 79
WEAK(E)NER 88
REIND(I)CT 72
(A)ERATING 80
BENZOAT(E) 96
LATINoS 88
OUTDRAG 67
RUSTIER 81
STINTER 72
(T)WOONIES 72
MA(T)ELOTE 89
SEETHED 75
tU(R)BOFAN 82
V(A)RIETAL 72
LENTIGO 78
HAPtENO(ID)* 78 (there's a story behind this one)
LUTEINS 63
SLATHER(S) 76
UN(H)AILEd 76
TRUSTEE 81
TEETERS 77
UNlACED 93
ANtISEX 98

Theirses, again in no particular order

NAST:

WALKErS 78
LISTL(E)SS 59
E(L)ICITED 76
STAInIN(G) 66
PRAISES 77
PERCALE 78
FROUZES* 98 (all I could think at the time was "hey, she didn't block THALWEG!)
EPiGONE 73
CORyBAN(T) 83
NITRATE 70
DELUDES 80
TENUOUS 70
ELOINER 74
iNFAnTS 75
ENLAR(G)ES 72

Regular season:

(D)RAgLINE 74
SOOTI(E)ST 69
DROWsIE(R) 86
DEAIRI(N)G 74
GOITREs 74
NIcO(T)INE 64
EARNEsT 64
INtURNS 71
AStERIA 66
LAMINAS 74
OXiDATES 101
ESCUAGE 79
FLAVORS 84
INERTIAE 59
SANtERO 64
MI(S)COUNT 69
BEEbEES 65
INDORSE 73
B(I)oGENIC 70
VItIATE 75

Rating somewhere in the 1755 range. Big whoop. Still, I played surprisingly well for not having played for two and a half months. The anagramming practice I put in in the last few weeks helped quite a bit -- I was seeing things much faster than I was at Nationals. Of course, it helped not to have the bubonic plague.

I had somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 shots Friday night. On an empty stomach. Not only did I not die, not only did I not wake up with a hangover, I never really felt very drunk. I think I should be worried...is it possible to have a too effective liver?

Back to Scrabble: if I stay motivated and disciplined, the Twin Cities tourney next month will be interesting. We'll see.

Today was good. I went 4-1, and then played a game against Dave and Mike simultaneously, losing both (it's hard to do that!). I played PAESAnA* on Dave today. Luckily, it stayed on the board, now, I must remember this though:
PAISAN: PAISANA, PAISANO, PAISANS
PAESAN: PAESANI, PAESANO, PAESANS

This song is up my alley, and up my mountain,.....sexy beats and stuff

Two more players advanced to Round 4 today... which also means two more are eliminated. One of the matches reached a dramatic 5th game. Matchups & stats pages are updated... brackets will be later:

http://sites.google.com/site/2008scrabblebeanpot

Opponent and I start game. After one move he resigns.

dewk: wow, I didn't think I was that good
(told stellerex)
stellerex tells you: You probably didn't think you were a jerk either :)

The conversation ended here, because he blocked messages from me immediately.

Scrabble has become enjoyable again, and 6 people showed up to play. I got to play one of my OOOO bingos, OLOROSO. I almost pust OROLOSO* down instead, they sound similar. I went 2-2, and the club environment was relaxed.

I had an interesting position against Jesse where I was torn between QUINT and QUINTA. I took the two extra points because -OW was better that -AWO as a leave and QUINT gives easy back hooks. But I did not think a step further; QUINTA also has easy back-hooks, and they were on the triple lane! He made a huge score with his QUINTAL hook.

Fortunatly, I was able to get to chess club after and think many moves ahead to redeem myself. It is fascinating how the body language of chess players differs from serious competitors compared to coffee house players. Somehow I can see it in their faces and their eyes that they are not thinking about things like weak squares, color complexes, superior minor pieces and maintaining the tension. Their style of play is to look for tactics; they can see ahead several moves in these blitz games but they play without a sound plan, or even a plan at all. There are coffee house players who have never studied that are good, but they have picked up on principles over time. Somehow these concepts are a mystery to some while others can see them. I was a little thick and I had to read "My System" and "Pawn Power" a few times before those concepts sunk in, and that was only after losing many games. In fact I have even tried teaching some of these concepts to the coffee house players, and many of them just refused to believe me! A lot of them get defensive about their positions; they are more interested in justifying the moves they made than admitting they have made mistakes. I see many of them act with emotion when they do post mortems with each other. Mistakes are painful, admitting them takes resilience... if I am doing something wrong I want to know. That is also a big part of Scrabble improvement; taking a hard look at how you play the game. Like my QUINTA decision; David questioned it, and it turned out to be a lemon.

Bingos:
OLOROSO
ENTOMBED
DOILIES
ANISEEDS
GORDITAS

Them:
ALUNITE
REFILMS
ENACTIVE
HURTLES
JAROSITE
BANTERED

Non-Scrabble:( Read more... )

In the midst of the KB's recap of last night's Canucks game, this bit about baseball:

olaugh and i were in the office quackling our latest game yesterday when it came to my attention that a mouse was in the kitchen. only i could see him from my position in the office, and by the time i told john and we got up to investigate, mousie had scampered away.

though i am a very neat person, i also had mice while living in delaware. that apartment had an extra room built onto the back so shoddily that i'm surprised more vermin didn't find their way in. lordiceman insisted on telling the landlord, who set peanut butter traps in the kitchen. the traps would snap sickeningly, then rod would dispose of their supine, white-bellied bodies.

perhaps unwisely, john and i are both content to take the path of least resistance, which is to pretend we never saw the mouse. we hardly ever eat processed food so don't keep much food in the house, and as long as it doesn't crawl over us in the night or anything, we're willing to entertain a peaceful coexistence.

Today's Question of the Day (link only valid today[1]) at the Las Vegas Advisor web site is: "I understand that all of Harrah's Casinos in Vegas are pulling IGT Megabucks Progressive machines. What casinos in Vegas still have those progressive slots? How often do they actually hit?"

The first part is interesting. I wonder if Harrah's is pulling them nationwide in response to Harrah's AC being sued over a different IGT jackpot, but the question mentions LV only. The answer says that LVA contacted various Harrah's slot departments and found that they had all pulled all their Megabucks machines or reduced down to one or two left.

There is also an update from a reader: "About your QOD for 10/12/08. All Harrah's properties are in the process of eliminating "Participation" slot machines, where Harrah's leases the machine from the manufacturer and has to share the profits with them." [Ed: If that's the case, then a lot of your other favorite games may be disappearing from Harrah's casino floors.]"

So the bean-counting deterioration of Harrah's continues...

[1] They have archives, but they're only open to paying members

Portland 2008 Round 15

Play the Game

The news of Paul Newman's death a few weeks ago was still rattling somewhere around my semi-conscious brain this morning when I went to the cupboard to make my coffee. I pulled out a bag of grounds labeled "Newman's Own" and had a very morbid thought.

i'll be playing my games at Carberry's in Central Square starting at 1pm (would've played in Harvard Sq, but Oktoberfest will make it infeasible). Stop by if you're around!

When I was a newer player and my opponent got a 100 lead on me, I would often panic and make reckless moves to try and catch up. More often than not, this resulted in them beating me with even more spread.

Early in the game, a 100 point lead is not as hopeless as it may appear. The bag is full of blanks, Ss, powertiles and bingo prone tiles. As long as the board is not dead, coming back is a possibility, especially if you draw those 2 blanks separately. You obviously can't play scared, but don't set up easy hooks and easy hotspots which enable your opponent to run up the score even more. Now if you had a 100 deficit early, and the game is getting close to the end and you have not caught up, then you might want to take those risks. But now hopefully with your tracking you can set up hooks that only you can use. Setting up hooks with a full bag doesn't appear to work well. The "outbingo" is a powerful weapon. When you get those high prob bingos down cold, and there are only a few in the bag, you can make some really strong fishes. I have won several "hopeless" games where I played for the most likely bingo and got it. Of interest, none of these have been against strong experts because they see what bingos are left in the bag and they block them!

One of my best stolen games was when I fished for (U)NPOTTED and got it to bingo out and win. I was behind the entire game, and thanks to UNPOTTED being played against me in a previous tourney, the word jumped out at me as a possibility. So I made a play to open a triple lane as a distraction. My opponent grabbed the triple lane, and I got what I needed to go out with UNPOTTED elsewhere and barely win.

The coolest stolen game I saw using an outbingo was when Robert from the club fished for a nine! He fished for HENEQUINS through 2 tiles, got his fish, and had a shocking Q outbingo to win.

Non-Scrabble stuff:( Read more... )

Guy proposes via Twitter (she said yes).

Previously: proposals via graphjam and icanhascheezburger

via ribmeister. Pick your version.

I haven't been reading *all* of the "Historical Archives" series they've got going on (a lot of them are funny, but it gets a bit tedious after a while, and there's only so much time I can waste at work)... the third item here made me genuinely laugh out loud.

Great comeback, although I could understand if the Flames feel a bit irked by the officiating. The boarding call late on Bertuzzi seemed soft (although he did shove him), but consistent with the fairly tight standards they had for most of the game. Of course, then Burrows doesn't get called for tripping in OT. Heckuva game-winner though -- Demitra was almost past the goal line when he put it in.

Man, I hope Bieksa isn't going to be one of those cursed with bad injury luck.

I may have to make a STFUC icon to go with the STFUM one. Please tell us again how you can't score from behind the net so they shouldn't follow the Sedins back there. Oh, and did I mention they're twins? And they always know where each other is.

The NHL could really use a new ad agency. The "Is this the year?" campaigns are pretty lame, both the frozen photo one (note to NHL: when Crosby says "I never want to be in this photo again" there are *two* ways that statement could be true) and the one where it's just music played over a montage of photos of players from a single team ending with "For every goal there are thousands of assists." (Another one I saw said "18,200" instead of thousands, dunno how many versions there are.) Um, what are you trying to say? If you mean in the game, that's obviously silly. If you're talking about the fans, maybe you should include at least one photo of fans cheering?

The "on the road with Carrie Milbank" spots promoting the new nhl.com web site with stats etc. are fairly uninspired too. They should just say "see more of Carrie Milbank's breasts at nhl.com" -- it would certainly do a better job of driving traffic to the site.

But the golden raspberry goes to the "why is it called hockey and not puckey" self-promo for the NHL network. Someone must've seen this Yahoo Answers item and thought it would make a funny (one-minute-long!) commercial. They were wrong. I feel sorry for everyone who was involved with this fiasco.

The underlying message here is troubling -- while they did have some "regular" commercials for things like Progressive auto insurance etc., it seemed like by far the majority of the ads were the aforementioned NHL/NHL network stuff, which strongly smells like they're having trouble attracting advertisers.

so, after two hundred miles of driving, four games of ultimate, numerous cuts and scrapes and a black eye, I was all set to sit down this evening and look at my new york games. Unfortunately, I managed to look at all of one play before getting distracted. I had ABINOP? after Jeremy's opener of ORA. Quackle suggests that my play of BOP is second best. What should you play?

what a nice way to start a tournament, eh?

Attended the wedding of the best friend of one of my stepsons.  Why was it perfect?  For starters it was outside, along the creek behind the bride's parents' house, & the weather was sublime.  The creek, normally dry, even had water thanks to a thunderstorm a week ago.  The ceremony lasted no more than 10 minutes.  Sweet, touching, but blissfully brief.  The reception included a choice of 3 cuisines: Indian, Mexican, & bar-b-que. Lots of  food & a full bar.  The band, playing outside in their cul de sac, was a Western-Indian blend which featured a vina/veena.  Every guest I met, including an 10-yr old whose goal it is to get into Harvard,  seemed fascinating.  I talked to two women, unconnected to each other,  who both wore gorgeous salwar kameezes (an Indian garmet consisting of a tunic over matching pants). Is this a new fashion trend? Good one if it is.  No Bridezilla here - bride, groom & families informal & relaxed. Normally I'm not big on weddings but this was quite superb, & I actually (the gin & tonics didn't hurt) enjoyed myself.

First it was "double rent" for a couple weeks, then moving expenses, then New York City (which I might be regretting going to now, except that it was way too much fun), then car repair. Now that I'm somewhat solvent again, when I came back from NYC, my TV won't turn on. I've been so busy I haven't really had time to notice ... maybe I should just live TV-less for a while. I haven't even the foggiest notion where a TV repair place is in Lansing. *sigh* (esp. since I'm missing the Red Sox-Rays ninth inning as I type) I have a feeling it won't be worth the cost of repair. Maybe I should keep an eye out for a relatively cheap new TV.

In that vein, thanks to ipecac_icecap for the hosting offer next weekend, as I can't really afford a hotel stay.


EMU was favored over a fellow FBS (or I-A) team for the first time in 22 games, at Pat Forde pointed out pre-season. Naturally, they lost to Army 17-13 in a game on ESPN Classic (which I think is televising like every Army game this year). *sigh* And speaking of Army, why didn't EMU hire the guy I wanted them to hire when they picked Genyk? It's not too late, EMU athletic department! Fire Genyk!

EMU has always been terrible vs. the option (a 39-7 loss to Navy in the Woodruff era, plus a couple years ago when Navy scored TDs on its first six possessions); I might've been tempted to bet serious $$$ on Army, but I probably would've had a heart attack when EMU led 13-7 at half.


Cal Thomas' latest column infuriated me (of course, this is a common reaction whenever I read his stuff).

What infuriates me is the stance that, if I'm not opposed to abortion or gay marriage, that I'm not a "true" Catholic. FWIW, I oppose abortion. And I think the later along the pregnancy is, the more disgusting it is.

But what are you gonna do? Ban it? Yeah, right! I wish I had my head that far up my rear to believe that would fix anything. I also don't believe "life" begins within 24-48 hours of conception, so that softens my opposition somewhat.

But man, I really resent being told what I should and should not believe, esp. from any anti-gay marriage person who has no f***ing idea what it's like to be me. (rant over)

Jason