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Back up.
Two weeks ago, there was an ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
npl puzzle party at the house of Music Man, over in Woodland Hills. To cut down on driving, Artistry crashed in my bed, which was less trouble than one might think, since I was at work at the time. When he got up, we went out for our now traditional meal at Jerry's Deli. (I'm not sure how we'll manage that at the next party, since the location is between the two of us. Perhaps we'll all meet at Cramerica's place beforehand and go to the one in Marina Del Rey. Or Nichol's.)
They day was pretty standard. We opened up with a simple pencil-and-paper game by Kegler, then disrupted Bluff's original schedule to play Bartok's minivaganza first. I'm glad we did, because we definitely needed the energy. It had a magic-show theme was rather compact, featuring a page of cryptograms, a straight crossword, a cryptic/printer's devilry crossword, and a very unusual puzzle about identifying unusual words and decoding a Playfair cipher. I spent most of my time on the lattest. It was a tough set, which is why I'm glad we started early. At our informal parties, frustration with a long puzzle can easily turn to quitting if dinner is tantalizingly near. Instead, we just kept hacking away at it. There wear a few minor bumps (one anagram had an unexpected answer), and some unusual referencing was required, but things moved smoothly, and the ultimate solutions were pleasantly apropos. Definitely a good way to pass the time.
We moved on to one of Music Man's song-identification games. They're usually some form of Name That Tune with a twist. This time, the twist was that the first letters of the titles spelled out the name of a country or state. Since I was on a team with Artistry and Dot that wasn't very good at it, we tended to shout out random guesses. And we did okay with that, actually.
There was a business meeting, where we learned that plans continue to progress for LAConic '05. Elfman apparently now has a connection with some LA Chamber of Commerce type of person, who may be able to help us get a hotel which is not only cheap but also in a good location. We're having a bit of trouble trying to find a good location, because all of us have cars, and consider most LA locations to be equivalent. ("Everywhere in LA takes twenty minutes." — Clueless) Also, Bluff asked Cramerica and me to present![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
thedan's ACRONYM minihunt. This led to some furtive glances between Cram and me, since we never actually finished the last leg of the puzzle. Oops. Well, we've got a month or so to figure it out and to get the game ready for a generally older crowd who won't have web access.
Elfman imported a game from IndyCon called 11-Seek. This is a game similar to the old 10-Seek, but not very. In 11-Seek, played to celebrate the eleventh edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, a moderate offers a target word, and players try to think of another word that has the target word in its definition. G Natural, who presented at the Con, chose his list to carefully include words new to the new edition. (For example, "skinny" is in the definition of five words in 11-C, and "anchovy" is in nine. I'll list answers later.) Unfortunately, Elfman seemed to be slightly less discriminating in the words he chose. None of them obviously featured new words, and many of them were in too few definitions to be likely guessed.
We then played Bluff's game, the name of which escapes me. Apparently, I didn't bring home any of the handouts of it either. This is a strange little criss-crossing thing involving categories. Every place where two words cross, the two words share a category in common. But when a word crosses a different word, it needs to have a new category. Here's an invented example:
An oilskin and a macintosh are both worn in the rain, Macintosh and Tandy are both names of computers, Tandy and Berry are both names of Best Actress Academy Award winners, and berries and apricots are both fruit. This time, Bluff provided categories, which were a big help. Still, the puzzles are rough when one gets stuck, since all you end up with is a category and a single letter of the possible answer. My team got very stuck, but another managed to work through both grids. Good for them, and I'm glad we won't see this again.
After dinner, we worked on Panache's list of celebrity letter banks. Something similar was done at the Con a few years ago (by Manx, IIRC), and it ended up on the New York Times puzzle page. In these puzzles, a word or phrase is turned into the name of a celebrity or otherwise famous person by using each letter at least once. (Example: LAND (actor; 4,4) --> ALAN ALDA. Each letter is used once, many are used more than once.) These were fun, and everyone whipped through them at a pretty good speed. Some of my favorites included GRAND LEO (politician; 6,6); BY NOTE (singer; 4, 7) and LET BRAINS (scientist; 6,8).
Well, not really, but he threatened to. The group split up. Most played Cluesome, but a small group of slightly more tired people (led by me) played a game of Apples to Apples. Our game went well, A2A always does, and the Cluesome game seemed to be going okay too. The Cluesome players got a little mad at us though, because we were having a good time and talking and laughing while they were being all serious and stuff.
After all that, Art and Cram came over to my place, where we played Trivial Pursuit. Thenwjukknibs stopped by (he's been spending a disturbing amount of time at my landlords' house), and we played mini-Cluesome and Chain Reaction (the latter doesn't have rules online, and I don't feel like typing them up). Eventually, I managed to kick everyone out because I was really tired. So tired, indeed, that it took me until now to tell thee of it.
The End.
npl puzzle party at the house of Music Man, over in Woodland Hills. To cut down on driving, Artistry crashed in my bed, which was less trouble than one might think, since I was at work at the time. When he got up, we went out for our now traditional meal at Jerry's Deli. (I'm not sure how we'll manage that at the next party, since the location is between the two of us. Perhaps we'll all meet at Cramerica's place beforehand and go to the one in Marina Del Rey. Or Nichol's.)They day was pretty standard. We opened up with a simple pencil-and-paper game by Kegler, then disrupted Bluff's original schedule to play Bartok's minivaganza first. I'm glad we did, because we definitely needed the energy. It had a magic-show theme was rather compact, featuring a page of cryptograms, a straight crossword, a cryptic/printer's devilry crossword, and a very unusual puzzle about identifying unusual words and decoding a Playfair cipher. I spent most of my time on the lattest. It was a tough set, which is why I'm glad we started early. At our informal parties, frustration with a long puzzle can easily turn to quitting if dinner is tantalizingly near. Instead, we just kept hacking away at it. There wear a few minor bumps (one anagram had an unexpected answer), and some unusual referencing was required, but things moved smoothly, and the ultimate solutions were pleasantly apropos. Definitely a good way to pass the time.
We moved on to one of Music Man's song-identification games. They're usually some form of Name That Tune with a twist. This time, the twist was that the first letters of the titles spelled out the name of a country or state. Since I was on a team with Artistry and Dot that wasn't very good at it, we tended to shout out random guesses. And we did okay with that, actually.
There was a business meeting, where we learned that plans continue to progress for LAConic '05. Elfman apparently now has a connection with some LA Chamber of Commerce type of person, who may be able to help us get a hotel which is not only cheap but also in a good location. We're having a bit of trouble trying to find a good location, because all of us have cars, and consider most LA locations to be equivalent. ("Everywhere in LA takes twenty minutes." — Clueless) Also, Bluff asked Cramerica and me to present
thedan's ACRONYM minihunt. This led to some furtive glances between Cram and me, since we never actually finished the last leg of the puzzle. Oops. Well, we've got a month or so to figure it out and to get the game ready for a generally older crowd who won't have web access.Elfman imported a game from IndyCon called 11-Seek. This is a game similar to the old 10-Seek, but not very. In 11-Seek, played to celebrate the eleventh edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, a moderate offers a target word, and players try to think of another word that has the target word in its definition. G Natural, who presented at the Con, chose his list to carefully include words new to the new edition. (For example, "skinny" is in the definition of five words in 11-C, and "anchovy" is in nine. I'll list answers later.) Unfortunately, Elfman seemed to be slightly less discriminating in the words he chose. None of them obviously featured new words, and many of them were in too few definitions to be likely guessed.
We then played Bluff's game, the name of which escapes me. Apparently, I didn't bring home any of the handouts of it either. This is a strange little criss-crossing thing involving categories. Every place where two words cross, the two words share a category in common. But when a word crosses a different word, it needs to have a new category. Here's an invented example:
O
I
L
MACINTOSH
A K
A N I
P D N
BERRY
I
C
O
TAn oilskin and a macintosh are both worn in the rain, Macintosh and Tandy are both names of computers, Tandy and Berry are both names of Best Actress Academy Award winners, and berries and apricots are both fruit. This time, Bluff provided categories, which were a big help. Still, the puzzles are rough when one gets stuck, since all you end up with is a category and a single letter of the possible answer. My team got very stuck, but another managed to work through both grids. Good for them, and I'm glad we won't see this again.
After dinner, we worked on Panache's list of celebrity letter banks. Something similar was done at the Con a few years ago (by Manx, IIRC), and it ended up on the New York Times puzzle page. In these puzzles, a word or phrase is turned into the name of a celebrity or otherwise famous person by using each letter at least once. (Example: LAND (actor; 4,4) --> ALAN ALDA. Each letter is used once, many are used more than once.) These were fun, and everyone whipped through them at a pretty good speed. Some of my favorites included GRAND LEO (politician; 6,6); BY NOTE (singer; 4, 7) and LET BRAINS (scientist; 6,8).
Well, not really, but he threatened to. The group split up. Most played Cluesome, but a small group of slightly more tired people (led by me) played a game of Apples to Apples. Our game went well, A2A always does, and the Cluesome game seemed to be going okay too. The Cluesome players got a little mad at us though, because we were having a good time and talking and laughing while they were being all serious and stuff.
After all that, Art and Cram came over to my place, where we played Trivial Pursuit. Then
wjukknibs stopped by (he's been spending a disturbing amount of time at my landlords' house), and we played mini-Cluesome and Chain Reaction (the latter doesn't have rules online, and I don't feel like typing them up). Eventually, I managed to kick everyone out because I was really tired. So tired, indeed, that it took me until now to tell thee of it.The End.
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