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An NPL Day.
So, last week I had a party.
Hours and hours before the party started, I woke myself up early to go to the premiere of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. In retrospect, this was an example of Bad Planning, since the 2-1/2+ movie forced me to wake up slightly early and deprived me of a whole lotta sleep that would have been extremely helpful during this marathon day. Luckily, the film was showing at the Galleria, a five minute walk from my house.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wjukknibs and K. were waiting in line, and wjukknibs was helpfully calling me from the theater to make sure I didn't sleep through the showtime. When I arrived, he was waiting outside to hand me my ticket. (Come to think of it, I don't think I've paid him back for it. Must do.) After catching a few fractions of a wink during the "Pre-Show Entertainment" (read "Eternal Commercials"), the movie played.
I thought it was . . . well, better than the first. (Also, as one reviewer noted, better than Attack of the Clones, though that's not saying much.) I was very disappointed by the first HP movie because of how stunningly unoriginal it was. Chamber had most of the same problems with pacing, exposition and dreadfully long pauses between dialogue, but it also managed to think for itself for a change. So, rather than being a disappointingly lame book adaptation like Stone, it was merely a lame book adaptation (which, of course, is what we've come to expect from Hollywood).
As the credits came up, I rushed out of the theater and back to my home to scarf a bowl of cereal. Wjukknibs and K. showed up too, and reassembled the chairs they'd been upholstering. Reupholstering is an amazing thing, I must say. The set of four chairs that were older than I (and looked and smelled it, too) is now a happy and contemporary part of my swinging pad. (Note to self. Get wjukknibs and K. good Christmas gifts.)
Then it was off to my nighttime day job, where there was nothing but annoying and pointless documents as far as the eye could see. I eschewed eating much and used all of my break time to put the final touches on Museum Piece and to print out a copy for Xeroxing.
I mentioned that I woke up early and was deprived of sleep? Well, I was feeling it. The somnolent word-for-word documents, the anxiety of things left undone and the lack of sleep were hurting. Ultimately, I left an hour early, the moment my replacement got in. I'm very glad I did, too, because the rest of my day was packed.
On the way home, I stopped at the Kinko's on Ventura and produced ten neatly stapled copies of Museum Piece. Next, I grabbed an egg-bagel sandwich. Then, I scarfed again, checked my email to be sure that no one had left last-minute requests for directions, then collapsed into bed.
Two hours later, my very loud alarm clock jolted me up, and I got to work. There was still some cleaning to be done, and I still had to go shopping. I cleaned up a little bit (emptying the fridge of unnecessary items), put the living room into the optimal arrangement and then zoom-zoomed to the store to pick up a few last-minute items, clean supplies and ice. Zoomed back home and used my disinfectant to quickly clean off some of the items I tend not to clean. As I finished making my bed (T-15 minutes), Artistry and Bartok arrived to see me looking shocked (shocked!) that people had arrived already. They were very nice about letting me run around, though. And run around I did, very quickly arranging the chairs and tables on the front and back patios. Pretty much everything was done by noon, but then there was the running around of greeting and directing and arranging snacks (brought by guests; it was potluck), etc., etc., etc. There were only three handouts: a simple word puzzle by Music Man, a cryptic by Kegler and a "Guess the Language" game that was posted on the wall (where it remains, if you're interested). At one point, after moving around chips and salsa and hummus and onion dip for the tenth time, Artistry demanded that I relax and enjoy myself. There was a sudden flash that, as has happened occasionally, I would be so worried about the logistics of hosting that I wouldn't have a good time at the party. Thankfully, this didn't happen, and once the party got going for real, I was able to sit back and let others be in charge.
We had a good turnout, thankfully not as big as it could have been since a few people didn't show. In attendance were Artistry, Bartok, Bluff, Cramerica, Dot, D., Game Dame, Gypsy, Kegler, Music Man, Panache, P., and S and Elfman arrived later. We welcomed a new member, Charts, who is actually an old member, but who just recently moved to Los Angeles. Banterweight was a member visiting from Oakland. And as a very special treat,wjukknibs stopped by for an hour or so on his way to work.
The games began with Panache's geography trivia game "Atlas," He Shrugged. The goal was to name states and countries that have certain characteristics, like "1. Country with no repeated letters" or "2. State sharing no letters with its capital." Whichever team could come up with the longest answer got the points. (winning answers below) Since this was the first game, some of the latecomers arrived. First D., who joined my team, thenwjukknibs. Although I would have liked to keep him around at first, my team now had far too many people, so I introduced him to some of the others and left him to fend for himself. As far as I can surmise, he fended quite well.
Next came a game from Music Man, the name of which I didn't catch since I was moving chairs around. It was very fun, if somewhat odd. Music Man would play, on his Yamaha, brought specially for the occasion, a short passage of music to be identified. Then another piece of music would be played. The title of each piece of music was part of (or a very similar clue to part of) a movie title. So if the first song was "You're the Top" and the second song was "You Can't Get a Man with a Gun," then the movie would be Top Gun. It went on for quite a while, and by the end, my team had won. Err. Sorry. My team had one. Point that is.
Despite the horrible incompetence of my team (Bluff, D., and me) at identifying songs, we still had a fun time. It's very nice when, after you've been teased with a bit of music that you recognize but cannot time, someone tells you the answer. Saves you a lot of time wasted trying to remember it.
Next, Bartok presented Dubious Acronyms. The meat of the game involved creating acronyms describing six-letter words like "bridge" (Better Redeal, I Didn't Get Enough), "sphinx" (Sandy Pussycat Haunts In Nile Xeriscape) and "raisin" (Reisling's Alcoholic Ingredient Shriveled Into Nothing). Much fun was had by all with the name "Cheney"(Cheating Halliburton Exec Not Exonerated Yet; Conservative Hardliner Even Now Espouses Yesterday; Codger Hasn't Eviscerated Nation's Environment . . . Yet! and Coronary, Hopefully, Ere Next Election Year). During this game, wjukknibs left for work, but he came up with a great one for "gerbil", but I can't remember it. Maybe he will be so kind as to post it. There was an odd scoring system and some team won, but it wasn't mine so, i wasn't paying too much attention.
Next came Bluff's version of Stage II, with a little Stage III thrown in. I've talked about Stage II before, so I won't explain it again here. The Stage II aspect of the game worked fairly well, but Bluff's version of Stage III had some flaws making it difficult to follow along or understand what was happening.
There was a business meeting, which consisted mostly of the new people introducing themselves. Then we played a pair of puzzles from New Jersian Wrybosh. The first involved creating chains of people (e.g., Mary Stuart, Stuart Little, Little John, John Jay, Jay Ward, Ward Cleaver). I was in a good group for this. Dot, Gypsy and I covered a good range of general knowledge so this ended up being less of a puzzle and more of a pass time. Here are some examples:
The second puzzle by the same author was a bit trickier and involved a color printer. Colorful Language had a title, simple clues, some colorful numbers and no instructions. See if you can figure out what was going on from these examples:
Then there was dinner. There was lots of food, and I didn't have to cook any of it. Unfortunately and unexpectedly, there was a shortage of desserts, since the people who didn't show up were supposed to be bringing the desserts. We did have one pie and one cake, however, and that seemed to be enough. Oddly, I wasn't in the mood for sugar. Anyway, after dinner, there was one last nameless game from Game Dame. I didn't get to play much of it, since I was busy bringing chairs and tables inside and getting rid of the leftover foodstuffs. She had taken the titles of several famous works of literature and substituted the main words with their dictionary definitions. Except that, whenever possible, she used very misleading definitions. Ultimately, the difficulty level was strange, since the definitions were usually unknown, but things moved a bit more smoothly when Game Dame began helping out with the names of the authors. Some examples:
After that, everyone settled down into three teams for the finale.
During Game Dame's game, I had set up three team stations, each with a table and a cd player, and then I handed out three copies of Museum Piece. (That's a lj-friends-only link, but if you want to see it and can't, just drop me a line.)
Museum Piece was a multi-part puzzle, of the sort that has been played many times before. I took a lot of inspiration from the style of the MIT Mystery Hunt when constructing it. The premise is that the Nine Greek Muses have been kidnapped, and the team has to solve puzzles in order to figure out where they've been taken. Each puzzle is themed, and solving it leads to an answer which, in this case, is always the name of a city. Once the first nine puzzles are solved, then the team is given the opportunity to solving the final puzzle, which uses the answers to all of the previous puzzles to give the team the last bit of information.
With three teams of five players attacking nine puzzles, there was a pretty good division of labor, and it was fun to watch as people attacked the puzzles. Invariably, the fastest one to be solved was Polyhymnia's word search. And the hardest seemed to be the baffler associated with Terpsichore. That was partly my fault, since I'd been having trouble with the cluing. I actually figured out how to clue the answer while in the shower the next day, so any future solvers will enjoy the benefit of it.
This was the first time I'd done anything like this. And it was the first time I'd attempted to create some of these puzzles. I was pleased, then, that the variety cryptic and the acrostic went out without a hitch. (Well, almost. There was one clue in the cryptic that should have been altered. The test solvers hadn't picked up on it, but all of the solvers on Saturday did, forcing me to run around and fix answers.) The acrostic took longer than the word search, but was still pretty straightforward and was solved quickly. The cryptic took longer than I would have expected. I think that the teams didn't quite catch on to the fact that each puzzle was themed to the Muse that it depicted. Otherwise, I think that the gimmick in the cryptic would have been much more transparent, as I had intended. I mean, there was even a clue to the gimmick within the puzzle itself and people still didn't see it. Sigh.
One of the more unusual events was the silence that lasted for quite a while after handing out the packets. See, each packet included a CD, and each team had been given a CD player. Maybe it's just me, but with that combination, the first thing I would have done would be to play the CD. But nobody did. I had to go to each team and prod them into trying it out since it might actually help them with the puzzle that didn't seem to have anything at all except for answer blanks. The audio puzzle, constructed with the indispensable aid ofwjukknibs, was a series of clips from TV theme songs. From that point on, my house was filled with a Nick-at-Nite medley that never ended and that left many solvers going home with the songs permanently stuck in their brains.
Eventually, one team pulled far ahead, giving them the right to filling in the final answers. I watched them as they struggled with it, finally getting the final answer. I'd been worried about this, since I thought it had been a bit of a stretch, but as I watched them, I could see the pieces that had been laid throughout the puzzle finally click together in understanding. It was wonderful.
After the puzzle was solved, there was some final explaining, and then everyone started to file out. The solving had taken longer than i had expected, and it was now about 9pm. Everyone thanked me for a lovely party, and I thanked them for attending. Some people stayed for some final games. Some people played Wordbluff, a rather complicated game invented by Bluff. I played a different game invented by Bartok whose name I do not recall. I do want to play Wordbluff, but I had been awake for too long to concentrate on it. When the games were over, more people left, and Artistry, Bartok and I played Kill Doctor Lucky. Then the left, and I slept until the next afternoon
Here are the answers to the posers in this entry. As before, they're in white text on the white background, so you shouldn't be able to see them unless you highlight them.
Also, were you wondering about the lj-cut titles? Here are the answers for those:
P/r-otter; work, shirk; (c)hair; party, hearty; emus, Museum
SatNYTX: 13. Wow, and I thought I'd be rusty after no crosswords for a few weeks.
Hours and hours before the party started, I woke myself up early to go to the premiere of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. In retrospect, this was an example of Bad Planning, since the 2-1/2+ movie forced me to wake up slightly early and deprived me of a whole lotta sleep that would have been extremely helpful during this marathon day. Luckily, the film was showing at the Galleria, a five minute walk from my house.
wjukknibs and K. were waiting in line, and wjukknibs was helpfully calling me from the theater to make sure I didn't sleep through the showtime. When I arrived, he was waiting outside to hand me my ticket. (Come to think of it, I don't think I've paid him back for it. Must do.) After catching a few fractions of a wink during the "Pre-Show Entertainment" (read "Eternal Commercials"), the movie played.I thought it was . . . well, better than the first. (Also, as one reviewer noted, better than Attack of the Clones, though that's not saying much.) I was very disappointed by the first HP movie because of how stunningly unoriginal it was. Chamber had most of the same problems with pacing, exposition and dreadfully long pauses between dialogue, but it also managed to think for itself for a change. So, rather than being a disappointingly lame book adaptation like Stone, it was merely a lame book adaptation (which, of course, is what we've come to expect from Hollywood).
As the credits came up, I rushed out of the theater and back to my home to scarf a bowl of cereal. Wjukknibs and K. showed up too, and reassembled the chairs they'd been upholstering. Reupholstering is an amazing thing, I must say. The set of four chairs that were older than I (and looked and smelled it, too) is now a happy and contemporary part of my swinging pad. (Note to self. Get wjukknibs and K. good Christmas gifts.)
Then it was off to my nighttime day job, where there was nothing but annoying and pointless documents as far as the eye could see. I eschewed eating much and used all of my break time to put the final touches on Museum Piece and to print out a copy for Xeroxing.
I mentioned that I woke up early and was deprived of sleep? Well, I was feeling it. The somnolent word-for-word documents, the anxiety of things left undone and the lack of sleep were hurting. Ultimately, I left an hour early, the moment my replacement got in. I'm very glad I did, too, because the rest of my day was packed.
On the way home, I stopped at the Kinko's on Ventura and produced ten neatly stapled copies of Museum Piece. Next, I grabbed an egg-bagel sandwich. Then, I scarfed again, checked my email to be sure that no one had left last-minute requests for directions, then collapsed into bed.
Two hours later, my very loud alarm clock jolted me up, and I got to work. There was still some cleaning to be done, and I still had to go shopping. I cleaned up a little bit (emptying the fridge of unnecessary items), put the living room into the optimal arrangement and then zoom-zoomed to the store to pick up a few last-minute items, clean supplies and ice. Zoomed back home and used my disinfectant to quickly clean off some of the items I tend not to clean. As I finished making my bed (T-15 minutes), Artistry and Bartok arrived to see me looking shocked (shocked!) that people had arrived already. They were very nice about letting me run around, though. And run around I did, very quickly arranging the chairs and tables on the front and back patios. Pretty much everything was done by noon, but then there was the running around of greeting and directing and arranging snacks (brought by guests; it was potluck), etc., etc., etc. There were only three handouts: a simple word puzzle by Music Man, a cryptic by Kegler and a "Guess the Language" game that was posted on the wall (where it remains, if you're interested). At one point, after moving around chips and salsa and hummus and onion dip for the tenth time, Artistry demanded that I relax and enjoy myself. There was a sudden flash that, as has happened occasionally, I would be so worried about the logistics of hosting that I wouldn't have a good time at the party. Thankfully, this didn't happen, and once the party got going for real, I was able to sit back and let others be in charge.
We had a good turnout, thankfully not as big as it could have been since a few people didn't show. In attendance were Artistry, Bartok, Bluff, Cramerica, Dot, D., Game Dame, Gypsy, Kegler, Music Man, Panache, P., and S and Elfman arrived later. We welcomed a new member, Charts, who is actually an old member, but who just recently moved to Los Angeles. Banterweight was a member visiting from Oakland. And as a very special treat,
wjukknibs stopped by for an hour or so on his way to work.The games began with Panache's geography trivia game "Atlas," He Shrugged. The goal was to name states and countries that have certain characteristics, like "1. Country with no repeated letters" or "2. State sharing no letters with its capital." Whichever team could come up with the longest answer got the points. (winning answers below) Since this was the first game, some of the latecomers arrived. First D., who joined my team, then
wjukknibs. Although I would have liked to keep him around at first, my team now had far too many people, so I introduced him to some of the others and left him to fend for himself. As far as I can surmise, he fended quite well.Next came a game from Music Man, the name of which I didn't catch since I was moving chairs around. It was very fun, if somewhat odd. Music Man would play, on his Yamaha, brought specially for the occasion, a short passage of music to be identified. Then another piece of music would be played. The title of each piece of music was part of (or a very similar clue to part of) a movie title. So if the first song was "You're the Top" and the second song was "You Can't Get a Man with a Gun," then the movie would be Top Gun. It went on for quite a while, and by the end, my team had won. Err. Sorry. My team had one. Point that is.
Despite the horrible incompetence of my team (Bluff, D., and me) at identifying songs, we still had a fun time. It's very nice when, after you've been teased with a bit of music that you recognize but cannot time, someone tells you the answer. Saves you a lot of time wasted trying to remember it.
Next, Bartok presented Dubious Acronyms. The meat of the game involved creating acronyms describing six-letter words like "bridge" (Better Redeal, I Didn't Get Enough), "sphinx" (Sandy Pussycat Haunts In Nile Xeriscape) and "raisin" (Reisling's Alcoholic Ingredient Shriveled Into Nothing). Much fun was had by all with the name "Cheney"(Cheating Halliburton Exec Not Exonerated Yet; Conservative Hardliner Even Now Espouses Yesterday; Codger Hasn't Eviscerated Nation's Environment . . . Yet! and Coronary, Hopefully, Ere Next Election Year). During this game, wjukknibs left for work, but he came up with a great one for "gerbil", but I can't remember it. Maybe he will be so kind as to post it. There was an odd scoring system and some team won, but it wasn't mine so, i wasn't paying too much attention.
Next came Bluff's version of Stage II, with a little Stage III thrown in. I've talked about Stage II before, so I won't explain it again here. The Stage II aspect of the game worked fairly well, but Bluff's version of Stage III had some flaws making it difficult to follow along or understand what was happening.
There was a business meeting, which consisted mostly of the new people introducing themselves. Then we played a pair of puzzles from New Jersian Wrybosh. The first involved creating chains of people (e.g., Mary Stuart, Stuart Little, Little John, John Jay, Jay Ward, Ward Cleaver). I was in a good group for this. Dot, Gypsy and I covered a good range of general knowledge so this ended up being less of a puzzle and more of a pass time. Here are some examples:
- Actor who played Rooster Cogburn in True Grit
- Las Vegas show circuit singer
- Speaker of the House in the 104th Congress
- Chief Justice appointed by Eisenhower
- Cabinet offical under Clinton
- Actor who played a Reverend on TV, a Doctor in three movies, and an Uncle in two movies
- Cabinet offical under Clinton
- Actor who played Oliver Wendell Douglas in Green Acres
- Either of two Tennessee Senators
- Author of Myra Breckinridge and 1876
- Hair stylist entrepreneur
- Author of The Jungle and Dragon's Teeth
- Author of Main Street and Babbitt
- Author of Alice in Wonderland andThe Hunting of the Snark
- Actor who played Archie Bunker in All in the Family
The second puzzle by the same author was a bit trickier and involved a color printer. Colorful Language had a title, simple clues, some colorful numbers and no instructions. See if you can figure out what was going on from these examples:
- Perfect, pure (8)
- Automotive mishap (9)
- Component (10)
- Bush (9)
- Bushes (9)
- Train signal (7)
Then there was dinner. There was lots of food, and I didn't have to cook any of it. Unfortunately and unexpectedly, there was a shortage of desserts, since the people who didn't show up were supposed to be bringing the desserts. We did have one pie and one cake, however, and that seemed to be enough. Oddly, I wasn't in the mood for sugar. Anyway, after dinner, there was one last nameless game from Game Dame. I didn't get to play much of it, since I was busy bringing chairs and tables inside and getting rid of the leftover foodstuffs. She had taken the titles of several famous works of literature and substituted the main words with their dictionary definitions. Except that, whenever possible, she used very misleading definitions. Ultimately, the difficulty level was strange, since the definitions were usually unknown, but things moved a bit more smoothly when Game Dame began helping out with the names of the authors. Some examples:
- The / to bring in / of the / unaffected (Thomas Hardy)
- The / stirred by or attracted to the inexplicable / novice (Mark Twain)
After that, everyone settled down into three teams for the finale.
During Game Dame's game, I had set up three team stations, each with a table and a cd player, and then I handed out three copies of Museum Piece. (That's a lj-friends-only link, but if you want to see it and can't, just drop me a line.)
Museum Piece was a multi-part puzzle, of the sort that has been played many times before. I took a lot of inspiration from the style of the MIT Mystery Hunt when constructing it. The premise is that the Nine Greek Muses have been kidnapped, and the team has to solve puzzles in order to figure out where they've been taken. Each puzzle is themed, and solving it leads to an answer which, in this case, is always the name of a city. Once the first nine puzzles are solved, then the team is given the opportunity to solving the final puzzle, which uses the answers to all of the previous puzzles to give the team the last bit of information.
With three teams of five players attacking nine puzzles, there was a pretty good division of labor, and it was fun to watch as people attacked the puzzles. Invariably, the fastest one to be solved was Polyhymnia's word search. And the hardest seemed to be the baffler associated with Terpsichore. That was partly my fault, since I'd been having trouble with the cluing. I actually figured out how to clue the answer while in the shower the next day, so any future solvers will enjoy the benefit of it.
This was the first time I'd done anything like this. And it was the first time I'd attempted to create some of these puzzles. I was pleased, then, that the variety cryptic and the acrostic went out without a hitch. (Well, almost. There was one clue in the cryptic that should have been altered. The test solvers hadn't picked up on it, but all of the solvers on Saturday did, forcing me to run around and fix answers.) The acrostic took longer than the word search, but was still pretty straightforward and was solved quickly. The cryptic took longer than I would have expected. I think that the teams didn't quite catch on to the fact that each puzzle was themed to the Muse that it depicted. Otherwise, I think that the gimmick in the cryptic would have been much more transparent, as I had intended. I mean, there was even a clue to the gimmick within the puzzle itself and people still didn't see it. Sigh.
One of the more unusual events was the silence that lasted for quite a while after handing out the packets. See, each packet included a CD, and each team had been given a CD player. Maybe it's just me, but with that combination, the first thing I would have done would be to play the CD. But nobody did. I had to go to each team and prod them into trying it out since it might actually help them with the puzzle that didn't seem to have anything at all except for answer blanks. The audio puzzle, constructed with the indispensable aid of
wjukknibs, was a series of clips from TV theme songs. From that point on, my house was filled with a Nick-at-Nite medley that never ended and that left many solvers going home with the songs permanently stuck in their brains.Eventually, one team pulled far ahead, giving them the right to filling in the final answers. I watched them as they struggled with it, finally getting the final answer. I'd been worried about this, since I thought it had been a bit of a stretch, but as I watched them, I could see the pieces that had been laid throughout the puzzle finally click together in understanding. It was wonderful.
After the puzzle was solved, there was some final explaining, and then everyone started to file out. The solving had taken longer than i had expected, and it was now about 9pm. Everyone thanked me for a lovely party, and I thanked them for attending. Some people stayed for some final games. Some people played Wordbluff, a rather complicated game invented by Bluff. I played a different game invented by Bartok whose name I do not recall. I do want to play Wordbluff, but I had been awake for too long to concentrate on it. When the games were over, more people left, and Artistry, Bartok and I played Kill Doctor Lucky. Then the left, and I slept until the next afternoon
Here are the answers to the posers in this entry. As before, they're in white text on the white background, so you shouldn't be able to see them unless you highlight them.
- Switzerland
- South Dakota (Pierre)
- John Wayne Newton Gingrich
- Earl Warren Christopher Lloyd Bentsen
- Eddie Albert Gore Vidal Sassoon
- Upton Sinclair Lewis Carroll O'Connor
- aBsoLUtE
- BReakdOWN
- inGREdiENt
- pREsiDent
- shRUBberY
- WHIsTlE
- The Return of the Native
- The Mysterious Stranger
Also, were you wondering about the lj-cut titles? Here are the answers for those:
P/r-otter; work, shirk; (c)hair; party, hearty; emus, Museum
SatNYTX: 13. Wow, and I thought I'd be rusty after no crosswords for a few weeks.