Journal

What it is?

Wurdle, in a nutshell, is a Scrabble like game that is word search in reverse. You work only with the tiles/letters you start with, which can be 16, 25, 36, and you form as many words as you can by connecting on a grid adjacent letters as quickly as you can. You get more points for longer words. Dupes don't count. It uses the official Scrabble library.

The name, Wurdle, is a good hint at what it is. It sounds like muddle - you're dealing with a random letters, letter salad. It also sounds like riddle - you're basically doing a mass, randomish decryption.

Playing Wurdle

I am no Scrabble expert and feel especially so after having read a New Yorker piece on the annual Scrabble tournament, but I have found some ways to score better. I mostly play in the 5x5 grid for three minutes mode. Suffixes like "s", "er", "ed" lets you double up on words that can be pluralized or tensed. "S" in the right place is like a suffix two-fer. Letter groupings like "est", "ing", "oo", ee" usually are chock full of opportunities. Certain patterns come up frequently: a, e, t together in a triangle gives you: tea, eat, tae, eta, ate.

Those are small potatoes though - the way to score is to find all the long words just like you would with Scrabble, but the more exotic letters like "Z" don't give you higher scores. However, I really don't have an simple method for finding many lettered words. I take it that that is one of the innate abilities that identify the really good players but that's something I'm working on. I have a feeling it's got more to do with your visual than language ability.

I saw this around labor day. V for vote? Victory? Love the tags!

Brandy, a standard Schnauzer with a dark pepper coat, was one of the few who strutted around with his tail intact, thanks to Danish law. He was well traveled, living mainly in the beautiful environs of Vancouver and Denmark. He had a funny walk. A side to side wobble with his hind legs that suggested a dance from the bebop era. He tended to stare a little too long at other dogs, sometimes sparking a minor ruckus, other times opening up a friendly heart to heart, dog to dog. He never talked much, perhaps a soft bark here or there. Brandy lived a privileged life and was knowingly and unabashedly spoiled by his owners, as it should be, enjoying walks in verdant Stanley Park and dining on delectable Vancouver Chinese takeout. He will truly be missed, especially by Kim, Laura and Bjorn. Brandy was 13.

Brandy slideshow
Brandy photos

Warning: There are *NO* spoilers ahead. Read on to remain in ignorant bliss.

"Raiders of the Lost Ark", when it was released, was so novel and groundbreaking, it would be too much to expect the same from the fourth installment, "Crystal Skulls", after almost 30 years. Where to begin if you try to list all the changes the action movie genre has gone through since the early eighties?

Try and extricate yourself from this. I see some poor driver in this position every once in a while. You'd think someone would have the good grace to check if he/she gave the other driver wiggle room.

I've seen three smart cars in the last week. Mainly in the upper east side and midtown. One was parked vertically in a space where folks normally parallel park. Officially, in New York, this is illegal. But that's one way to pass your driving test. They look like cars owned by real people, not part of some PR stunt and are getting lots of looks.

So Clinton just declared victory although both CNN and MSNBC haven't declared a winner because both have a case of CYA. She quoted Obama saying that Indiana will be the tiebreaker and declared she's on the way to the White House since she won Indiana. They're both wrong. Clinton took Indiana, but she didn't break any tie in terms of delegates or the popular vote. Obama still has those numbers going for him. Pack the suntan lotion baby, looks like we're going to Puerto Rico!

All the pundits are saying that a long drawn out Democrat (a disparaging moniker coined by the GOP) primary is no good for all the obvious reasons, but maybe it's not so bad after all.

McCain gets less press because of all the attention on the Democrats. His "get to know me" tour and his distancing away from Bush hasn't got all that much attention. The Democrats sign on more and more voters to the party. Yeah, he gets to add to the treasure chest, but if Obama wins, McCain is toast - Obama will raise gazillions more dollars than McCain.

More importantly, the eventual nominee will have less time to duel with McCain and that means less exposure to the Republican attack machine (RAM). Less time for all those RAM super negative ads on the air, pounding voters into submission. I can imagine McCain learning from Bush's black baby ad and putting out something more vile to demean Obama. Suppose Obama won New Hampshire and took California. Obama and McCain would have been having it out starting in March (I think). And do you really believe that they're going to have a civil discourse? More like "a frank and serious exchange of ideas".

If I ever have motivational problems to go running, cycling, swimming, etc..., I'm posting this excerpt from the New York Times to give me a good reason to get out there.

I have written often about the protective roles of exercise. It can lower the risk of heart attack, stroke, hypertension, diabetes, obesity, depression, dementia, osteoporosis, gallstones, diverticulitis, falls, erectile dysfunction, peripheral vascular disease and 12 kinds of cancer.

Article Link

I also read a New Yorker piece, I can't remember the date, that describes in gory detail, the process of tooth decay after you eat. It deserves to go into every dentists' office. After reading it, I immediately wanted to brush and floss.

With all the music available to us in digital format and all its conveniences, I'd like to harken way back to the days of audio cassette tapes.

We all know about records, or LPs, or vinyl, the scratches, the dirty needle, 45s. Now it's not as nearly bad when there was *no* musical media, say in 17th, 18th centuries, besides your imagination and live music, but cassette tapes, though portable (the Sony Walkman, when introduced, was a huge hit) was prevalent for awhile.

Despite it's portability, tapes got chewed up. Instead of the 10 gigs you have on your mp3 player, cassettes had a capacity of 60, 90, 120 minutes each. You had to switch sides. You had to rewind and fast forward to your song. There was hiss. Remember Dolby B and C? The liner notes were in small font to fit in those small cassette boxes. If you wanted to copy the tape, you had to copy it... *in real time*. No drag and drop, instant copy, done. Record and wait. Now that's one media type that will never come back.

Out of Print - The death and life of the American newspaper - Article Link

This was a very good read. I had no idea the Huffington Post had so many eyeballs. I still think the death knells are premature. I know these arguments have been made, but I'll make them again.

You still need some kind of organization to keep good writing and editing staff. I think it the concern more should be - Death of the printed newspaper. Institutions like the New York Times and New Yorker aren't going away.

Wasn't radio doomed to extinction? Gone are the days when the family sat around a big wooden box but radio is ubiquitous in cars.

Despite my and generation Z's addiction to reading news online, there is still a market for a paper newspaper. Obviously you can take in more with one eyeball of the New York Times than the largest of widescreen monitors. It's just that when I read a real newspaper, I feel I've covered more territory than I did an online version. I often catch articles in newspaper 1.0 that I've missed while reading the online version. Why is that?