Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Things I Would Not Have Expected

One of the new features of StamfordBrooklyn that slipped under the radar was the new $30 fee to watch the finals. It got added late (I don't think it was there when I registered, or maybe it got added between when I printed out the form I thought I was going to have to mail and when I ended up doing Paypal), and I quite frankly refused to believe that anyone would actually spend $30 to watch nine people doing crosswords with big silly earphones on.

According to Will via Stella, nearly 100 people have signed up.

I blog corrected.

Friday, February 22, 2008

I'm Sure There's a Reasonable Explanation For This

I just can't think of it quite yet: License plate on a Pontiac Vibe: "3SMLUV".

There was a "family portrait" of a stick-figure mother, father, and daughter on the back, if that helps.

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Why Yes, I Am Pathetic

I decided to set myself a goal for today (Monday's crossword comes out at 6): to do my best at being the first one done. I started hitting refresh on the page at 5:58, and although the time sucks:Yay me.

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Oh that wacky New York Times

I keep hearing about how the Times has lots of very good editors, you'd think at least one of them would have killed this story before it actually got printed. And it came out on a Thursday! I could almost understand if it came out on a Sunday -- there's no way to actually fill all those pages with meaningful information -- but surely there was something happening on Thursday?

The advantage of the crossword solving applet is that if you get to a cross you don't know -- such as cuchifrito crossing orfe -- you can systematically type letters in until the applet tells you that you are correct. Of course, if you didn't look at a previous crossing and so have exacet instead of exocet, well, you won't look at that until you've gotten all the way down to Z.