Friday, January 22, 2010

This Recent Time Period in Puzzles

  1. OMG OMG two P&A metas in a row. Either Foggy is slipping or I, after 10 years of this, have started to not suck at these. They both seem vanishingly unlikely.
  2. My ACPT training: I started working on the big book of Boston Globe puzzles when I got to the auto shop today at 9:30. My hand started to hurt around 12:15, so that's not bad I guess. I took a break and started in again at 12:30 and then the car was ready at about 1. I was unable to solve one of the HH puzzles. :( Bonus observation: Not even Henry Hook can make a Sunday-size quote puzzle anything but insipid, or obscure. It was a bit of a shock to the system to do a "real" HH puzzle after several quote puzzles in a row.
  3. Next part of ACPT training: print out Fireball 2, find the Official ACPT Pencil And Eraser, set the kitchen timer to 20:00, and go. It won't be a complete reproduction , because I won't be sitting at the junction of two of those long industrial tables which are at different heights, meaning I have to sit at an angle (because I'm right at the legs of the table) and add some padding underneath the puzzle (so that the puzzle lies flat). Maybe I should just sit on the aisle this year.
  4. OMGOMG two P&A metas
  5. I got seduced by a quote for my next acrostic, and didn't originally realize that it had 452 characters in it. I have since edited it, and now it's at 294 characters (IIRC). It still might be too much.
  6. I have made 0 progress on my idea for an ACPT puzzle suite.
  7. I won't be able to bring Matt Gaffney pencils (plural) to Brooklyn, since I've only got one and I'm already dead for this month. (Well, technically the book prizes now include a pencil too, but those odds aren't usually very good.)

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