Puzzles

So the blog has moved, hasn't it. That means all those hard-coded links to cox.net are dead, doesn't it. Maybe when I completely fail to get to sleep tonight I'll go and fix them.

That does mean I'm going to have to re-post the puzzles too. I plan to do that; I'm pretty sure I have all the files and can get them up. My original next crostic wasn't working very well at all; maybe I'll make another one when I completely fail to get to sleep tonight.

The MIT Mystery Hunt puzzles aren't up yet. This is a good thing, as I should really be in "nothing but crosswords" mode for the next month; but I always like to read the Hunt puzzles so that I can say "I'm glad I didn't have to try to solve that". And it gives me an excuse to not think about the many many NC puzzles I haven't solved in the current P&A Magazine.

(Of course, all that really means is that I am neither fish nor fowl: neither pedestrian enough to have a legitimate claim on the word "normal", nor fully embracing the puzzle mindset to be (a) a competent solver (yes, top 10% at ACPTs; yes I did manage to solve a metapuzzle once in P&A; call it "competent enough for my standards" if it makes you feel better) or (b) a competent constructor or even (c) really engaged in the world (no NPL membership; no MIT team -- my mantra is "no one's invited me on their team, and no one's going to either, understood?"). But any claim on normality, no matter how slight, has been a prized possession, so the situation probably won't change much either.)

Edit: NOOOOOOOOOOO! The new P&A comes out on Valentine's Day. (Fitting.) And the MIT puzzles are up, too! Well heck.

Maybe I Should Work for the Airlines

I'm planning my trip to NY for the ACPT (like I plan trips; let's call it "booking a flight" and be done with it). Anyway: I know I'm going to use Airtran, most likely, but I thought I'd at least see what Delta could do for me. The automatic deal routes me always through Atlanta, which I think is odd, so I look at the full published schedule. And the schedule confirms: Newport News to LGA is gone, as a route. We still have flights to Pensacola and Key West, and in its place, effective February 12 and flying on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays: Newport News to Wichita. I'm sure it will sell well.

Hey look, it's the internet again!

It only took four days, but the new "cable" people managed to show up to "install" my new internet connection. The people on the phone at the main office were insistent that their service wouldn't work with our old from-Cox modems; of course the tech showed up with the exact same modem in hand. He suggested that I would be able to get a refund if I return it, so we'll see.

I seem to have lost the ability to do puzzles recently also. I fear that my run at the top of Justin's leaderboard is over, as I'm looking at two puzzles that I'm stuck on. And the latest issue of P&A! The warmup puzzles are the usual fare, but I've only got 3 (well, really 2.9) of the puzzles solved. Just because I know my Monty Python doesn't mean I can solve the Monty Python puzzle; just because I can solve the sudoku doesn't mean I can solve the sudoku puzzle; and so on. I think I need more sunlight.

Frustrations

The new P&A came out today. It will not print. I don't know why. I'm going to try it from the laptop to see if it's the Mac driver.

After two rounds (three hours!) of mahjong today in the ODMC, I won one hand. Total. Fortunately, that was good enough for second place in the second round, as Martin S. had a habit of going out selfdrawn, so no one else had any points either.

Just in time

The last two GMO recaps now available: rounds five and six. The Danish Open is this weekend, so hopefully I have both (1) learned something here and (2) can use what I have learned. We'll find out.

More Recaps

Hurray recaps! Rounds three and four from the GMO are now available.

Recaps

It's amazing how willing you are to do things after you've gotten eighteen hours of sleep and had a liter of Coke. My recapping of round 1 was delayed by the fact that I got (and, of course, accepted) three invitations to play games while reviewing this one. But here is round one from my point of view.

Added at 9am: And round two.

GMO Day 2

Round 4: A heavy-hitting table; Chris was at 7, the rest of us were at 6. The first hand not only took forever, but was a draw; we managed to finish seven nonetheless. Both of my winning hands were seven pairs; the seven pairs that I tried to turn into all pungs went nowhere. Just enough to get by Chris, who won one but self-drawn for second place. So now, eight points, twentieth place.

Round 5: We got through eight hands, with one player missing. I won three hands, but when another wins five, well. Another second place, ten points now, still twentieth place. I also realized that I forgot to save round 4. And that one I really did want to go back to look at, too.

Round 6: Also eight hands, but that's because several hands went by super-quick. (I believe there were three hands where I was ready with seventy-odd tiles left in the wall.) I managed to win four, so a big pile of points, another first-place. I finished 14/24 (so yay for meeting goals) in 13th place (so yay for the top quarter of the field). I guess this means I should set the goal for 16 for OODC at Thanksgiving.

So finally: The crosstable for the whole tournament. Obviously I got the tiebreaker thing fixed. I think only the bottom two players missed the entire tournament, although some other people missed parts (I know there were four people missing Saturday, and I think seven people missed the first round today, down to three or five for the last round. And one of those missing players got 2.5 table points!)

GMO Day 1

Round 1: Won one hand, which ended up being good enough for third place. (Could have won another, if I had realized that last tile was worth enough to make up for the lack of everything else.) Adrie won the table, with quite a bit of help with me (I don't play very strong defense; I know I'm throwing dangerous tiles, but I often figure it's worth it based on the hand, especially if I'm solidly in third place at the table -- and he snatched those up seemingly every time).

Round 2: We just barely got through six -- I doubted we would get through, as we had been averaging 16 min/hand for the first five and only had 10 min left for the last, but I was quick; unfortunately someone else was quicker and won with :20 on the clock or so. The person who had been first paid to the person who had been third; that gave the winner a 1-point lead on the previous leader, and I went from second to third. So only one more point for me. :(

Round 3: Finished the seventh hand with :15 on the clock. I won 29 selfdrawn, 12 on a discard, 31 on a discard, and 33 on a discard, which was my day's ration of good hands. A big pile of points, which gives me the top tie-breaker score for my score group (6 points), which means I am 18th, of 64. (There are 14 of us at six points.) My target score again is 13/24, and right now I am 6/12, so almost halfway there.

And so finally: the crosstable for day 1. I need to do something about those page breaks. (Update: fixed the page breaks, and also the strength-of-schedule calculation, 'cause I screwed it up when I changed the numbering to match MT's numbering scheme.)

Another Weekend, Another Tournament

This weekend it's the German Mahjong Open (online, of course). This is the only thing keeping me as high on the rating list as I am (36) -- if you miss a tournament, it counts as a zero. Another opportunity for me to save games and then neglect to go back and analyze them, and another opportunity for me to tweak my mahjong crosstable generator (which still doesn't handle ties, and is probably not engineered very well). We got to 64 players, which is a good turnout; two people on the waiting list, hopefully they'll let them take over for absent people at the start (always the bane of these tournaments).