Today I hosted the five-times-yearly puzzle party of the Los Angeles subset of the National Puzzlers' League.  I swept off those little prickly tree spheres from my sidewalk about an hour before the appointed time, when it struck me that I should in fact leave some of them on the walk, thusly:


( Read more... )

No doubt everyone reading this is aware that the DASH 3 puzzle hunt will take place on April 30, in 12 cities across the U.S., and has already signed up -- but for everyone else, go here now and reserve your team's spot in the city of your choice!

If the city of your choice is Los Angeles, I'll be one of your hosts for the event.

(And hey, why not ( Read more... )

On TV this weekend, a word was displayed that I thought was interesting, and a quick check just now confirmed it is the only single, unpunctuated word in Webster's Collegiate dictionary (not counting inflected forms) containing 2 pairs of DD -- that is:  *DD*DD*, where * = any string of 0 or more letters ( Read more... )

DAVID (my first name)
PAVID
PAVIS
PARIS
PARTS
PORTS
SORTS
SOOTS
SCOTS
SCOTT (my middle name)

(All intermediate words 11C or NI3)

I'm a member of a peer-to-peer lending site where you can invest money that gets pooled into loans to individuals, which (if all goes well) returns about 10% on investments rather than the low rates from banks or CDs.  (Obviously, risk is involved.)

Today, one prospective borrower added the following information to his or her loan request:

"Borrower ( Read more... )

Today at a meeting a colleague said: "All dogs lie down with fleas."

Part of my brain spent the rest of the meeting trying to think of a way to naturally interject: "If you flock with birds, you end up with feathers."

Rebecca (just now, from the other room):  What was the name of the gremlin when it wasn't a gremlin? [sic]

Me (because, like, I'm not a machine, you know):  Um ...

Rebecca:  Wasn't it Gidget?

Me:  No, it was Gadget ... no I mean Gizmo!

(Total elapsed time, about 8 seconds.)

Take a 5-letter liquid and a 4-letter ADJECTIVE describing that liquid.  Put one of them, intact, inside the other, and then reverse the whole string.

Adding a space gives the name of a well-known actor, who is quoted in his imdb.com biography as saying that his ADJECTIVE skin is the reason he looks a lot younger than his age.

Who is the actor?

I received a 2010 penny in change today.  Pennies now have shields on the back?!

The current headline on MSNBC.com is:

"Evasive BP CEO leaves Congress flummoxed"

So, which of them was flummoxed?