And the word of the day is...

Here is a Sudoku puzzle for you featuring letters instead of numbers!

And on a completely unrelated note, here is a funny joke.

Accidental Youtube - Legal Interns Being Nerds

I liked the idea behind this entry that I did a while back and so thought I'd revisit it. I even used the same website! This time I came up with the uncommon interjection "Oyez". This was the first link that came up. It is a video of a perfectly normal bailiff performing a standard opening ceremony for the Supreme Court of the State of West Moorleens (??).



It's nice to know that people who join the legal profession are just as prone to terrible bouts of embarrassing nerd humor as the rest of us.

Looking at the Spring Thing

The great thing about IF? The graphics.

So... there are a few IF competitions throughout the year. There's the generically titled "IF Comp" which begins mid-fall but the other "big" competition is the "Spring Thing". There are several differences between these two competitions. For one, the annual IF Comp gets much more attention (at least from outside the IF community) and it gets a ton more entrants. I'm fairy certain these two facts are correlated. But more importantly, the fall IF Comp is more for medium sized works of IF, whereas the Spring Thing has no such limitations and is thus implicitly if not explicitly for longer form games. The only problem is that is takes a TON of time to write one good medium sized game. Last year they didn't even have a Spring Thing because not enough people entered (i.e. I don't think there was any). This year, there was a substantial uptick with it looks like six entrants.

Crosswords - The Pick Up Artist

Hey, beautiful. I couldn't help but notice you standing across the room, looking beautiful and lonely. And I remember thinking that all you needed was an arm around your shoulder and someone to talk to. What are you drinking? Looks tasty. Can I have a... No, no.... You don't have to call over the bouncer. Ha. Ha. I was just joking, see look at me. I'm laughing! You're laughing! Wow, God. It's good to laugh. Ha. Ha. Ha. Wow. You know, it's amazing, I feel like we just met and yet I'm already feeling this connection to you. Like I've already spent time camped outside your bedroom window with binoculars. What? No! No way! No! That must have been someone else driving a red Toyota Camry. Say, let's change the subject, you know I don't mean to be forward but, is it just me or do you seem a bit uncomfortable right now? Hmm? How about we ditch this crazy joint and go back to my place. I've got a pantry full of rip olives and a DVR filled with Hoarder's episodes, huh? How bout it? Or we could swing by here and solve my new crossword puzzle, or we could-- Woah! Woah! Okay, okay! I get the idea! You don't have to spray me with mace in the face twice!

The IM-Personals - Part 1

Remember: This is what Julie Andrews looks like

Okay, so I was trying to brainstorm a puzzle idea, and it hit me that if I could find a repository of images of celebrity impersonators and then select a few that missed their marks, that it could create a pretty awesome puzzle. Well, frankly, after perusing this website let me tell you that I grossly under-estimated how fascinating looking at people trying to look like other people can be. So I've decided why not draw out a few separate blog posts out of it, amirite? Just like the gummint draws the blood of our nation through taxing the wealthy. Amirite? Sorry, I've been hanging out with libertarians. (NOT ON PURPOSE!!)

Judging a Book by its Cover

I'm not going to waste time talking about why I haven't updated this blog for a while, since it doesn't really matter. Actually, I hadn't even thought much about this blog until last weekend I published a new crossword puzzle (and there are more on the way!) and it occurred to me that my profile directs people to this website.

So it occurred to me that I might as well give them something to look at, eh? So here's a new visual puzzle. I've taken the covers of 20 classic works of literature and clumsily removed the title and author's name using some free photoshop clone from the Chrome store. Some of these are famous covers. Many are not, but well read and observant puzzle solvers should get most of them. How many can you figure out? I'll post the answers on Friday.

P.S. - Click here if you want to see a larger version of the puzzle.

And We're Back!... again

When I was a little kid, my parents didn't believe in corporal punishment. They believed in psychological torture instead. Whenever I was bad or did something naughty, they would give me this look like I had become the greatest embodiment of human disappointment and then with a heavy sigh they would say, "Brooks, Let me see your hand"... and so I would fearfully put out my hand and they would tap it firmly with their finger and say "Bad Brooks! Bad Bad Bad Brooks!" and then I would weep uncontrollably.

Ah... Childhood memories. Just remember parents, mental scars are the kind that don't heal.

Anyway, I'm returning (we'll see for how long (no promises!)) to blogging. I know I pretty much screwed the pooch for the IF competition, not even getting to half of the entries. (though may I say that I was pretty down with the results) I think I'll put up a post later on talking about how my general reactions, etc.

Why was I away for over a month??? Well let me tell you, my charming and well-endowed readers: It's none of your damned business. But let me just say that I couldn't bring myself to review the next game on my list, "The Bible Retold: The Lost Sheep" because I was an asshole and had signed up to beta-test that particular game and had flaked out on the author. This would be bad enough on its own, if that very same author hadn't beta-tested my own (and only) game and was one of my two best testers! So I'm sorry Ben Pennington! You are awesome!

So I didn't want to write the review, so I just kept putting it off and, well blah, blah, blah. Anyway, we'll see how this current batch of posts does me. I'm actually much busier now than I was in the past month. Work has been crazy, I'm just gearing up for a play I'm in, I'm applying to Grad-school and the holidays will soon be upon us, which, and I think I speak for all of is, means that we'll be getting an extra dose of crazy in the way of dysfunctional friends and relatives. 

But I'm back, and thanks for staying with me, or coming back.

P.S. - For those people who are simultaneously puzzle solvers, Interactive Fiction hobbiests, and Top Chef fanatics, you are going to LOVE this blog. For the rest... you can find pictures of grammatically challenged cats saying adorably stupid things here.