Larry Hosken: New

It is March and the lovely EnigMarch people have challenged puzzle designers to write a puzzle inspired by today's word: "hint".

Suppose you're trying to log into a computer that isn't yours. The password hint is "Mary's violet eyes keeps John up." What passwords might you try?

I can't claim credit for this "puzzle". I got it from William Murphy, by way of the Epstein files. Murphy, as near as I can tell, did IT work for Jeffrey Epstein. He set up the computer password and set up the hint.

Hints, rot13'd:

Pnershy! Zhecul zrffrq hc jura jevgvat gur cnffjbeq uvag.
"Znel'f ivbyrg rlrf" vf evtug ohg "xrrcf" vf n zvfgnxr.
Jung zvtug Z… I… R… or n zarzbavp sbe?

Answer: in an email from Murphy, preserved in the Epstein files.

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2026-03-04T01:51:07.802871

It is March and the lovely #EnigMarch people have challenged puzzle designers to write a puzzle inspired by today's word: "center".

Oh no! The USA clown President Trump halted production of penny coins without warning! If any other president had done it, you know they would have had their ducks in a row; but Trump's just going by whim. If you ask him why he stopped making pennies, all he has left to say is "Er…" Silver lining: he inspired me to write a crossword puzzle.

Unlike most of my EnigMarch puzzles, this doesn't have an answer word/phrase. It's just a crossword to fill in! Careful, though: there's a gimmick.

top of a crossword grid. Also the clue for 1 Across (3 letters): What these letters have: àéô

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2026-03-03T16:33:47.647450

It is March and the lovely #EnigMarch people have challenged puzzle designers to write a puzzle inspired by today's word: "color".

🔴🟠🟡🟢🟣

Oh no! Donald Trump Jr was so scared of refugees that he… uh, hang on.

I was researching a different puzzle idea in the Epstein files when I got distracted. I saw the way Epstein took notes in one notebook. It was in code: For example, "Detildkoyuataendg" ain't English. But it wasn't too tough to crack this code when you noticed how he laid out his writing. Like this seeming nonsense scribbled in next to a magazine(?) clipping:

excerpt from notebook. There's a magazine(?) clipping and some hand-printed text. The clipping: 'title: Ivana Trump. Entrepeneur [I guess this is Don Trump Sr talking]: She once asked me how I handled the press during my divorce. She said 'You came out of your divorce with diginity and pride, and that's how I would like to come out of mine.'' The hand-printed text is laid out in pairs of rows. To read it, you don't read across, but in a sawtooth pattern, a simple transposition cipher. E.g., the first row starts out 'De' and the second row starts out 'es'. By reading sawtooth, you get 'Does'. Full text: Does this lady know you cant have any digity if youve been with him? I know I have none. Only skittles'

Here's a puzzle: After being with Trump Sr., what did Epstein have instead of dignity? (Answer is in the image's Alt text.)

🔴🟠🟡🟢🟣

(More similarly-coded text is in that notebook. Fair warning: It gets pretty grim.)

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2026-03-02T03:40:33.083059

I updated my "CarpHick" char picker web app thingy: You can now pick circled letters and numbers like ① and Ⓩ. When I was setting up CarpHick and looking over the Unicode spec to figure out which of the worlds' many symbols to list/omit, I thought "What on earth is an 'enclosed alphanumeric'? I dunno, so I bet I never use them. Guess I'll skip them." But it turns out they are thingies like ① and Ⓩ which I use a bunch during EnigMarch.

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2026-03-01T16:41:04.101604

On yesterday morning's walk in #SanFrancisco at 20th and Irving, I once again noted a Kal Zakzouk sidewalk chalk piece of art: a CNY-appropriate fire horse pondering a delivery scooter.

sidewalk chalk art: a horse with a Chinese-painting-ish-flames-mane looks at a delivery scooter

sidewalk chalk art: zooming in on the fire horse's head

sidewalk chalk art: zooming in on the delivery scooter. a passenger in the back drinks from a carton of 'woke milk'

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2026-03-01T22:27:12.447568

It is March and the lovely EnigMarch people have challenged puzzle designers to write a puzzle inspired by today's word: "season".

Oh no! The USA clown President Trump has made a total mess of things again!

Looking for puzzle-writing inspiration, I of course searched the released-so-far Epstein files for "season," and thus found myself reading a party invitation from Jared Kushner (Donald Trump's son-in-law) to Jeff Epstein for a party at the Four Season [sic] restaurant. I thought "Huh, that's funny, clown got the name wrong," and then got swept away in nostalgia for that time the Trump administration failed to hold a press conference at the Four Seasons Hotel Philadelphia and instead held it the parking lot of Four Seasons Total Landscaping. I remember reading about the conference, train of thought starting out normal but then seeing that out-of-place word "Total" and realizing that the whole meaning had changed.

Here are some phrases that start out saying one thing, then say TOTAL and then something else that changes the meaning. Fill in the blanks. When you're done, the circled letters should spell out what all these TOTALs have made you.

I expected a hotel, but instead got a lot of lawn trimmers‽
`F o u r Ⓢ e a s o n s`	`TOTAL L a n d s c a p i n g`
I expected a country, but instead watched Karolína Muchová and Victoria Mboko play tennis‽
`_◯_ _ _ _`	`TOTAL-_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _`
I expected a car, but instead got an organization with "total" in the name, which seems like bad luck for things associated with cars‽
`_ _ _ _ _ _ _`	`TOTAL _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _◯`
I expected a citizen of the USA, but instead got an old-timey display for parimutuel betting‽
`_◯_ _ _ _ _ _`	`TOTAL-_ _ _ _ _ _`
I expected slot machines, but instead got reminded not to skip leg day‽
`_ _ _ _ _`	`TOTAL _ _ _ _◯_ _`
I expected to start playing golf, but instead missed the 19th hole‽
`_ _ _-`	`TOTAL-_◯`

Here are the "pieces" you're trying to fit in those blanks: American, Bally, Citroën, -Energies Open, -er, Fitness, ~~Four Seasons~~, -isator, ~~Landscaping~~, Quatar, Tee-, World Rally Team

Here is the puzzle solution, rot13'd:

f / Sbhe Frnfbaf Gbgny Ynaqfpncvat / V rkcrpgrq n ubgry, ohg vafgrnq tbg n ybg bs ynja gevzzref‽
h / Dhngne Gbgny-Raretvrf Bcra / V rkcrpgrq n pbhagel, ohg vafgrnq jngpurq Xnebyían Zhpubiá naq Ivpgbevn Zobxb cynl graavf‽
z / Pvgebëa Gbgny Jbeyq Enyyl Grnz / V rkcrpgrq n pne, ohg vafgrnq tbg na betnavmngvba jvgu "gbgny" va gur anzr, juvpu frrzf yvxr onq yhpx sbe guvatf nffbpvngrq jvgu pnef‽
z / Nzrevpna Gbgny-vfngbe / V rkcrpgrq n pvgvmra bs gur HFN, ohg vafgrnq tbg na byq-gvzrl qvfcynl sbe cnevzhghry orggvat‽
r / Onyyl Gbgny Svgarff / V rkcrpgrq fybg znpuvarf, ohg vafgrnq tbg erzvaqrq abg gb fxvc yrt qnl‽
e / Grr-Gbgny-yre / V rkcrpgrq gb fgneg cynlvat tbys, ohg vafgrnq zvffrq gur 19gu ubyr‽

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2026-03-01T13:45:10.705942

A couple of things I saw in #SanFrancisco's Fishmerman's Wharf this morning:

There's a building missing. I guess one of the wharf places was beyond renovation and needed a tear-down and construction.
The statue Desert Shark by Peter Hazel. This piece must have seemed pretty ironic, like (ahem) a fish out of water, in its original venue the Nevada desert Burning Man festival. Here on the San Francisco waterfront, it loses that "oomph" of irony. It's hard to think of a less-ironic place to put it. Maybe across the bay in the town of Tiburon I guess?

that area of crab-chowder restaurants in Fisherman's Wharf, but there's construction fencing up and a building missing

that area of crab-chowder restaurants in Fisherman's Wharf, seen from the back. There's a building missing

Statue of a shark belly-surfing a wave. it's gray, but the top looks like someone put a mosaic-filter blue patch on top

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2026-02-14T20:59:04.964211

Yesterday, the Super Bowl took place in Santa Clara, a few towns south. A bunch of reporters and pundits stayed in #SanFrancisco and my socials were peppered with screen shots of various people from around the USA discovering that that SF is not a knee-deep-in-💩 hellscape, despite Trump's tweets to the contrary. "We were so surprised by what we were told and expected versus when we walked through the streets."

Good. SF ain't perfect, but it's nowhere near as bad as you might think if you believed right-wing pundits.

This morning, I walked downtown. I do that every couple of months, when I donate blood. You're not supposed to exercise for a few hours after donating, so I get my daily exercise by walking to the blood donation place.

Along my route, there are a few blocks on Market near the Tenderloin that normally each have several people suffering: probably unhoused, probably addicted to some bad drugs. This morning was different, though. This morning, there was maybe a handful of such folks, total. I'm pretty sure a bunch of these people were swept under the proverbial rug for the weekend so that we'd present a pretty picture for the influx of visitors, especially influence-y reporter-ish visitors.

Anyhow, don't believe the dystopic tweets. But maybe don't believe your lying eyes, at least not this past weekend. It's not normally like this.

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2026-02-09T22:22:08.148687

I continue to check my little dashboard of #SanFrancisco COVID numbers each morning to decide whether to go get professionally made coffee at my local Peet's or make so-so coffee at home. As you may recall, I track three numbers: number of positive (i.e. sick) tests; % positive tests; and COVID detected in wastewater. A couple of weeks ago, the COVID-in-wastewater number zoomed up sharply. It was so sharp, I assumed it was just a momentary blip (wastewater numbers are noisy), but it stuck around. The last time I blogged about these numbers, it was because all three were at "pretty safe" levels. This time, I'm blogging to note that they're not all pretty-safe. I'll still go out for coffee,* though. The COVID-in-wastewater isn't super high, and the PCR test levels are still low.

graph charting three measurements over the past 60 days. two measurements have stayed low the whole time: number of positive PCR tests and % of positive PCR tests. The green line, COVID in wastewater has generally been higher (though below the 'pretty safe' line. A couple of weeks ago, it shot up to about 50% over the safe level. since then, though it's wobbled, it's stayed at about the same level

I dunno why the COVID-in-wastewater went up so much. I just saw an article about how recent improvements at the Southeast Treatment Plant helped it smell better, I thought maybe someone moved a sensor after they re-opened that part of the plant. But now that I double-check, I see that work happened a few months ago. So, uh, 🤷

*Joke's on me: The new Peet's corporate closed my local shop. I guess I'll make my own coffee at home after all.

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2026-02-06T17:48:00.662813

The Storybook House at Masonic Ave/Upper Terrace has their Valentine's Day decorations up. One word: 💕♥️ Hearts! 💖💗

The place across the street also has decorations up. More than one word, I guess.

#SanFrancisco

mansion with a big front yard decorated with many, many hearts. Also in view is a splash of plum blossoms

strip of front yard in front of vehicle parked in house driveway. the yard strip has some decorations. closest to the viewer is a horse-skeleton Hallowe'en decoration, the kind that inexplicably has ears. It's been painted black and augmented with ghostly white hair where some horses have long hair: the mane plus feathering on the lower legs. Also the eyebrows. (I forget if there was also a tail, dang.) Next a painted-plaster-statue showing a kinda-cartoon-y looking duckling hatching from a pastel-painted Easter egg. Last we have a wrought-iron planter shaped like Cinderella's carriage painted bright pink and carrying various flowers and ferns and such. Didn't make it into the photo: there's a concrete-looking sea serpent which would be the standout detail in almost any other yard, but kinda faded into the background in this context.

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2026-02-04T17:05:07.632095