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A couple of weeks back, I once again spent an afternoon helping to playtest the MaPP Challenge '26, a puzzle hunt aimed at math-enthusiastic high school students. When university math outreach n...
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I have once again updated the Phraser phrase list and word list. These are big text files that list out some common phrases, along with a hazily-computed score number for each phrase; high-score phr...
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Stencil artist Eclair Bandersnatch knows that it pays to increase your word power. Consider phthalates: if these chemicals are good for softening PVC plastic, maybe they can also soften your bones? T...
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Here are some of my popular posts from 2025. Now I can post a link to this post on the various social networks where I'm 99% dormant so folks can catch up. (If you're wondering about my active socia...
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My morning walk was longer than intended. There was a fun run going on in Golden Gate Park today. I kept thinking "Surely I have made it around the edge of the racecourse. I can now head back directl...
- Book Report: Frostbite
It's a book about food preservation. It's mostly about refrigeration; that's because in recent decades, developed countries concentrated on refrigration, setting aside research into other methods. ...
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My Saturday exercise walk took me out to 20th Ave and Irving St, where I saw that the shake-lovin' tricyclist sidewalk chalk art had accumulated more art down the block: a skateboarding Scooby Doo an...
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On January 16 2026, I played in the MIT Mystery Hunt with team Left Out. In Minneapolis, federal law enforcement agents were so bad at their jobs that they drove the crime rate up. In Cambridge, ne...
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I saw some things on my morning walk in #SanFrancisco. Ever since that Naga sea serpent went in, there's been sawhorses and caution tape warning folks away from the control boxes. This morning, the...
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I wrote a little #puzzle this morning. Here are some mixtures for you: brlueed 🥄➡️ ◯_ _ _ _ _ crourexam 🥄➡️ _ _ _ _◯_ _ _ bratmobiann 🥄➡️ _ _ ...
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The char picker (that little app you run if you want to enter an accented character or an emoji and you don't have the keyboard shortcut memorized) built into my desktop machine's OS was clunky enoug...
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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,...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 constructio...
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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 thing...
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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. ...
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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 ...
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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&hel...
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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 co...
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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 p...
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It is March and the lovely #EnigMarch people have challenged puzzle designers to write a puzzle inspired by today's word: "path". Oh no! The USA clown President Trump keeps getting math wrong! One...
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It is March and the lovely #EnigMarch people have challenged puzzle designers to write a puzzle inspired by today's word: "sound". Oh no! The USA clown President Trump sounds incoherent! People wh...
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It is March and the lovely #EnigMarch people have challenged puzzle designers to write a puzzle inspired by today's word: "wild". Oh no! The USA clown private citizen Trump demanded the death of fi...
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It is March and the lovely #EnigMarch people have challenged puzzle designers to write a puzzle inspired by today's word: "mystery". This year, when I don't immediately have an idea for a puzzle, I ...
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It is March and the lovely #EnigMarch people have challenged puzzle designers to write a puzzle inspired by today's word: "water". Oh no! The USA clown President Trump hallucinated immigrants commit...
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It is March and the lovely #EnigMarch people have challenged puzzle designers to write a puzzle inspired by today's word: "band". If you search the Epstein files for "band," you'll find messages fr...
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It is March and the lovely #EnigMarch people have challenged puzzle designers to write a puzzle inspired by today's word: "past". Oh no! The British clown King George was so bad at governing that th...
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It is March and the lovely #EnigMarch people have challenged puzzle designers to write a puzzle inspired by today's word: "concrete". Oh no! The USA clown President Trump is vain and gets angry when...
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It is March and the lovely #EnigMarch people have challenged puzzle designers to write a puzzle inspired by today's word: "kitchen". Oh no! The USA clown President Trump wants to put his extremely t...
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It is March and the lovely #EnigMarch people have challenged puzzle designers to write a puzzle inspired by today's word: "place". Oh no! The USA clown President Trump wants put his extremely toxic ...
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It is March and the lovely #EnigMarch people have challenged puzzle designers to write a puzzle inspired by today's word: "dog". Dogs are the best hotel guests. If you try to give dog-commands to hu...
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Some things I saw on my morning excercise walk in #SanFrancisco this morning. Kal Zakzouk chalk art advertising Smokin' D's. I wondered why a Texas BBQ place would have art with a lady in a not-so-...
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It is March and the lovely #EnigMarch people have challenged puzzle designers to write a puzzle inspired by today's word: "out". Oh no! The USA clown President Trump keeps pardoning blatant thieves,...
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It is March and the lovely #EnigMarch people have challenged puzzle designers to write a puzzle inspired by today's word: "air". Oh no! The USA clown President Trump built his reputation as a succes...
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It is March and the lovely #EnigMarch people have challenged puzzle designers to write a puzzle inspired by today's word: "classic". Oh no! The USA clown President Trump, who famously doesn't drink ...
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It is March and the lovely #EnigMarch people have challenged puzzle designers to write a puzzle inspired by today's word: "visit". Consider the "isi" in "visit": two identical letters surround anoth...
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It is March and the lovely #EnigMarch people have challenged puzzle designers to write a puzzle inspired by today's word: "card". Oh no! The USA clown President Trump said that rich foreigners can g...
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It is March and the lovely #EnigMarch people have challenged puzzle designers to write a puzzle inspired by today's word: "words". John Brockman wrote some words. He also became a literary agent spe...
- Trashpicking notes
Today I helped pick up trash on a few blocks around the Haight/Ashbury neighborhood. Some notes: Event organizer Cassius said: Don't bother picking up trash on Haight itself around here. The merchan...
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It is March and the lovely #EnigMarch people have challenged puzzle designers to write a puzzle inspired by today's prompt: "planet". "Planet" is an interesting word: if you strip off the surroundin...
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Some new-to-me pretty-subtle #SanFrancisco #StreetArt this morning. Can I say it's "new to me" if I'm not sure I haven't walked right under it many times without noticing? I was walking down the Will...
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It is March and the lovely #EnigMarch people have challenged puzzle designers to write a puzzle inspired by today's word: "moving". Oh no! The USA clown President Trump bombed Iran with no plan and ...
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It is March and the lovely #EnigMarch people have challenged puzzle designers to write a puzzle inspired by today's word: "cozy". Oh no! The USA clown President Trump wants to sell a drink cozy in h...
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It is March and the lovely #EnigMarch people have challenged puzzle designers to write a puzzle inspired by today's word: "file". I contemplated some of the Epstein files and was impressed by the wo...
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It is March and the lovely #EnigMarch people have challenged puzzle designers to write a puzzle inspired by today's word: "different". Oh no! The USA clown President Trump can't get any of his sycop...
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It is March and the lovely #EnigMarch people have challenged puzzle designers to write a puzzle inspired by today's word: "together". Oh no! The USA clown President Trump got so mad at his vice pres...
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It is March and the lovely #EnigMarch people have challenged puzzle designers to write a puzzle inspired by today's word: "down". What goes up must come down. All men are mortal. About some people p...
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It is March and the lovely #EnigMarch people have challenged puzzle designers to write a puzzle inspired by today's word: "fill". Can you fill in the surnames below? To help you out, the full list o...
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It is March and the lovely #EnigMarch people have challenged puzzle designers to write a puzzle inspired by today's word: "home". Oh no! The USA clown President Trump needs a place to live in 2029, ...
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On my morning's walk in #SanFrancisco at 20th and Irving, I once again noted a Kal Zakzouk sidewalk chalk piece of art: a lady with an umbrella kneeling by a pond. Was the artist inspired by news art...
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Today, I once again participated in an Upper Haight-area trash pickup event which I found out about through Bay Resistance. I thought of this as the "Safe & Healthy Haight" pickup, but when I got th...
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Out behind 400 Parnassus Ave in #SanFrancisco is a fine sheltered balcony from which to observe storm clouds blow past. ...
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A year and a half after a truck hit a pedestrian at Parnassus and Stanyan, we finally got some speed humps on Parnassus Ave. They're very, uh, gradual? I suppose the city wanted to say they'd done so...