Wednesday, March 28, 2018

Beat Me At My Own Game, Shows

I have finally come up will the perfect message to encode.  However, it will still be another two weeks or so before I can post it.  Therefore, it is time for another puzzle.  This week's theme is television.  Below is a list of television series.  However, I have re-worded their titles, but have kept most of their original meanings.  For example, if I wrote Self-possessed Minuscule Equine Equalizes Camaraderie with Mystical Prowess, you would answer My Little Pony:  Friendship Is Magic (what can I say, I have become somewhat of a 'brony').  Each of the shows has had at least one new episode in the last twelve months.  See how many you can name.  Answers appear at the bottom of the page.
  1.   An Unconfirmed Hypothesis Concerning an Extremely Large Loud Noise
  2.   Fractured Reality
  3.   Contemporary Unit of Those Related by Blood and/or Marriage 
  4.   Relatively Recent from Yonder Sea-going Vessel
  5.   Guide for Committing Homicide, sans Negative Reactions
  6.   Some Particular Group Equals  Same Particular Group
  7.   Very Nice Locale
  8.   British Matchstick
  9.   Home Food Preparation Area Bad Dreams
  10.   Absence of Color Meteorological  Electric Discharge
  11.   Former Manic Female Paramour
  12.   Pleasant Pastime Involving Royal Seating
  13.   Ambulatory Non-living Entities
  14.   Semi-formal Business Attire
  15.   Carbon-like Non-metal Dale 
  16.   Recent Young Female
  17.   Cerulean Bodily Fluids
  18.   More Peculiar Undefined Objects
  19.   Inebriated Past Events
  20.   Illegal Activity Discovery and Monitoring Group for Aquatic Military Forces (my favorite)
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ANSWERS
  1.   The Big Bang Theory
  2.   Life in Pieces
  3.   Modern Family
  4.   Fresh off the Boat
  5.   How to Get Away with Murder
  6.   This Is Us
  7.   The Good Place
  8.   Lucifer
  9.   Kitchen Nightmares
  10.   Black Lightning
  11.   My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
  12.   Game of Thrones
  13.   The Walking Dead
  14.   Suits
  15.   Silicon Valley
  16.   The New Girl
  17.   Blue Bloods
  18.   Stranger Things
  19.   Drunk History
  20.   NCIS (look up what the letters mean if you don't already know)

Wednesday, March 21, 2018

T Is Not for Thundersnow

A few years ago, the Weather Channel decided it should be naming winter storms affecting the United States in the same way international government agencies name tropical systems.  However, the criteria they use are not as precise as theirs.  Tropical systems are named based on location where they are formed, once they have achieved a minimum sustained wind speed.  The Weather Channel, a corporate division of NBC/Universal and now Comcast, uses the approximate total accumulation of wintry precipitation (snow, sleet, and/or freezing rain) and total population to be affected as their criteria.  This means that a relatively minor nuisance in a highly populated area, such as the Mid-Atlantic, could get a named storm, while a almost blizzard might be ignored in a low population area, such as the northern Great Plains.  A corporate entity should not have the power of deciding whether a weather event should be considered "major" or not.  It place too much importance on people as opposed to the weather itself.  Furthermore, the way it decides upon name is also somewhat skewed.  When it first started out, the Weather Channel had weather students pick out the names, mostly from Latin and fiction.  This season's names are more pedestrian and commonplace.  Mostly, they are forgettable. The most recent ones are still fresh, though, as they were all nor'easters, following similar paths.  In order, they were "Riley", "Quinn", and "Skylar." (Quinn was first named when it hit the west coast, and kept the name as it crossed the country, before striking New England.)  Now, the latest storm is called "Toby."  While it is slowly becoming a more popular name, at least three television series airing on Tuesday nights have characters named Toby or Tobias, the act does seem to be cross-promotional, as one of these series airs on NBC.  If timing had been better, this particular storm would have struck while the show was still airing new episodes, making a great promotional theme for the company.  As it is, this current storm is slow in churning out bad weather.  Because it is late March and already spring, much of the impact of this storm will fade quickly, with many areas having even three to five plus inches of snow melting fairly quickly.  In fact, done of these four storms have impacted myself personally, at least in any great degree.  Yes, it is forecast to produce some areas with thundersnow, the unique blend of blizzard and thunderstorm that drives some weather geeks wild.  It seems to drive viral video content, but it isn't as special as it once was before more people realized its special nature.  At least I will have s storm named after me.  T is too far into the alphabet to hope to have a tropical storm with my name, and more likely to be negative as well.

Tuesday, March 20, 2018

The Jack of the Film Trades

I am still having problems coming up with the right message to encode to show you  my technique.  Therefore, it will sometime next month before I will be able to show you something.  However, I had such a great time great time creating last week's puzzle, that I decided on making a few more.  This week's puzzle is based off of some of the more notable (if not necessarily noteworthy) films of 2017. The list below contains twenty film titles that have been reworded to disguise their identity, but the basic meaning has been kept.  For example, if you see Ebon Large Generic Feline, you answer would be Black Panther.  I know that it came out this year, but you get the idea.  See how many you can name.  Answers appear at the bottom of the page.
  1.   Figures Presented with Melted Ice
  2.   Leave the Premises Immediately!
  3.   Youthful Vehicle Director
  4.   A Catastrophe Creator
  5.   Miraculous Adult Female
  6.   THAT THING THERE
  7.   Least Lit Period of Sixty Minutes
  8.   Use Own Moniker to Answer for Mine
  9.   Ladies' Excursion 
  10.   Law and Order Establishment Organization
  11.   One Half of One Hundred Degrees of Color More Deep
  12.   An Enormous Discomfort
  13.   Ghostly Sewing Material
  14.   Madame Avian
  15.   Combat between All Genders
  16.   Infant Executive
  17.   Total Fighting Pertaining to Celestial Orb Inhabited by Non-human Anthropoids 
  18.   Extraterrestrial Contract
  19.   Most Remarkable Performer
  20.   Thoroughly Rotten Self, the Third  
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Answers
  1.   The Shape of Water
  2.   Get Out!
  3.   Baby Driver
  4.   The Disaster Artist
  5.   Wonder Woman
  6.   IT
  7.   Darkest Hour
  8.   Call Me by Your Name
  9.   Girls Trip
  10.   Justice League
  11.   Fifty Shades Darker
  12.   The Big Sicke
  13.   Phantom Thread
  14.   Lady Bird
  15.   Battle of the Sexes
  16.   Boss Baby
  17.   War for the Planet of the Apes
  18.   Alien:  Covenent
  19.   The Greatest Showman
  20.   Despicable Me 3 
  21.  

Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Master of the Bait and Switch

I know I said I would be presenting a new code type puzzle to solve this week, but I have been having a few problems getting everything just right.  So, I have come up with a simple puzzle of a different type instead.  Below is list of some titles from top songs of 2017.  However, the words have been changed, but the basic meaning remains the same.  See if you can guess the original titles and artists from the clues.  For example, "Very, Very Slowly" is "Despacito" by Louis Fonzi, Daddy Yankee, and Justin Beiber.  Okay, that one is more of a translation than a re-wording, but you get the idea.  Answers are hidden at the bottom of the page, underneath the border.
  1.   Observe My Reactions Due to That Persons Actions
  2.   Oscillate between Two Non-Adjacent Points on a Polygon
  3.   The Three-Dimensional Quality Possessed by That One
  4.   Mystical Properties Possessed by Pure Gold
  5.   Beyond Exceptional in Saying Farewell
  6.    Remain at This Location
  7.   Inquire for the Condition of the Collective First Person Objective Case
  8.   Notice Specifically 
  9.   Physical/Emotional Sensation Continues after the Initial Stimulus
  10.   Unrestrained Completely in Regards to Personal Forward Momentum
  11.   Your Physicality Resembles Unpaved Rural Driving Surface
  12.   Interpersonal Problems
  13.   Symbolic Representation for Current Conditions
  14.   Situations Equaling My Personal Preferences
  15.   Detection of Future Conditions Directly Sensed
  16.   Amorous Feeling Covering Cognitive Neurological Matter
  17.   Personally against Immortality on the Physiological Level
  18.   Want of Conditions Exact to Current Conditions
  19.   Fortified Edifice upon Yonder Smallish Mountain
  20.   Negative Response to Discovery of Information
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Answers
  1.   "Look What You Made Me Do "  Taylor Swift
  2.   "Side to Side" Arianna Grande and Nicki Minaj
  3.   "Shape of You" Ed Sheeran
  4.   "24K Magic" Bruno Mars
  5.   "Too Good at Goodbyes" Sam Smith
  6.   "Stay" Zedd with Alyssia Cara
  7.   "What About Us" P!nk
  8.   "Attention" Charlie Puth
  9.   "Feel It Still" Portugal the Man
  10.   "There's Nothing Holdin' Me Back" Shawn Mendes
  11.   "Body Like a Back Road" Sam Hunt
  12.   "Issues"  Jullian Micheals
  13.   "Sign of the Times" Harry Stiles
  14.   "That's What I Like" Bruno Mars
  15.   "I Feel It Coming" The Weeknd
  16.   "Love on the Brain" Rhianna
  17.   "I Don't Want to Live Forever" Zayn and Taylor Swift
  18.   "Something Just Like This" The Chainsmokers and Coldplay
  19.   "Castle on the Hill" Ed Sheeran
  20.   "Don't Wanna Know" Maroon 5

Wednesday, March 7, 2018

A Code in My Nodes

I have always been interested in codes and ciphers, even since I was a little kid.  I am not quite sure why.  It must lie near that perfect spot between my love of language and logic that just thrills me to no end.  My need for privacy and secrets, coupled with a unique curiosity for finding things out, just seems to blossom with coding.  I can't remember if it is my love of reading or puzzles that first got me hooked on codes, as either would have provided me with my first taste.  I remember seeing codes in the works of Poe and Doyle, as well as more age-appropriate reading, that were crucial to the plot.  I also remember simple substitution puzzles, again many not age-appropriate but still within my mental capacity, that I would try and solve.  Both would have occurred at roughly the same time, so I can't be sure which would have been first.  Regardless, I liked them, and I would try to get as much information on the subject as possible whenever I could, just like I do with any other thing I get interested in.  As with other things, my interest would wain whenever I had researched all that I could at the time.  It would still linger, in the back of my mind.  In college (actually, some of this may have started in high school), I tried to come up with a code that would be simple to implement, yet very had to decipher.  I come back to this goal every so often.  Just a few years ago, I think I finally came up with something that would fit all of my criteria.  It would be easy for someone to encode, but might be very hard for someone to crack, even with a computer.  In fact, with just a little tweaking, a computer might not be much help at all.  Of course, it would have very little use outside of puzzle making.  Once I reveal it and use even one time, its usefulness would plummet. Still, I am thinking of using it for the next puzzle I will post here.  It is taking me a few weeks to get everything together.  One you see why, you will understand why it is taking so long.  There is a lot of prep time needed for this, especially in coming up with the perfect message to be encoded.  It might be next week, but I am looking at on or two weeks after that.  It looks like this will be a short post this week, but wait until I finally can post my next puzzle.  It looks like it could be a big one.