Posts Tagged ‘puzzles’
Find Both
This morning, we built a fire in the fireplace to ward off the chill of the dampness we awoke to after an overnight thunderstorm. The temperature is in the 30s (F). Above freezing, at least. Yesterday, the high nearly reached 80 degrees. The bouncing of spring, I guess.
We met Jeremy! He is the new person who will be our primary contact with This Old Horse. As such, he will be the person delivering bags of grain for the mares.
On his first visit, he came bearing seven new bags. Literally, new bags. They are paper bags instead of the woven plastic previously in use. I didn’t handle them, but Cyndie reported they seem like they will rip easily. One had torn when Jeremy loaded it in his car.
He drives a Subaru and is a big lover of cats. Interesting seeing the enhanced logo he added to his car since the car brand markets itself so very strongly as a dog-friendly automobile. Meow.
How about a puzzle exercise for your Saturday morning or whenever you happen to read this? There are two things to be noticed in each of the following photos. Try your eyes and see if you can figure out what my crazy mind is thinking.
One is easier to spot than the other.
Click the thumbnail below for solutions…
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But Wait
Sometimes, it’s not what you think. When searching for something that continues to elude discovery because it is not where you expect it to be, one strategy is to go back to the start. I did just that yesterday and, although I may have ended up even farther from what I am ultimately seeking, I gained valuable new insight.
Since my search for the birth record in Hinesburg, VT of my 3rd-great grandfather John Hays (b.1795) was exclusively based on information taken from his youngest son’s death record, I decided to revisit that source death record to confirm I wasn’t misremembering anything.
Oftentimes, the information collected and entered onto the family tree record becomes gospel despite each tidbit of detail for each record having variable degrees of accuracy. It pays to keep in mind the fragility of the whole collection.
I looked up the actual record from which I picked up the belief my ancestor was born in Vermont.
Upon a fresh viewing, the first thing that caught my eye was that both parents are shown with the birthplace of Hinesburg. I have other sources about Laura Kittle that tell me that is not accurate.
It’s like having the wrong piece of a jigsaw puzzle in place that makes it impossible to find any adjacent pieces that will fit.
If it isn’t accurate for Laura, then what makes me think it is correct for John? Who provided that information upon John B.’s death? Why was that thought to be true? Something must be behind the thought of Hinesburgh being the place of birth. What could that be?
I have found a surprisingly thorough history of Hinesburgh, Vermont that makes the place sound barely established when I am trying to envision my ancestors being there. The first (colonial) birth was noted as happening in 1785 and there were no doctors yet. Despite there being very few families noted in the history of this community around that time, there is absolutely no mention of the name Hay(e)s anywhere.
Next, I revisited the details I’ve collected about John(b.1795) and tried finding notice of his death in 1840. I learned that death records weren’t kept before 1869 in Ontario. However, I did rediscover one of his daughters (under her married name) was buried in the same cemetery near Vankleek Hill.
Maybe, with her married name, I can find her death record to see if that one lists the birthplace of her parents. Of course, think about it. I really am relying on whoever the survivors were to report this information at the time of death. Genealogy research is one endless puzzle.
I think I’ll go finish the jigsaw currently on the old family table and get away from the online searching for a day.
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Why Wordle
I have been contemplating the rapidly expanding popularity of the online word game, Wordle, and wondering what it is about it that appeals so. Since you can only play one word per day, that seems like it would be a detriment to the ever-expanding popularity. At the same time, it just might be one of the plusses.
The urge to play another round cannot be easily satisfied, so the attraction is maintained?
It seems to me, although individual interpretation will certainly vary widely, the game is rather simple without being too easy. The obvious target audience would be people who are fond of words and playing with words and solving puzzles.
The clues provided and the limitation of 5-letter words offer just enough support to keep the solution within reach of the six guesses available.
The randomness of letter options chosen for each turn creates an exciting mystery that determines the odds for solving on subsequent turns.
What a wonderful surprise it must be for the founder, John Wardle, to see how popular his creation has become.
Something about this game has triggered memories of an old favorite word game our family played in the car when trying to kill time during our frequent 3-hour drives to the lake place when the kids were young. Each player can select a word to be guessed and the first word Julian selected became the name of our made-up game ever after: “labelye” (La [soft A] • bull • yee).
What made the game difficult was that it was played completely in our minds. We had to visualize the letters in our heads to scramble and descramble them. Julian chose the word eyeball and had to scramble them into a pronounceable word clue for us to work with.
We could ask him to spell it, so we had the right letters to decode, but sounding out the scrambled word was one way to keep all the letters in our minds while trying to rearrange them into a solution. It was a trick to do without writing anything down and that probably made it too hard to catch on as a game that we kept playing as time went by, but it worked pretty slick for a while to occupy our attention and distract each of us from the doldrums of being trapped in a vehicle for longer than desired.
None of us were able to solve Julian’s scramble, so he won the round by stumping us and that helped nudge his word to become the name of the game from then on.
I suppose it wouldn’t be too complicated for a skilled game developer to build an app for that old car game so word puzzlers will have something new to play with after Wordle has faded out of the viral game-of-the-moment moment.
“Hey, Alexa! Give me a Labelye word to descramble while I wait for tomorrow’s next Wordle game.”
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New Puzzle
The urge has been rekindled in a big way lately. Jigsaw puzzling has become a daily craving once more. Much to both our surprise, Cyndie has picked up the bug as much as I and for the first time in all our years together, we are sharing the joys of assembling the scattered pieces.
I recently received a hot tip on another chicken puzzle, this one by the Cobble Hill Puzzle Company.
With an all-white border, we are again foregoing the usual norm of completing all the edges before moving on to other details. I’m finding it wonderfully liberating.
An anonymous quote included among the many on the puzzle:
“A true friend is someone who thinks you are a good egg, even when you are slightly cracked.”
Yeah. Like that.
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Relative Something 