That bloke

I like cryptic crosswords. The problem with them is that they're either too easy or too hard. Neither of those gives the optimal solving experience. Some where the perfect puzzle exists, perhaps? I read a setter saying that the art of setting is to give in gracefully, which amounts to the same thing: I should have to think about it, but it shouldn't be baffling.

The fifteensquared blog breaks down how the solutions work, which is helpful, but the comment section is a depressing read. The commenters always love the puzzle, except for the easier ones. If I've gone to that site it's because the clues made no sense, but the commenters still say how much they enjoyed it. I want to tell them how bad it was, but I've seen people who've complained get stomped on, so I leave the happy commenters in their bubble.

Covid has removed a lot of the social aspect - no lunchtime pub crosswords any more - but also meant that I've done some on line with family members. Hooray for social puzzle solving!

I was talking to my father about eggs - he likes them boiled for breakfast. I said that I remembered as a small child I thought once that he gave me a second boiled egg, but it was just the shell of the first one turned upside down in the egg cup, so when I broke the shell there was nothing inside. I said it was probably the first time anyone played a practical joke on me. He said that he remembered doing that, but also that I was very cross about it. Strange that I remember it happening, but not my reaction.

Sometimes he would draw faces on the eggs. I think we had egg cosies to put on them, so I suppose that the face made that look like a hat.

Damn, I want a boiled egg now.

I like a cryptic crossword. The Guardian web site has them without paywall. EC and YC both expressed interest recently, and I've had to explain clues. It's only by doing that that I've realised how much arcane language is used. For example, today I was looking at a clue that relied on knowing that "side" is arrogance. I've never heard anyone use it that way, so how do I know? Because my grandmother told me about it when she was explaining a crossword clue.

Conversely, the same puzzle involved me knowing that "Tinder" = "app". So the target audience is people aware of popular phone apps who have also been doing crosswords for decades. So... me?

There's an NME list of the best 500 albums. Obviously there's a lot of stuff on there I've never heard. So it occurred to me that I could listen to all of them. Today I started at number 500 with Stankonia by OutKast.

There's a lot of problems with this while idea. I won't see this through to the end (which, spoiler alert, is The Queen is Dead by The Smiths). I would have to listen to things I know I don't like (for example, I can tolerate but am unlikely to enjoy Bob Dylan; I can't stick Bruce Springsteen - both of them are on there). I have to overcome prejudices (which started right at the beginning - Outkast have funk elements that I'm enjoying, but hip-hop elements that I'm managing to sit through).

If were to listen for 8 hours a day, assuming 45 minutes per album, I could be done in about a month and a half. Why not play along at home?

Hmm, hip-hop. There are two things that bother me. Testosterone-fueled self aggrandisement, anger and mysogyny aren't something I want to hear. Outkast were asking me repeatedly if I "want to hear about the gangsta shit?" No, not much, and stop calling women bitches. I accept that this is me manifesting white privilege and having less to be angry about, but realising that doesn't make it enjoyable. The other thing is that I want rappers to stop rapping and sing. That's why the more funk parts of this album work for me. But then I suppose it wouldn't be hip-hop, would it?

If this ridiculous music experiment carries on for long, I'll be able to explain why I don't like a whole lot of other things too. The music industry must be trembling.

Edit: I'm moving these to fartoomuchmusic

When I first knew my SO she lived with her parents. There was a room at the top of the house that wasn't used except for junk, so she cleared it, put up an easel, and used it for painting. It didn't occurred to me then that it was odd to have a room in your house that you didn't use.

But there was also a room referred to as "the table tennis room" which contained no table tennis table, and any way who has a whole room for that? There were some armchairs so you could sit in there, but no one did because who wants to go upstairs for a sit down? Then there was a room on the ground floor at the front that contained a table and a piano(!) and was called the dining room, but no one ate in there because there was a "breakfast room" next to the kitchen where all meals were eaten.

So that's three rooms they didn't use, and I'm not counting a spare bedroom that was only used occasionally for visitors. Someone asked me recently if we had a big house. If the criteria is "has rooms you never use" then no.

Enough about house size. Let's talk about what happens in bedrooms. When I came to stay in that big old house, I wasn't allowed to stay in my SO's room. We were both adults, but maybe the problem was that she asked her father. Then he then had a choice that made him uncomfortable. So after he said no, some creeping around was necessary. To begin with I was in the spare bedroom (see occasional use for visitors above). That meant stairs between us and tricky, creaky creeping. But when the junk room was cleared, I had a mattress in there and it was a very short journey.

But no one needs to feel that they'll be caught in mid creep. So when my children had people round they slept where they liked.

I had bread and I had blueberries. What would a blueberry sandwich be like? Made one. Yum! It's a bit like a jam sandwich but not so sweet. Probably works with other fruit, but that's what I had.

I've always spent a lot of time on my own, so I thought that the virus lockdown was no problem. But it turns out that I like the small scale interactions with other people. I'm a little bit more of a people person than I realised. It took a pandemic for me to find this out.

It takes a certain kind of game to get me interested. Yesterday I played Gorogoa which worked for me. It's beautiful (if you like Islamic-style intricacy) and has some very strange (but satisfying) game mechanics. I was finished in about three and a half hours, and I was disappointed that there wasn't more.

If that sounds interesting, give it a go, and don't find out any more before you start. Part of the fun for me was that I had no idea what to do at the beginning.

And I started thinking about Islamic design, and doodled a bit. The game artwork is, of course, enormously better than what I knocked up in 15 minutes. 8~)

When I was a child I liked the whimsicality of the 59th Street Bridge Song. What would it mean to have a conversation with a lamp post about flowers growing? Quite wilfully peculiar, thought young me. I had a mental picture of the lamp post on a little stone bridge like the ones in Amsterdam. The song mentions cobblestones, and I knew nothing of actual New York bridges. So it was a bit perplexing when I looked up the actual bridge recently. It's a huge piece of engineering, all girders and rivets, with nine lanes of traffic. And it's not even called the 59th Street Bridge.