h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Well, tapdancing is one thing, carrying a sword is another, but tapdancing *while* carrying a sword is quite confusing and dangerous, and leads me to ask why you are doing it.

Have you seen the unaus tapdancing? Mindspring appears to have taken lessons from Gene Kelly movies. And Singin in the Rain is one of my favorite movies.

Can we ask what is the reason for this upwelling of joy?

What she said!

Welcome to Friday, everyone, hope you survived the week, and are ready for the weekend.

My joy's almost always upwelling. It's my status quo. And I'm always tapdancin'. And I always carry a sword because it's the only weapon I'm proficient in that can, while sheathed, double as a tap dancing cane.

I swear, you folks pick the strangest things to be weirded out by.

My apologies, I had mistaken your sword for a double handed broadsword, which clearly would not have doubled as a tap dancing cane.

I used to do a little soft shoe, back in the day.

[Yar tapwalks in, carrying a sheathed katana and wearing tapdancing shoes. He looks like he's about to start dancing, but then frowns, realizing that the curvature of the katana makes it ill-suited for use as any sort of cane, and frowns, tapwalking out again.]

*claps anyway*

*Blinks. Pulls his sword out of his sheath*

Broadsword? No, see, this is a one-handed longsword. I suppose I could hold it in two hands if I really wanted to...but I'd have to learn all new techniques for that.

[Yar] [leans back in] I suppose two years ago I would've encouraged you to do so anyway, in the hope that they'd turn out to be more powerful techniques. [pops back out again]

[Dylan appears, looking slightly more like Yar actually does now, and continuity-bleaches out the accidental use of HTML in a forum which neither supports HTML nor has an "edit" button.]

*Lil has sat down at the scrabble board and has helped herself to a tray and some tiles*

Politics are exhausting. IIEM, can I have another Hot Shot?

*The Librarian leans back in his chair, sips his almost depleted banana puree drink, and pretends nonchalance as he watches Lil peruse the board and her tiles...*

*...then, he quietly draws his next seven and places them in his rack.*

[Mog glances over at the impending scrabble game, resisting the urge to look over someone's shoulder and say something like "No, qrrbrbirlbel only has three b's"]

Check your dictionary, Mog.

*Looks at Lil's Scrabble game*

You know, the most recent Puzzle that I created was based off of a Scrabble game that I played a few months back. Sad to say I lost the game, though I at least managed to be the one to end the game, so that counts for somethin'.

That does, really.

IIEM, can I get a non-fat latté?

[Mog] Did the puzzle have any particular context or purpose, or was it just general puzzle-making-because-I-can, sort of thing?

Both, actually. I design puzzles as a hobby, and I submit some of them to Perplex City's "We Love Puzzles" website.

http://www.welovepuzzles.com/permalink/puzzle/8608/

One downside to this website is that they only allow user-submitted puzzles to be answerable in the form of multiple choice questions. I've had a few puzzles that could have been quite difficult (or at least more difficult than presented) without the four given options. This is why I'm also toying with the idea of creating a magazine of puzzles for local kids (no way it'd generate enough interest to make it reasonable to publish often, but it might be a fun exercise in writing and publishing.)

You could do a magazine, or your own website -- maybe find someone who can come up with a puzzle engine that allows more complex (non-muti-choice) solutions?