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

Deb

I've been running about and not having time to respond here, but one thing up there that I just have to remark upon (apart from the casual mention of the Moet) *jealous* was the Words of Wonder game. Icy is ahead of me! and I seem to be a bit stuck on a level. I'd been in the lead for ages....


Oh, and TC, the cabbage/cauliflower were alternates, not meant to be in the same dish.

I generally get through the Words of Wonder puzzles after two or three attempts, but they're getting harder. One recently took me about 10 goes.

My dinner yesterday at Chez Max was a very French affair. The restaurant even had snails and frog's legs on the menu. I've tried both of those in the past and wasn't impressed. I had baked cheese for entrée, and roast lamb for main course, with lots of wine. The wine is the reason I didn't post a full report yesterday evening. It was a pleasant surprise when it turned out someone else was paying. The first of the pre-Christmas celebrations.

I can get through most of the Words of Wonder levels first time, with the exception of anything involving flying letters and large numbers of short-timer bombs, which can only be solved with remarkable good luck.

Tactics for the other levels are:

If it's an ink level but the letters are easy, then explode two 7-letter word bonuses to clear them.

If it's a quills level, just work in one vertical channel, then any future quills will appear in the same channel which you have cleared.

If it's a timed level, go for 5-letter words ending in S

If there are curse tiles, hit them first before anything else.

Those are my tactics too, Icy. The best tactic of all is to make two 7 letter words, then join the resultant bonus tile into a single word and it clears the whole board. I'm stuck on the level with lots of bombs and flying letters you need to use. They're usually at opposite corners of the board... I just need a bit of luck to get a board where they coincide enough to get past. (sorry for hijacking this thread Gnomon)

Your dinner sounded wonderful. It's not even Advent yet, but who would turn down any celebratory meal. Even a Christmas humbug like me would enjoy the company, food and wine!

I went to a restaurant once that did snails. I asked the waiter 'Do you have frogs legs?' He said' No, I have always walked like this.'

I'll get my coat

I thought Words of Wonder was a multi-player scrabble game, but Icy's post has set me back on my hells. Curse tiles?? It sounds like poker played with all sorts of daft rules (one-eyed jacks are wild on Tuesdays if it's raining).

Words of Wonder is Boggle with knobs on.

The window cleaner came round in the morning, so we now have clean windows. It was the first time he had been since this time last year, as had fallen off a roof just after that and was out of action. I'd cleaned the windows myself, but had not done as good a job.

He's a delightful man to chat to, sharing a lot of my interests including choral singing, so we had a long conversation over coffee.

In the afternoon today, I went to another remembrance ceremony for all the people who had died in the last year, including my father. This one was in the Nursing Home where he lived for the last year of his life and where he died. It was sobering that 8 of the residents had died in the same year as my father.

I had a choir committee meeting in the evening, then at 11, I drove Iz and her friends into town for the midnight showing of the second Hunger Games film. Mrs G will go in at 2 to collect them.

Deb

Mrs G collected Iz from the cinema at 3 this morning and they were home by 3:20. I slept through this. Apparently, "Catching Fire (Hunger Games 2)" is "v good would recommend", the highest accolade of a modern hipster teenager.

In work, I'm moving desk again - the fourth time in two years - so I spent the last hour packing everything into crates, sticking notices on everything and getting ready to go. When I return on Monday, I'll be in a new sunny office - this is just a temporary move while they redecorate the area I'm in. It hasn't changed since I first came here in 1986 - still the same lime-green carpet, which is looking rather threadbare now after nearly 30 years.

We've big choir tonight - practising Christmas music for our concert on the 9th of December.

Tomorrow I'm off work because a guy is coming to look at our burglar alarm. It was installed by Mrs G's late dad many years ago and could do with an overhaul.

The alarm guy arrived late so he's now rushing around with a helper to get it all finished before we have to go out. El and Iz are playing in Noye's Fludde by Benjamin Britten in St Patrick's tonight and we want to hear them play.

Spent the time I was waiting finishing my Prats de Mollo entry and getting it into Peer Review.

Ooh, just discovered a bug in Pliny. Wonder if it has been fixed in new Pliny?

No it isn't

I'm still in Brunel. Let us know when it's safe to shift.

Brunel doesn't have too many bugs, but it does crash fairly regular; Pliny doesn't. I'd say that if you don't write entries, you'd be best to change when the new Pliny comes out.

Noye's Fludde was a great performance. It's the story of Noah's Ark for children. There's an orchestra with lots of recorders, there's whole troop of little children dressed as animals, there's some good singers are Noah, his Wife, their three sons and their wives. There are dancers representing the waves of the storm, there's the raven who was sent out to find dry land and never came back, and dove that returned with an olive branch.

I never knew they had five pandas on board the ark.

The music is really good. It has all sorts of little clever touches - the flutter-tongued recorder to represent the dove, the weird chromatic cello solo of the searching raven, the storm, the VOICE OF GOD, the steadfast believers singing to the Lord while the thunder rolled around them. We the audience were given three hymns to sing along with at certain points. It's a great way to get the audience on your side - fill the stage with tiny children dressed as cats and zebras; and to get a standing ovation, tell the audience to stand for the final hymn and not sit down until the end of the show.

A great night.

If Death talks in small caps, I suppose God must speak in all caps. You've made me think of the old Bill Cosby routine.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bputeFGXEjA

Hadn't seen that one.

Saturday. The only things on the schedule for today so far are:

Collect El's old cello from the repair shop. Then we'll sell it. The new cello was four and a half thousand, so it would be nice to get a thousand for the old one.

Put up a curtain rail for my brother in law. It's a block wall with plasterboard dry lining so I won't know what to do until I've drilled a few holes.