Living in Obliviousness

In case you've been living in a cave . . .
Go Jason Lezak!

You start the last leg of the 4x100m relay half a body-length behind maybe the fastest guy in the world at 100m. And you drag him down?!

Goose bumps.

(Incidentally: as you've probably noticed, American announcers generally hold out for American hopes long after it's realistic to do so (I don't mind this; just pointing it out). The American announcer for this race had -- quite reasonably -- written off Lezak's chances halfway through the anchor leg. Hilarious and amazing.)

Nationals Stats and Bingo List
Stats:
16-12, +550, 22nd/103 in Div 1.
Total score: 11859-11309
Avg score: 424-404
Bingoes: 60-49
Record when outbingoing: 12-3
Record when bingoes equal: 4-4
Record when outbingoed: 0-5
Blanks: 33-23 (wow: I was 6-14 at one point)
Record when blanks 2-0: 9-1
Record when blanks 1-1: 6-7
Record when blanks 0-2: 1-4

Summary: I played okay; there were a couple of games I wonder if I should have won. I got plenty of blanks and bingoes, to be sure, but Div 1 at Nationals is *tough* -- everyone here can play. Twas fun, and I look forward to the next one.

And now the promised bingo list:
( 109 words for your perusing pleasure )

The SF Giants are awful, an ongoing series
Giants shortstops are slugging -- slugging! -- .251 this year. Without a single home run, natch.

Puzzle o' the Day 178!
Kudos to

evwhore for suggesting this excellent chestnut. He also suggested I use a less-savory formulation, but won't somebody think of the children?!

a. Alice and Bob are specialist surgeons; Chris and David are patients. Both Alice and Bob need to perform surgery on both Chris and David; the order of the four surgeries doesn't matter. Unfortunately, each of the four people has a different nasty communicable skin disease, and none of the four wants to contract another one. There are only two pairs of surgical gloves available (and a surgeon needs both hands gloved during an operation). How can the operations be performed?

b. Can you generalize to s surgeons and p patients? How many pairs of gloves g(s,p) do you need? Any results for small values of s and p?

Found wordplay
I noticed yesterday that the sign on the door of the bridge club which

evwhore and I attend reads:

PIEDMONT VETERANS MEMORIAL BUILDING

Anybody want to guess why I found that neat?

Quick Nationals update
Returned from Scrabble Nationals last night. Went 16-12 +550 to end up 22nd/103. A poor start (4-6) put the kibosh on me cashing. Still, it was the first Nationals where I didn't totally suck, and a good time was had. Bingo lists and stats to come.

Baseball Trivia 14!
Today we once again combine baseball and wordplay!

a. (Found by me): Name a current major leaguer (a regular or semi-regular for the last few years), whose last name is a color, and whose first name, when spelled backward, is also a color.

Hint in white: He's an American League outfielder.

b. (Found by BriCap, natch): Name a fairly prominent current major leaguer whose full name (first and last) anagrams into a 13-letter word. The word, in white: SUPERADDITION

Further hint: He's a scrappy AL second baseman. Really, if you know baseball, all you needed was "scrappy".

Puzzle o' the Day 177!
On the heels of PotD 170!, we ask this related question:

Which integers are the *sum* of two squares? Be specific. Prove your answer, if you can.

Hint in white (apologies to those whose backgrounds aren't white): For any given positive integer, you can determine by its prime factors whether it's the sum of two squares. You'll want to start by figuring out which primes are the sum of two squares. Modular arithmetic will also come in handy.

Squidbillies is a terrible show . . .
But its theme song -- a marvel of simplicity -- has been running through my head all day. So I'll infect y'all with it. Sing it with me, won't you?

"My dreams are all dead and buried/
Sometimes I wish the sun would just explode/
When God comes to call me to His Kingdom/
I'll take all you sons of bitches when I go."

I've been in a very dark mood lately, but I feel a little better now. It's good to share.

Amusing tidbit
This made me chuckle. I'm surprised

evwhore didn't post it first.

Puzzle o' the Day 176!
If p is an odd prime, then 2^(p-1) leaves a remainder of 1 when divided by p; this is a consequence of Fermat's Little Theorem.

How about the converse? If p is odd and 2^(p-1) leaves a remainder of 1 when divided by p, must p be prime? The ancient Chinese thought so, and they were clever.

But they were wrong. The puzzle: find the smallest counterexample. Brute force will certainly suffice, but cleverness will shorten the job. Here's a hint, in white: The smallest counterexample is the product of two prime numbers, each greater than ten, but the counterexample itself is less than 500.

Note: while the Chinese were wrong, the basic idea is used to great effect in probabilistic primality tests.

Yet another amusing poker hand
From a mid-limit hold 'em game:

I limp with JhTh under the gun. UTG+1 raises (boo!), but there are two cold-callers, and both blinds call (yay!). I call too, so we're six-handed heading to the flop. Which is . . .

KK6, with no hearts. Boo.

I get ready to fold to any bet. But it's checked around. Okay. The turn is:

K.

I get ready to fold to any bet. But it's checked around. Okay. The river is:

2.

I get ready to fold to any bet. But it's checked around. Okay. The small blind throws his hand in the muck; the big blind jokingly says "I have 9 high!" and turns over 98. I jokingly say "I have jack high!" and turn over my hand.

There's a strange silence, then:

Muck. Muck. Muck.

I say "What just happened?!" to the big blind, as the dealer pushes me the pot.

Puzzle o' the Day 175!
Since most of you are going on holiday, let's make this a very easy one. Really, I promise. Here it is -- an old chestnut.

An even number of pennies are arranged in a row. Your job is to put them in stacks of two. The only movement rule is this: you can take a single penny and move it left or right over exactly two pennies (either two single pennies or a stack of two), and land it on the first single penny beyond (if there's a stack there instead, you can't make the move).

a. The smallest number of pennies for which you can solve the puzzle is eight. Demonstrate a solution. Piece of cake, right?

b. Show that the puzzle is solvable for any even number greater than eight (if you get a., this should be easy).

Greatest picture of evwhore ever
Via

whipartist. It's fantastic. Enjoy!

Puzzle o' the Day 174!
You've probably had a Scrabble endgame where the board was entirely blocked, and neither player could play. These puzzles are about the smallest (in terms of number of tiles on the board) blocked games. By the way, I don't know the answers to some of these, and I'm not sure anyone does.

a. Starting with the standard English 100-tile bag, what's the smallest blocked game? I'm pretty sure Kyle Corbin's answer is still at least tied for optimal.

b. Now say there are infinitely many blanks in the bag. What's the smallest blocked game here? Corbin's solution no longer works, though a similar one will . . .

c. Now say we throw out the blanks before the beginning of play. What's the smallest blocked game? Rick Wong's classic solution may still be best.

d. Let's go back to the 100-tile bag. What's the smallest blocked game with no blanks on the board (and thus both blanks in the bag)? With the new lexicon, Rick Wong's solution no longer works here.

e. Finally, what's the smallest blocked game with no blanks on the board, but infinitely many blanks in the bag? (This may well have the same solution as d.)

Puzzle o' the Day 173!
Here's a fun one, and not too hard either. Let's cast it in terms of food -- that's always popular.

McWendy's is testing seven new types of burger: Aardvark, Brontosaurus, Cow (heh), Dandelion, Elephant, Flamingo, and Goose. Instead of doing so one at a time, however, they are creating a certain number of Test Meals (tm), each one of which contains three different types of burger. To facilitate comparison, any two different Test Meals should have exactly one burger in common; also, every set of two distinct burgers should appear in exactly one Meal.

a. How many Meals are necessary? What should be the composition of each?

b. Same question, but this time there are thirteen types of burger, and each Meal should contain four. The restrictions on the Meals are the same.

Believe it or not, this one is extremely important in combinatorics and group theory. Not that you need any advanced techniques to solve this; pencil and paper will easily suffice.

Baseball Trivia #13!
As of this morning (6/23), who was leading the major leagues in hits? I wouldn't have gotten this in ten guesses. Hell, I might not have gotten it in 100. Good luck!

Puzzle o' the Day 172!
I've been on a word puzzle kick lately. Here's one I made up. I'm not sure my answers are optimal, so have at it!

You can write down a list of (Scrabble-acceptable) words that collectively contain the alphabet, in order, along with some extra letters. For example, you might start with ABACUS DEAF, which gives you A-F.

a. Write down such a list containing as few extra letters as possible. My best is in white: 11 extra letters

b. Write down such a list containing as few words as possible. My best is in white: 7 words

c. Same as part a., except with the alphabet in reverse order; for example, you might start with ZOYSIA, which gives you Z and Y. My best is in white: 13 extra letters

d. Same as part b., except with the alphabet in reverse order. My best is in white: 8 words

Good luck!

Puzzle o' the Day 171!
Find a word that contains five consecutive letters of the alphabet in *reverse* order, not necessarily consecutively. For example, "edict" contains three consecutive letters (EDC) in reverse order. Hint: tied for the shortest example is a word that . . . (continues in white) . . . has appeared many times in this blog.

Wasn't this the plot of "Eaters of the Dead"?
Yes, yet another Michael Crichton novel has a counterpart in reality. This is getting creepy. (By the way, "Eaters of the Dead", one of Crichton's more obscure novels, was made into the film "The Thirteenth Warrior", starring Antonio Banderas. Spoilers in white: The book concerns an Arab who somehow finds himself hanging out with Vikings in Scandinavia. He and his newfound friends go fight a Grendel-ish monster who turns out to be one of the last of the Neanderthals. )

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