c4countdown

Steve Balog

You probably saw this coming.... but Octorock star path. Needs some sort of Legend of Zelda-ish name, though.

Steve Balog

On the top of my list is ANODISE[S/D/R], AVERSION, NOTARI[ES/SE}, and TRIAGE[S/D] for words I know the meanings of that come up a lot. Also GIRASOLE/SERAGLIO as a set of letters I see a lot that I haven't gotten.

Yea the frequency that I miss "apto-spots" is a bit ridiculous.

Steve Balog

Well, it makes sense in a way... like I guess if you went on the show and got a round like 100 9 8 4 4 5 -> 900 you can be like "8 plus 4 is 12, minus 5 is 7, times 4 is 28. Oh then 9 times 100 is 900, you can ignore the 28." Technically you did "use" the 5, but not in the soluti...

Steve Balog

Yea, to elaborate, the Guardian's first step is 6x4=24, and then he uses the other 4 numbers to hit the target, just leaving that 24 there without actually doing it. I assume that if the Guardian can get the solution with 4 or fewer numbers that aren't the red one, he can, in theory, just waste the ...

Steve Balog

Beat it with JAZZ. Not very surprising, though, considering the algorithm. Nice find.

Steve Balog

A touchdown plus one point. That's seven goals. Well yea, the extra point too. You know, one of the very few things in American football where someone actually uses their feet. Always wondered why they call it football. Well, to be fair, no matter how badly the most important players play, a loss i...

Steve Balog

Jason Larsen wrote:A touchdown plus one point. That's seven goals.

Well yea, the extra point too. You know, one of the very few things in American football where someone actually uses their feet.

Steve Balog

Oh come on, they only lost by a touchdown. No big deal.

Steve Balog

Yea, I don't think Jordan will have any problem with Ian and I playing before the round is technically "over". I think by round 1 he means a time frame for the play in games. EDIT: @Ian, I'm US but am usually on most days. Later your time will probably be better. There's times I'll be on b...

Steve Balog

I actually got up early enough to catch the 2nd half of the stream of this game -- but then FF wouldn't load the streaming utility correctly, and IE8 crashed my computer, so I only got to see about half a round of this game. I was Deeksappoint :cry: But congrats, and seeing how you managed a 116+, e...

Steve Balog

http://www.apterous.org/viewgame.php?key=7951739579407998692 Not even a pencil could save me... :cry: Well done Steve. Very good game. Nice letters spots in R1, R3, and especially the pencil. R10 was a 29s spot [actually so was R5, I wasn't quite firing on all cylinders in the first third], basical...

Steve Balog

Excellent. I once watched attentively while Ian McKellen, in his one-man show, demonstrated his technique for tearing out the page containing Leviticus 18:22 from a Gideon Bible, which he continues to do in hotel rooms all over the world. Apparently it's catching on; one fan sent him a collection o...

Steve Balog

If we're talking about just computer games, Lemmings was basically my childhood describe in one computer game. I think a lot of people here would like it, and I'm pretty sure (well, maybe not since they made a new one not long ago) the original games are abandonware so you can get them free.

Steve Balog

I caught myself saying "shopping cart" instead of shopping trolley today and was thoroughly disgusted with myself. To be fair even I think some of the Americanisms are stupid, but that statement made me laugh really hard for some reason. "I robbed an orphanage today. I'm a bit disgus...

Steve Balog

For 2+ large numbers games, multiplying 25 by itself or multiplying 50 by (25-[small]) to get middling or big targets is not seen even by solid numbers players a lot, and so is the result of a lot of missed numbers rounds. Of course the 100 75 50 25 X X -> 625 is the most simplified example of the 2...

Steve Balog

Gaijin baka desu~ (no I don't know or care if the sentence structure is right, actually speaking Japanese properly is actually very difficult, and thus is not kawaii sugoi desu~) I had SKULLFUCK disallowed for KUF in a recent Aegilops game. Though, I think I was actually more disappointed that it wo...

Steve Balog

Tarmac (the original non-genericised noun) doesn't have a k in it -- I guess it's like panic where the past tense is panicked.

Steve Balog

Noted.

Still probably won't stop the puns with your last name. I think we've Deekshausted most of them though

EDIT: wait found another one nvm

Steve Balog

U1400:
Thomas Carey 78-90 Steve Balog

U1200 will likely be on Wed.

Steve Balog

Double post, but this is, erm... http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/18/news-of-the-world-sean-hoare welp not suspicious at all, nope. No, really, it's "not being treated as suspicious" ... granted when you have Scotland Yard in your pockets of course it wouldn't be. I was really sad ...

Steve Balog

POORTRACE, at least with regards to Brooks getting arrested partly for hacking phones. Maybe not so specific, but at least topical. Considering who Murdoch's propaganda machine tricks the easily manipulable sociopathic right wing into fellating in the US, the answer is apropos also. EDIT: after gett...

Steve Balog

Just looked this game up on the wiki, and yea Deeks was a bit lucky that his opponent's numbers prowess went down the garbage Deeksposal :P Also @Tony -- shhhh about the 25 squared for middling targets with uncooperative smalls, that's saved my ass in numbers a lot more than it should ;) But yea, ho...

Steve Balog

Thomas and I haven't been on at the same time -- he PMed me and I think we'll be able to play our match in the U1400 tomorrow.

Steve Balog

I am totally cheering for Deeks every game from here out just so we can have more awesome spoiler threads

I'll be Deeksappointed if he doesn't become an octochamp mainly for this reason (or, at least get 7 wins)

Steve Balog

You people Deeksgust me.

Steve Balog

Of everyone on apterous, I think Mark Deeks has by far the best frat brother name. I can totally imagine Mark chugging a beer bong while a bunch of guys chant DEEKS DEEKS DEEKS DEEKS during it and after he finishes they let out a loud MARK DEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKS!!! in celebration. ...why do I get ...

Steve Balog

U1400 brackets wrote:#13 Steve Balog vs # 20 Thomas Carey (Winner to play #4 Jamie French)
#12 James Levinson vs #21 Chris Marshall (Winner to play #5 Jamie French)

#4 in this bracket is Ian Volante. Unless someone cloned Jamie.

@Thomas, I can play whenever we're on -- send a PM when you can play.

Steve Balog

Yea, this is a game that is played a LOT at the poker forums I post on -- usually there's more questions in a round, and the questions are more accessible. I can give maybe 3 answers for the first question, 3 for the 2nd (the 3 easiest ones), and quite a few for number 4, but I only think I know the...

Steve Balog

Peter Mabey wrote:
Steve Balog wrote: It's on at 3:10 (GMT?), and I'm GMT -5 right now I think (lol daylight savings) which makes it on at 10:10 AM here. I'm up at that time sometimes, at least.
At present it's 3:10 BST (GMT+1) - daylight saving here, too - so 11:10 AM for you

Significantly better

Steve Balog

DISTILL is the American spelling. That's one of the few English spellings I'm not used to in games yet -- one l vs. two l's.

Steve Balog

The (original) Powerthirst advert is probably my favourite, come to think of it. Edit: It's kinda annoying that nowhere near here seems to stock it, though :evil: On a much lighter note, I am very happy that Powerthirst is real, so I'm probably going to buy some. EDIT: their website.... it's a thin...

Steve Balog

My subjective opinion (though I could probably put together some facts to support it) is that the 1970s and 80s were a golden period for imaginative, witty and memorable TV ads while most of today's are feeble in comparison, although I suspect what's happened is that, in terms of production values ...

Steve Balog

This game is a good example of why I think conundrums need to be "unrated" for the first few times they show up instead of defaulted to 2/10 -- honestly if I were facing a crucial and it was some word I've never heard of that was just added to the list, it'd be a major buzzkill. This was ...

Steve Balog

There's a site called TVPC that shows live streams of various shows all over the world. Not sure if the site is legal, but you as far as I know will not be downloading the show, just watching a stream (not exactly the highest quality though). Found the site, thanks a lot for sharing it. If it's liv...

Steve Balog

Yea, that assumes that the state merely "shifts" if a player fails on a given turn; that is, the probability is the same for each person. It wouldn't work if, for example, you wanted to change the probability of winning for each person so that each player has an equal chance of winning. I ...

Steve Balog

The way I'm thinking of it (I might be wrong): Let's say there's three people in this game. Player one wins with probability X. Player 2 wins with probablity 0 1/2 the time, and probability 1/2(X) the other half, because he essentially becomes player 1 if player 1 fails. Then player 3 has a 1/2*1/2*...

Steve Balog

Was talking to a girl at college during a dorm event where there was a Dance Dance Revolution setup. I played a couple games out of boredom (I'm better than I should be at it) and we started talking. Somehow within two minutes I actually managed to convince her, from playing DDR, that I was at one p...

Steve Balog

Honestly I like tau because it means more geeky math days -- I mean the link makes sense but I think I'd get funny looks if I used tau for 2*pi on maths homework.

For me, somewhat ironically, the first I heard of tau was on pi day this year.

Steve Balog

csb time Been cleaning out a closet with a bunch of games and found a "Deluxe Edition Scrabble" with each slot marked off with plastic so the tiles don't slide and a rotating base for the people who can't read upside down very well. The box has a picture of a sample game, pretty standard, ...

Steve Balog

I'm pretty bad at letters but I would've seen TRIANGLES. But ONLY because of the particular order of the scramble -- if the letters came out in a different order I'd probably have missed all the 9s there (or perhaps caught a different one). And there's a pretty decent chance I see ALTERING close to ...

Steve Balog

I voted for both Dale's and Innis's games so I don't know what you're talking about

My third vote did go for the 200-190 hypernums game but I am a numbers geek and that was before I realised a typical hypernums round is about as hard as a typical three large.

Steve Balog

In the U1400 and U1200 (as I mentioned, my rating is inflated thanks to numbers attacks vs. bots I can't beat at 15 rounders, so a couple games against a 1k rated player that's about as good as me that went the wrong way and hey I'm eligible for the U1200 now sitting at 1183 :lol: ) also explicitly ...

Steve Balog

every other round being QZUUXQAIC would be fun

Every letter having an equal chance might be a bit better: from what I can tell there's a bunch of words that can't come up in a normal game, if the goal is to hit "new" parts of the dictionary.

Steve Balog

I am so glad that chat happened after seeing what the conundrum turned out to be. Too bad I missed it, would've been a real toot.

Steve Balog

Well in that case whoeever updated the ODE would fail out of any graduate level stats program. Resampling, while made much easier with computerised stats programs, isn't exactly a new concept, at all (it's also good if you use the CSW).

Steve Balog

RESAMPLE not being good is a travesty, unless it's only hyphenated, and even then most statisticians call it resampling, without the hyphen. It basically means what it sounds -- when you have a small data set, you can "resample" in order to get a better idea of the distribution.

Steve Balog

I honestly don't know why, but after reading this thread I went on Youtube and listened to about a dozen Wesley Willis (RIP) songs

Steve Balog

exams ended like a month ago here failed my exit exam for my stats Master's (not sure what an M.S. is equivalent to in the UK) -- though to be fair it's a bit hard to pass a graduate stats exam when you completely forget what an ANOVA is during the oral defense. Worst marks in my classes in pretty m...

Steve Balog

Shalom already lost in round 1. From what I can tell Leviticus is a recent college [American] football recruit so that explains all the votes. I can see him winning the whole thing to the dismay of the entire rest of the internet -- America takes college [American] football way, way too seriously. V...

Steve Balog

http://www.nameoftheyear.com/NOTY2011/NOTY_2011.pdf

The fact that Col. Many-Bears Grinder is about to lose to Leviticus Payne in round 2 is a travesty, though. I've KNOWN people with first names that are Old Testament books not named after people ffs

Steve Balog

Can we have conundrum stones for the other variants please? Perhaps set it so one gets the normal difficulty stone if they solve a conundrum in 30 seconds in the normal set but on a different variant. Like, recently got my first ever 10/10 conundrum, but it was in Goatdown before the last letter wa...

Steve Balog

I didn't realise the "Everyone's a winner!" mentality applied to Apterous as well

Steve Balog

http://apterous.org/viewgame.php?game=463159

25 down with four rounds to play. Would've been a lot more impressive if my opponent didn't give me the conundrum and it took me 20 fucking seconds to figure out what letter was changed, but I'm pretty happy with round 14.

Steve Balog

I'm for either CAW or CLAW also, not sure which is better -- is ETI or LETI easier to bingo with next turn? Obviously a 5 letter word starting or ending in W containing a C is best, maybe one starting or ending in C with a W, but I can't see one, and if Innis didn't either, I doubt one exists. Also,...

Steve Balog

I've always liked Chrome (for the very reasons Kai didn't much care for it for [though for me it was still much faster], to each his own), then for some reason Chrome started making my computer slow down to the point I had to hard reset it every time I opened it. Firefox 4.0's design is pretty close...

Steve Balog

I like words without vowels. Including y, and even those words that use w as a vowel. pfft, pst, and brr[r] (but not brrrr or anything longer) are among my favorites. Think the thing I've wanted to do most in Scrabble is play QUETZALS as a triple-triple. That, or bingo on a 15-letter word across an ...

Steve Balog

I'm not sure what would've been worse here -- getting the last round and blowing a first max nums attack on THAT round, or not making the typo (100 PLUS (50/2), NOT MINUS YOU DOLT) and losing it on round 20. Though that last round's solution may have given me an epiphany on my weakest 2 large rounds...

Steve Balog

Plain fizzy water falls somewhere between dish soap and piss on my list of things I'd want to drink. It's a freaking awesome mixer though, yea.

Steve Balog

How did this thread fall so far? One can't be as his best without being able to laugh at his worst. http://www.apterous.org/viewgame.php?game=460977 http://signoffatness.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/count-von-count-sesame-street.jpg Eight! Eight disallowed words! Ah ah ah ah Notable rounds include R6...

Steve Balog

looking at three large: The other larges, as said before, have to be 25 50 or 50 75. 1) For the smalls, there CANNOT be anyway, whatsoever, for the smalls to make a 2, because you can then go (75*2-50) or (25*2+50). For 25, 4 and 6 are also off-limits for similar reasons, and 4 is also off-limits fo...

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