c4countdown

To all members of the FOCAL Team,

Just wanted to let you know that if you're ever in need of developing large volumes of witty conundrum scrambles for CO-events (even the night before they happen), you can always contact me and I'll throw together a couple hundred that I had planned to use as chat teasers. If you need conundrum words as well as scrambles, you can give me a rough idea of the difficulty you want for them and I'll make a good list; if you already have a list of conundrums, I can also check over your lists to verify that there are none with multiple solutions. Finally, if you want themed conundrum scrambles and/or answers (e.g., all scrambles for a future .co.mk event beginning with "MK"), you can inform me of this in advance and I'll incorporate the theme.

Aptomail is the best route for getting in contact with me.

I've noticed that some of the scrambles at recent events look suspiciously random/Apterous-like; do people still care about making their own scrambles?

Cheers,
JC

We write our own ta, but thanks for the offer!

I could have sworn I saw one event where pretty much all of the scrambles were dictionary words with 1 or 2 letters changed (e.g., RESIDEXCE => EXERCISED; DNESCENDO => CONDENSED), which is how Apterous' shuffler generates them. But that might be co:incidence; they could have been written by someone. No problem.

Next time you're over here, come to an event!

Thomas Carey wrote:Next time you're over here, come to an event!

I think that's the plan. He was hoping to get all the conundrums.

Johnny Canuck wrote:which is how Apterous' shuffler generates them

Sometimes!

Charlie Reams wrote:

Johnny Canuck wrote:which is how Apterous' shuffler generates them

Sometimes!

It's been revamped, then.

I might take you up on that offer for Co.Dublin!

Edward Byrne wrote:I might take you up on that offer for Co.Dublin!

Fantastic! You'll only need 7 conundrums for that in total, correct?

After a bit of research, it appears this may have been the tourney I was talking about with the vaguely Apter-ish scrambles. That was a while ago though.

P.S.: Props to whoever created the scrambles for .co.mk containing the names of various players. That was cute.

Johnny Canuck wrote:After a bit of research, it appears this may have been the tourney I was talking about with the vaguely Apter-ish scrambles. That was a while ago though.

Deliberately- that's always (or at least for the past few years) how I've done conundrums for COLIN/CoNot.

Ben Wilson wrote:

Johnny Canuck wrote:After a bit of research, it appears this may have been the tourney I was talking about with the vaguely Apter-ish scrambles. That was a while ago though.

Deliberately- that's always (or at least for the past few years) how I've done conundrums for COLIN/CoNot.

Come to think of it, this is a good idea on some level because it helps avoid the appearance of well-known falseagrams. For a lot of conundrum answers like REMBETIKA, if KIAMETERB (DIAMETERS + 2 letter changes) is used it's going to be deservedly challenging, but if BREAKTIME is used it may be artificially easy for people who already know that BREAKTIME has an anagram. Definitely not trying to knock your tourney-organisation skills in any way.