aibretty proposed going to the Battle Creek tournament over the weekend. I didn't have to coach soccer Saturday morning due to Yom Kippur, and it's likely to be the last tourney I can attend before next year's Arden Cup. Unfortunately, this meant getting picked up at the butt-crack of dawn and driving close to three hours each way. However, Kalamazoo ( Read more... )

I had an interesting game this weekend where it appears it was best for me to not challenge off a phony bingo and not because it setup a good comeback play. Late in the game, my opponent played UNSHApE* for 70. I didn't know UNSHAPED or UNSHAPEN but reasoned it was a phony. It just seemed like one of those words that would only exist in some ( Read more... )

    I entered the tournament seeded near the top of division two and feeling good about my chances.  I had a winning record against the top of the field who were mostly from Chicago.  Still after the meltdown I suffered at the Arden Cup, I was a little nervous.  I seem to implode when I don't draw well and my opponent keeps a closed board by ( Read more... )

I was excited to see that R Kelly has started releasing the next (last?) ten episodes of Trapped in the Closet on IFC:  http://ifc.com/static/sections/kelly/trapped.htmlRead more... )

As per ( Read more... )

Recently while studying, I've been having trouble recognizing 7s and 8s that contain common letters but in uncommon patterns, words like INDEVOUT, BEDSONIA, and TEVATRON. So I decided to try to rank words by some metric of how common their pieces were so that I could spend some more time on them. I compared each group of three letters in a word ( Read more... )