Daily puzzles/problems.

[jajdude]

jajdude the sniper

I approve of this.

[prendrelemick]

Sir Alan Ackbourne? He became a Knight Batchelor on 11 feb 1997




Oh 'eck, wrong date we're looking for a literary figure who was knighted on 14th Feb 1989, are we?



Ahh unless the bad review was a fatwah against Salman Rushdie.


I'm carpet bombing again

[Basil]

Ahh unless the bad review was a fatwah against Salman Rushdie.

You got it. Good job, Mick. I'll post a wrap-up a little later.

[prendrelemick]

By dint of lots of guessing I got the most right - I also got the most wrong but never mind .



Here's something we haven't tried before.

Imagine a room with ten people in it. Most are sat in, or on the arms of, comfy chairs and sofas that have been arranged in a half circle around the fire place. The focus of their attention is a young woman stood in front of the fireplace. She is gesticulating wildly, and all the others are shouting at her.

First, she holds her hands out in front of her, thumbs uppermost and palms together, she turns them outwards.

2. She holds up 5 fingers.
3. She holds up 1 finger.
4. She holds up one hand vertically and the other horizontally across the top of it.
5. She holds up 2 fingers
6. She cups one hand to her ear and gesticulates with the other, making the shape of little waves heading towards her ear.
7. She holds up 3 fingers.
8. She tugs the lobe of her ear
9. She points to her hand
10. She holds up 4 fingers.
11. She holds up one hand vertically and the other horizontally across the top of it again.
12. She holds up 5 fingers
13. She stamps about on the carpet, she shakes her fists aggressively, she draws back her lips to show her teeth are clenched, her brow is furrowed.

She repeats actions number 6 and 13 over and over, finally she points to one of the others and nods.
Then everyone applauds and she sits down. The person she pointed at takes her place.


So, what's going on and what's the answer?

[JuniperWoolf]

One hand vertically and the other horizontally across the top of it... like this?:

[prendrelemick]

Yes just like that.

[billl]

Imagine a room with ten people in it. Most are sat in, or on the arms of, comfy chairs and sofas that have been arranged in a half circle around the fire place. The focus of their attention is a young woman stood in front of the fireplace. She is gesticulating wildly, and all the others are shouting at her.

First, she holds her hands out in front of her, thumbs uppermost and palms together, she turns them outwards.

2. She holds up 5 fingers.
3. She holds up 1 finger.
4. She holds up one hand vertically and the other horizontally across the top of it.
5. She holds up 2 fingers
6. She cups one hand to her ear and gesticulates with the other, making the shape of little waves heading towards her ear.
7. She holds up 3 fingers.
8. She tugs the lobe of her ear
9. She points to her hand
10. She holds up 4 fingers.
11. She holds up one hand vertically and the other horizontally across the top of it again.
12. She holds up 5 fingers
13. She stamps about on the carpet, she shakes her fists aggressively, she draws back her lips to show her teeth are clenched, her brow is furrowed.

She repeats actions number 6 and 13 over and over, finally she points to one of the others and nods.
Then everyone applauds and she sits down. The person she pointed at takes her place.


So, what's going on and what's the answer?

I guess they're playing charades. I don't have a lot of experience with the game, but I think she begins by using her hand(s) to indicate how many letters are in the word (i.e. this word has 5 letters), and then holds one finger up for the first letter in the word, followed by a clue, then she holds up two fingers for the second letter and gives its clue, and so on.

So, right off the bat, we have a five-letter word with a couple T's in it, if things happen to be so straight-forward:

T _ _ T _

At this point, I have to ask about whether or not it might matter which country the players were educated in. I've spent a little time here with some lame and surely wrong ideas about what the clues for letters 2, 3, and 5 might be, but bouncing around in the back of my head are some of my earliest introductions to literacy, which included learning the alphabet "British-style". I might be way off-base here, because I never paid the issue any attention again, once I had gotten the hang of it and later moved on to the "American-style", but at least in early education at that time, British students were taught the letters according to how they sound.

For instance, a class of British children practicing the alphabet would pronounce the first four letters "AHH, BUHH, KUHH, DUHH..." and from there I think maybe it was "EH, FUHH, GUHH..." but those last three I'm not so sure about, I might be just imagining those at this point. I do remember, though that the earliest letters sounded a LOT like the beginning of "abracadabra" which was a revelation, and the final letter, of course, is the well-known "zed". Anyhow, I assume all of this to be the case, because it was what I encountered, but it might be the case that my school was out of step with the rest of Britain, maybe this was hippie nonsense or something, I don't know...

And, for the sake of completeness, I should point out that the "American-style" pronunciation of the letters is exactly the one British people know from the movies, songs, TV shows, and news reports that the US has bombarded them with.

So, Mick, do I need to worry about this issue? Has England switched over to the US pronunciation since I was educated there perhaps? Or was I in fact in a progressive hippie school that was totally unrepresentative of Britain all those years ago? (Didn't seem like it.) Or what?

Anyhow, I'm thinking the second letter might be "U", because that's what the other players would call the woman (i.e. they would call her "You").

The third letter might be "N" but I'm really doubtful about that one. By tugging at the ear, she's indicating that her forthcoming clue will "sound like" the third letter (rhyme with it, probably). So, the clue is maybe "hand" or "palm"? Maybe one of those sounds like "N". (American style...?)

Anyhow, IF the second letter were "U", then it's a crossword-type combo that would have a pretty limited number of solutions, I would think...

T U _ T _

"TUFTS"? "TUTTI"? So, I'm probably wrong about these three letters... Unless it is indeed "TUFTS". I wouldn't put it past Mick to use that, I guess. Wool reference?

And I have no idea what the last clue might be. And then the repeating of the two letters over and over, I don't know, maybe that just means the other players had trouble with those two letters?

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

They are playing charades and the answer is (drum roll):

"The Sound and the Fury" ...I think. Am I close?

.

[billl]

Gotta Be!


(My fractured understanding of the game is made obvious.)

[prendrelemick]

Correct GG. I'm so glad a non brit got it as I thought there might be cultural issues. Billl's mind is endlessly fascinating to me, I know he would've got it if he had set out with the right premise.

By dint of lots of guessing I got the most right - I also got the most wrong but never mind .



Here's something we haven't tried before.

Imagine a room with ten people in it. Most are sat in, or on the arms of, comfy chairs and sofas that have been arranged in a half circle around the fire place. The focus of their attention is a young woman stood in front of the fireplace. She is gesticulating wildly, and all the others are shouting at her.

First, she holds her hands out in front of her, thumbs uppermost and palms together, she turns them outwards. It's a book
2. She holds up 5 fingers. 5 words
3. She holds up 1 finger. 1st word
4. She holds up one hand vertically and the other horizontally across the top of it. The
5. She holds up 2 fingers 2nd word
6. She cups one hand to her ear and gesticulates with the other, making the shape of little waves heading towards her ear. sound
7. She holds up 3 fingers. 3rd word
8. She tugs the lobe of her ear. sounds like
9. She points to her hand hand (and)
10. She holds up 4 fingers. 4th word
11. She holds up one hand vertically and the other horizontally across the top of it again. the
12. She holds up 5 fingers 5th word
13. She stamps about on the carpet, she shakes her fists aggressively, she draws back her lips to show her teeth are clenched, her brow is furrowed. fury
She repeats actions number 6 and 13 over and over, finally she points to one of the others and nods.
Then everyone applauds and she sits down. The person she pointed at takes her place.


So, what's going on and what's the answer?

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

Correct GG. I'm so glad a non brit got it as I thought there might be cultural issues. Billl's mind is endlessly fascinating to me, I know he would've got it if he had set out with the right premise.

Not so fast Mick, we need to cross at least one cultural divide that stumped me for a moment and that regards the use of the "time out" hand gesture giving away the "The".
I asked the missus if she had ever employed the timeout gesture for "the" and I received an emphatic "are you kidding me? is that how they do it over there!!?"
No wonder we never get past one or two rounds; it takes us half an hour just getting past "The".

Okay, this is my first time to offer up the next game, so let's see how this goes:

Name the character and the book

Clues:
1. Clue to the book in the lyrics of a Procol Harum song (don’t be concerned about deep cuts)
2. The character must have eaten too much of the “magical fruit”
3. Received a… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9KniULwvjE …singeing
4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyzI323zFrs

.

[MarkBastable]

Not so fast Mick, we need to cross at least one cultural divide that stumped me for a moment and that regards the use of the "time out" hand gesture giving away the "The".
I asked the missus if she had ever employed the timeout gesture for "the" and I received an emphatic "are you kidding me? is that how they do it over there!!?"
No wonder we never get past one or two rounds; it takes us half an hour just getting past "The".

Okay, this is my first time to offer up the next game, so let's see how this goes:

Name the character and the book

Clues:
1. Clue to the book in the lyrics of a Procol Harum song (don’t be concerned about deep cuts)
2. The character must have eaten too much of the “magical fruit”
3. Received a… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9KniULwvjE …singeing
4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyzI323zFrs

.

I'd guess it's the Miller in the Canterbury Tales. Or, to be more accurate, Nicholas in the Miller's tale in the Canterbury Tales.

Incidentally, that T gesture doesn't mean 'time out' in the UK, because we don't have any games in which the participants can stop the clock just because it suits them. So that gesture has only ever been the sign for 'the' in the game Charades.

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

...Or, to be more accurate, Nicholas in the Miller's tale in the Canterbury Tales.

Incidentally, that T gesture doesn't mean 'time out' in the UK, because we don't have any games in which the participants can stop the clock just because it suits them. So that gesture has only ever been the sign for 'the' in the game Charades.

You got it; “Nicholas” and The Canterbury Tales are the correct answers.
Good job Mark.

Cultural divides, you gotta love 'em.
Timeouts can be a beating. I recall many frustrating games of tetherball interrupted by the spontaneous time out call at the moment I was delivering the beat down on my opponent and then came instant replay.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyRDM...eature=related


.

[MarkBastable]

I've tried to pull albums from a broader range of decades this time. You want the initial letter of the first word of each album's name - and when you have nine (or enough to see where it's going) you can arrange them to make the name of another album.



I think this is probably a collaborative thing, where you post the names of the albums - or the letters - here, and the winner is the first to get the constructed album title.

1...2...3
4...5...6
7...8...9

This may help....

[prendrelemick]

5. On the Beach - Neil Young.