Springing into April

You never know what spring in New England will be like, or when (if ever) it’ll arrive. This year’s April proved to be wet and wild for various reasons.

Saturday, April 1: No April Fools here, just setting up a Smart Garden with basil, baking a peanut butter cake, and watching the Revolution draw NYCFC.

Sunday, April 2: Finished watching Derry Girls, which I quite enjoyed.

Monday, April 3: Filed my taxes, with two whole weeks to spare.

Tuesday, April 4: After taking a second try at the Discworld with the Guards novels, I went back to where it all began with The Colour of Magic (and also got my first job offer).

Wednesday, April 5: Worked on a jigsaw puzzle of 32 doors.

Thursday, April 6: Grocery day, with a stop at the craft store for yarn for a project that I will get around to eventually.

Friday, April 7: Made macaroni and cheese for dinner.

Saturday, April 8: Officially accepted my job offer, went for a hike at the local reservoir after a trip to the library, and listened to the Revolution beat Montreal 4-0.

Sunday, April 9: Easter lunch at church.

Monday, April 10: Tried goldenberries (surprisingly tomato-y), and started a hidden cows Sandra Boynton puzzle.

Aliens, or fiddleheads

Tuesday, April 11: Did my annual-ish mass Goodreads update to see if they could give me any interesting statistics (for 2022: shortest book– The Sandman vol. 3: Dream Country, longest book/most shelved – A Game of Thrones, least shelved – Everquest: The Rogue’s Hour).

Wednesday, April 12: First day of the year hot enough for ice cream.

Thursday, April 13: Continued reading The Night Circus, and I agree with the overall sentiment that the descriptive passages are stronger than the plot, but I still really liked this book.

Friday, April 14: Took one last hike before starting work, at Mt. Watatic; walked to the Massachusetts/New Hampshire state line; had a Taco Bell taco; and talked to a friend from college.

Saturday, April 15: Watched a 10-man Revolution give up a 98th minute goal to Columbus to snatch defeat (a draw) from the jaws of victory.

Sunday, April 16: Finished a jigsaw puzzle of soda cans.

Monday, April 17: Baked a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting.

Tuesday, April 18: First day of school work.

Wednesday, April 19: Had leftover lamb, roasted potatoes, and arugula for lunch and calibrated a pH meter for the first time in a long time.

Thursday, April 20: Wild violets and phlox were in full bloom, crabapples a few days away.

Some bush in bloom

Friday, April 21: Free lunch day at work.

Saturday, April 22: Went for a hike along the reservoir, started building the LEGO Millennium Falcon I bought on sale last summer, and saw the Revolution beat Sporting KC 2-1 off a brace from Giacomo Vrioni, who also drew a red card for DOGSO (denial of an obvious goal-scoring opportunity).

Sunday, April 23: Baked a pineapple cake and watched Sonic the Hedgehog 2.

Monday, April 24: Laundry day after work.

Tuesday, April 25: Bonus Revolution game against Hartford for the US Open Cup, which they won after bringing on Carles Gil and co. to relieve a young starting lineup.

Wednesday, April 26: Made 50 L of buffer solution in a barrel, stirred it with a metal oar, and pumped it into the world’s largest IV bags.

Thursday, April 27: Eat, work, sleep, repeat.

Friday, April 28: Ran into the wild turkeys crossing the street while on a walk after work.

Saturday, April 29: Visited a neighboring town’s hill and swamp, where we saw a lot of skunk cabbage and an eastern bluebird, and caught most of the radio call for the Revolution’s tie game against Cincinnati, featuring a Djordje Petrović penalty save, a season-ending injury to Dylan Borrero, and Emmanuel Boateng’s first goal of the season.

Sunday, April 30: Finished Heir to the Empire, the acclaimed first Thrawn novel by Timothy Zahn, also the first authorized Star Wars novel that continued events after Return of the Jedi.

Crabapple tree

Piece by Piece [The World’s Most Difficult Puzzles]

If you’ve ever seen a limited edition flavor at the grocery store or anything proclaiming to be the “world’s hardest” and wondered, “who would want that?”, the answer is me. I would like to try cherry jalapeño yogurt, and today I’ll be reviewing a selection of puzzles that all have some kind of gimmick, including one that claims to be the world’s hardest puzzle.

The first puzzle is the Impossibles puzzle “Great Wall of China,” with 750 pieces, no edge pieces, and 5 extra pieces. The Impossibles puzzles are released under the BePuzzled name, which was acquired in 1999 by University Games from Lombard Marketing. University Games was founded in 1985 and creates/distributes a variety of educational and classic games and puzzles. There are several Impossibles puzzles no longer being manufactured (including “Great Wall of China,” which has a copyright from 1994), and a few new ones currently available. One thing to note is that some of the new puzzles have a repeating pattern, not a fully semi-randomized picture (see this Karen Puzzles video), making them significantly easier.

However, even with a moderately challenging picture, I didn’t find “Great Wall of China” hugely difficult (and it definitely wasn’t impossible). I don’t usually start with the edge pieces anyway, so the lack of an edge didn’t throw me off too much, and neither did the extra pieces. They did add a little extra twist, and make the puzzle harder than a “normal” 750 piece puzzle. Quality was good, the image was interesting, and I enjoyed this puzzle overall.

Great Wall of China

The second puzzle up is an I Spy puzzle of almost nothing but marbles. This 500-piece puzzle was released in 2008 by Briarpatch, which began in 1992 as a children’s game and puzzle company and continued until 2014, when they were bought by University Games. Obviously, I chose to do this puzzle because who would be dumb enough to spend a couple afternoons assembling almost nothing but marbles? It wasn’t as bad as the dalmatians, and the extremely obvious red border was an easy start. I thought the idea was fun, because after (or while) fixing the puzzle, you can look for the objects in the rhyme included on the puzzle, like in an I Spy book. The only negative for me is that it’s not cut particularly well. False fits weren’t a huge problem, but the pieces don’t click together nicely, which, yes, is a thing that people care about.

I Spy marbles

Third, we have a puzzle that wasn’t meant to be difficult, but it has a gimmick, so I’m including it here. On the box, it’s called “The Moving Puzzle – Coral Reef,” and was made in 1994 by the Great American Puzzle Factory, which based on the dearth of information about the company online, no longer exists (the Wikipedia article redirects to Fundex Games, Ltd., a company based in Indiana that started in 1986, produced an assortment of toys and games, and filed for bankruptcy in 2012).

For the molecular dynamics people, this puzzle is supposed to have a repeating boundary condition. For the non-MD people in the crowd, you’re supposed to be able to take the top row of pieces and move them to the bottom, or the left-most pieces and shift them to the right side, and still have a coherent picture. However, because of a misalignment in the image or cutting, the picture somewhat noticeably doesn’t match up when you try this after solving the puzzle in the “default” position. Also worth noting is that the pieces don’t lock together at all. They have indents that help to hold them in place, but every piece is exactly the same shape, so the puzzle is solved entirely by the image, which is doable since it only has 294 pieces and the picture has plenty of colors. I really like the idea, but unfortunately, they didn’t quite manage to pull it off.

Moving Coral Reef (left: completed puzzle, top right: box,
middle right/bottom right: misaligned image)

Next is the 131-piece Rubik’s Zigzaw puzzle from 1982, made by the Ideal Toy Company. The company began in 1907, and was eventually sold, first to CBS Toys, then Viewmaster International, and then Tyco Toys, which merged with Mattel in 1997. Ideal Toy Company was at one point the largest doll-making company in the US, but they also produced the Rubik’s Cube, on which the Zigzaw is based. Similarly to the coral reef puzzle above, many of the pieces are the same shape. In this case, the center pieces are mostly frog-like shapes that tesselate, and the objective is to make sure all the Rubik’s cubes are correctly solved. It’s harder than it may sound, because some of the pieces are very similar, differing only in the color of one “arm,” though slight printing/cutting misalignments sometimes let you see the color of an adjacent cube face that you shouldn’t be able to see. The pieces fit together very tightly, so you have to be careful taking pieces apart to not damage the thin arms. Other than that, it was a good challenge.

Rubik's Zigzaw (left: completed puzzle, top right: non-frog interior piece and edge piece,
middle right: similarly colored frog pieces,
bottom right: misaligned printing shows color of adjacent pieces) 

Finally, presenting the World’s Most Difficult Puzzle, jungle edition. The World’s Most Difficult Puzzles were originally made by Buffalo Games, but it seems that the line, with a few new puzzles, is now produced by TDC games, a board game and jigsaw puzzle manufacturer. This is the same idea as the infamous dalmatian puzzle – it’s a double-sided 529-piece puzzle with the pictures rotated 90 degrees from each other, and it’s cut vertically, then flipped over and cut horizontally so the pieces have no “back” or “front.” Probably fortunately for my sanity, the jungle puzzle was nowhere near as difficult as the dalmatian puzzle. The picture was orders of magnitude easier. Dare I say it was almost disappointingly easy? I’m actually a big fan of the concept, but I have yet to find the perfect image that’s more than “a few afternoons” hard but not “sitting on the coffee table for seven months” hard. Maybe I’ll try the penguins puzzle next, if I can get ahold of it.

World's Most Difficult Puzzle jungle edition

Everyday I’m Puzzling [White Mountain Puzzles]

Thanks to the library now lending out jigsaw puzzles, we’ve had a steady source of puzzles to assemble for free. Over the past nine months or so, we/I’ve put together a puzzle approximately every one to two weeks, with subject matter ranging from cats and books to marbles to pastoral scenes. Today I’ll highlight a few puzzles from White Mountain Puzzles.

White Mountain Puzzles was founded in 1978, and are still making puzzles today. They’re located in New Hampshire, in the White Mountains. Their website claims that their 24” by 30” 1000-piece puzzles are the largest in the industry. White Mountain Puzzles is perhaps best known for their collage-style puzzles, where they pick a theme like Broadway musicals or Christmas stamps, and make a collage out of related images. However, they do also have plenty of landscapes and Americana (general stores, drive-in theaters, etc.), based both on artwork and photographs. They offer hundreds of different puzzles; I found somewhere around 300-400 1000-piece puzzles listed on their website, though not all of them are always in stock.

Their puzzles are fun to solve and the collage puzzles in particular get put together pretty quickly because the individual images are easy to differentiate. The pieces fit together tightly, especially when new, so the entire puzzle can be picked up after assembly, and there are no false fits. The puzzles are random cut, and, though more cardboard-y than Ravensburger or Cobble Hill, overall high quality.

With that, here’s the first puzzle, titled “I Love Massachusetts,” and featuring such icons as Dunkin Donuts, Hoodsie cups, and Spock (Leonard Nimoy). This puzzle was designed/constructed by Charlie Girard, who does a lot of White Mountain’s collage puzzles based on photos/logos.

I Love Massachusetts

Next we have “Old Candy Store,” a candy store filled with jars of candy and excited patrons illustrated by Steve Crisp. This may be the only White Mountain puzzle I’ve done that isn’t a collage or map. It still came together pretty quickly, and had plenty of colors and interesting parts to put together.

Old Candy Store

“The New Millennium” is part of a series of puzzles based on different decades that are done by artist James Mellett. This series highlights important events and people, TV shows, athletic accomplishments, and foods and products associated with each decade. Along with the 1990s puzzle (The Nineties) that I also own, these two puzzles cover most of my childhood.

The New Millennium

Finally, we did “I Love America,” another Charlie Girard creation, which includes national icons like the Liberty Bell, NASA, hockey, and Play-Doh. My final verdict on White Mountain Puzzles: not the most difficult, but fun to assemble. Would recommend.

I Love America

Top Ten _____ [books, general fiction]

Over the past 18 years or so, I’ve read somewhere around 800 books. Just for fun, I thought I’d look at some of my favorites, starting with fiction, and see if anything interesting emerged. In this batch of books, I’ve excluded science fiction/fantasy and YA/children’s, which I plan to go through separately. I’m not a huge fan of romance/thrillers/mysteries, so aspects of those genres don’t feature heavily in the list below. Books are listed in reverse alphabetical order by author’s last name.

Our Town, Thornton Wilder – A play about everyday life in a small New England town at the beginning of the 20th century. Its intentional simplicity and sparseness emphasizes the message, and in many ways is the message.

The Color Purple, Alice Walker – An epistolary tale told by Celie, an African American woman living in the south in the 1900s, about the struggles and abuse she faces. At times violent and explicit, it’s nevertheless a powerful story.

Cannery Row, John Steinbeck – On a street lined with sardine canneries, characters go about their lives in Monterey, California during the Great Depression. I chose Cannery Row over something like The Grapes of Wrath or Of Mice and Men for being slightly less depressing than Steinbeck’s typical work.

The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger – A coming of age story filled with angst and alienation in which nothing much happens. Holden is, objectively, kind of annoying, but with reason, and there’s a particular mood that Salinger effectively captures.

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee – Set in Maycomb, Alabama, during the Great Depression, To Kill a Mockingbird tells the story of Scout Finch growing up with her brother Jem while her father Atticus defends a black man accused of raping a white woman.

Crazy Rich Asians, Kevin Kwan – When Rachel Chu travels to Singapore with her boyfriend Nick Young, she doesn’t expect to meet a bunch of crazy rich Asians. (Are they crazy rich? Or crazy and rich? Probably both.) It’s a ridiculous and completely fun read.

One Hundred Years of Solitude (Cien años de soledad), Gabriel García Márquez – Magical realism at its finest; the book follows seven generations of the Buendía family in the town of Macondo, and explores the ideas of fate and inevitability.

City of Tranquil Light, Bo Caldwell – Based on the author’s grandparents’ experiences as missionaries living in China during the first half of the 20th century. The writing treats the characters and setting with care, resulting in a lovely read.

Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen – Poor Mr. Bennet has five daughters to marry off in early 19th century England. Despite many misunderstandings and preconceived assumptions, will any of the Bennet women find love? Absurd at times, with memorable characters.

If you’re counting, that’s nine books for a top ten list. I couldn’t decide on a tenth, so here are some honorable mentions: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain), Dracula (Bram Stoker), The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck), Frankenstein (Mary Shelley) (arguably the first science fiction novel), Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë).

The list is pretty balanced in terms of gender – four female authors and five male authors. The oldest book is Pride and Prejudice, published in 1813; the newest is Crazy Rich Asians, published 200 years later in 2013. Most of the rest of the books cluster around the mid-1900s. There’s one book (One Hundred Years of Solitude) not originally published in English. One Hundred Years of Solitude is also the longest book by page court, per Goodreads, and Cannery Row and Our Town tie for the shortest (though by word court I would guess Our Town is shorter because it’s a play). And lastly, like only players with last names beginning with B scoring for the Revolution, five¹ of the nine books have titles that start with C.

¹Six if you use the original Spanish title for One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Marching On

31 sentence fragments (and three photos) about things that happened during the 31 days of March:

Wednesday, March 1: Started the graphic novel Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Rift, chipped ice off the back deck, and did laundry.

Thursday, March 2: Grocery day.

Friday, March 3: Tried monk fruit-sweetened oatmeal for breakfast (not bad).

Saturday, March 4: Shoveled the driveway for (likely) the last time of the season.

Sunday, March 5: Finished the birthday prinsesstarta that was baked the previous week (recipe from The Great British Baking Show: The Big Book of Amazing Cakes) and Wednesday.

Monday, March 6: Reviewed some photos, read some emails, and cored and de-eyed a pineapple.

Tuesday, March 7: Continued making my way through A Clash of Kings and started The Chair.

Crocus

Wednesday, March 8: Rewatched the Great British Bake Off season 9 final, the one with the outdoor open fire technical bake.

Thursday, March 9: Sent in some job applications.

Friday, March 10: Made a trip to the library and worked on a jigsaw puzzle.

Saturday, March 11: Spent the day at home with the puzzle and a book about a time-travelling café.

Sunday, March 12: Listened to the New England Revolution implode on the west coast and lose to LAFC 0-4 at midnight via radio call like it’s 2005.

Monday, March 13: Finished another graphic novel, Almost American Girl, about a Korean girl who moves to America in the 90s knowing very little English and eventually finds her place thanks to comics.

Tuesday, March 14: In honor of Pi Day, baked a cranberry apple galette.

Rubik's Cube jigsaw puzzle

Wednesday, March 15: Ate cranberry apple galette.

Thursday, March 16: First crocus in our sad flowerbed.

Friday, March 17: Put together a Rubik’s Cube jigsaw puzzle that was a gift from a Cornell friend for possibly the first time.

Saturday, March 18: Baked a Nutella/chocolate-filled babka, started another jigsaw puzzle, and heard the Revolution beat Nashville off Gustavo Bou’s first goal of the season while folding laundry.

Sunday, March 19: Dim sum lunch courtesy of (mostly) Trader Joe’s.

Monday, March 20: Watched Galaxy Quest (still haven’t met a parody movie I don’t like).

Tuesday, March 21: Started two kinds of tomato seeds – cherry and yellow pear.

Nutella/chocolate babka

Wednesday, March 22: Finally finished A Clash of Kings.

Thursday, March 23: Baked a batch of chocolate chip pecan banana muffins and talked to a friend from grad school.

Friday, March 24: Picked up The Soulmate Equation at the library to see if it was better than The Love Hypothesis (it was).

Saturday, March 25: Got to watch the Revolution beat DC United thanks to Carles Gil’s first touch after coming on as a substitute being an assist to Bou.

Sunday, March 26: Curry for lunch outdoors at the park.

Monday, March 27: Made research presentation slides the day before the presentation (so business as usual around here).

Tuesday, March 28: Went for an on-site interview.

Wednesday, March 29: Tomato seedlings made their appearance.

Thursday, March 30: Had blueberry frosted wheat for breakfast and bread with butter, arugula, and chorizo for lunch.

Friday, March 31: Mostly successfully made sushi and mostly relearned to knit.