'Tis A Puzzlement

Last week my brother received a letter from an on-line billing service regretting that they could not complete setting up his account because some critical information was missing. He had not tried to set up an account with this service and did not, in fact, know of the service's existence until the letter arrived.

Over the weekend a brand new smart phone arrived in the mail. It was addressed to my brother and he had to sign for it. He has a relatively new smart phone already, does not need a new one and would certainly not (and did not) order one from some no-name outfit in New York where this one apparently originated.

He contacted the on-line billing service and was told that he did indeed have an account with them which he informed them was fraudulent and needed to be cancelled. (The billing service, for the record, is a legitimate division of a very large web company.)

My brother also received in the mail and article of lingerie direct from the factory in China. The care instructions are in English but the rest of it is all Chinese. My brother's tastes in clothing do not run in that direction.

He was informed by the billing service that another smart phone is already on the way to him.

Here's the puzzlement:

His bank accounts have not been accessed. No money has been taken from him. The phones (and the filmy flimsy) have been paid for as far as the supplying parties are concerned. He is not being billed for anything. He is not being asked to return anything. The fraudulent accounts have been closed and notices issued so they can not be used in the future to gain access to his assets.

We can not figure out how the perpetrators have benefited, or planned to benefit, from this. Our best guess is it might be somebody in the neighborhood who was hoping to intercept the packages from our mailbox but, since the phone, at least, required a signature for delivery, that brilliant plan was not thought through all the way. Besides, one or the other of us is almost always home. My brother's most paranoid guess is that someone put malware in the phones but he intends to donate them so they will get nothing (from him at least, and it was his identity they were apparently trying to steal).

Either this is some fiendishly subtle and devious plot that is beyond our comprehension, or an act of sheer stupidity.

Right now, I'm leaning towards stupidity.

Eat Your Heart Out, Hammacher Schlemmer

The catalogs have been coming in pretty steadily for the past few weeks now and the floodgates will open soon but we may have received the winner of the season already.

In along with Grandin Road (the purveyor of those new Hallowe'en ghoulies we had out this year), Stauer (watches and jewelry), Smithsonian, National Wildlife Fund and a couple of others was Museum Tour, a new one to me.

Most of what Museum Tour offers is standard science education stuff for kids of various ages: puzzles, games, experiments, microscopes, telescopes, chemistry sets and selected intellectually stimulating toys.

And then there's the life-size Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton.

Thirteen feet tall, 39 feet long and weighing 661 pounds, this is a museum-quality cast resin model for only $249,000! Delivery and expert installation extra.

From the web site:

Educator Comments:Not everyone has room for a full sized T-Rex in their home, but if you do, you can be assured that the quality of this model is excellent and will make a perfect display. Museums around the world have installed this large dinosaur to the amazement of their audiences. The Geoword lab is meticulous about details. Even if you could find one, a "fossilized" T-Rex would be extremely heavy and cost many millions of dollars to display. This detailed representation is the way to go. It will inspire children and adults who are interested in the story of evolution.

        If you are interested in purchasing this model for yourself or a local museum, please call during business hours for details about shipping and installation. As you might imagine, displaying this large creature is not easy. An experienced team will be sent to your site to install the T-Rex to meet your specifications.

Of course, if that's a little beyond your budget (and in these times we would certainly understand) you can purchase just the skull (as seen in the rear of the photos) for a mere $24,900.

The web site helpfully lists the item status as "In Stock."

Don't delay! Order yours today!

End Games: My Face-Palm Moment

In the first book of the Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, there is a scene outside the gate to Moria in which Gandalf sits pondering the riddle written over the door trying to uncover the password that will let his party through. He translates it as "Speak, Friend, and Enter," and becomes increasingly frustrated as his "300-lives-of-men" worth of accumulated wisdom allows him to drag up virtually every secret password known to history all to no avail until it is pointed out to him that the riddle can also be translated as "Say 'Friend,' and Enter."

Face palm.

Boy, have I been over-thinking these puzzles. I solved two of them in short order over the weekend after dialing back a bit. I blame the need to discover an extra step in Puzzle 3 for my assumption of an unnecessary extra step in Puzzle 4. I was looking for the right solution and muddied up the clues which had been presented as straightforward as possible.

Puzzle 5 I rebuilt three or four times and kept fiddling with until I finally noticed, through sheer physically manipulative luck, the final instructions were built into the structure of the puzzle itself. When followed, the puzzle changed shape on its own, without further fiddling, and the answer was written right on it (although that did take a little squinting to see).

Unfortunately, that still leaves me four puzzles to go, the last one being unlocked yesterday. With all of them released, it is now a simple race to see who can deliver the last answer first. I am sure I am so far behind as to be completely out of the running but no announcement has yet been made, so I will keep plugging away.

And Back to Feeling Stupid, Again

I am going to be certifiably manic depressive before this Smithsonian puzzle contest is over.

Puzzle #7 opened yesterday and in short order I solved the surface conundrum but, of course, there is at least one more layer beneath that.

To make things worse, I have made no progress at all on puzzles 4 and 6. It doesn't help when I check Ken Jenning's puzzle blog and find comments from others about how quickly they have found the correct answers  and warning not to over-think the problem.

Right now I still have time but, if unsolved puzzles continue to accumulate, that will run out quickly since the winner will be the one who not only solves the last puzzle but is the first to respond. So they all need to be solved before the last one comes up next Monday.

One of Those Days

Sometimes a bunch of little things that, individually, don't mean anything accumulate in such a way that you just have to say "Well, this has been a strange day."

Today was platelet donation day but my appointment wasn't until noon so I decided to get a couple of things done on the way.

First off was gasoline since the car was running on fumes. As I pulled into the station I noticed a lizard had hitched a ride and was now clinging to the driver's side window opening just off the mirror. It was maybe three inches nose to tail tip, brown with a gorgeous delicate greenish stripe down its back. I tried catching it with the intention of releasing it in some nearby shrubbery and ended by chasing it up and down and around the side of my car while the attendant looked on from a distance. Eventually it got away. I tried looking for it when I was done fueling up but couldn't find it so maybe it got to somewhere green on its own.

(Not my barber. Although the resemblance
is scarily close. Stan's hair is fuller on
the back and sides.)

Next stop was the barber shop for my semi-annual shearing where I found my barber undergoing some sort of identity shift. He's always been on the doughy side and kind of soft with a Richard Simmons Sweatin'-to-the-Oldies thing going on, especially with his own hair, which I found amusing because of his very vocal full-on-Ebeneezer are-there-no-workhouses? libertarianism. Today I didn't recognize him. He's gone the full "It's Pat!" His voice is still upper baritone but he was wearing big dangly emerald glass earrings and his hair was classic middle-age matron.

Then it was on to the hospital where the TV over the donation couch was playing an episode of "House" and a patient was crashing out. "Oh uh," said my phlebotomist, glancing at the set while she stuck me. "Somebody's dying!" There's a reason the airlines all have a policy against showing in-flight movies involving plane crashes. I changed the channel.

And then on to the Smithsonian website where today's puzzle turned out to be an exercise in three-d. Even now that I'm done constructing it, the lettering makes no sense. I've already rebuilt it once. Well, back to feeling stupid again.

The Games Are Back On Track

The unseemly amount of fist pumping, happy-hopping and hooting accompanying my solution to the third puzzle would have been embarrassing if there had been anyone around to see it but, after six days of frustration, my elation was very real. So, take that, Ken Jennings! I'm back!

In the end, the answer just sort of appeared.

The Smithsonian released the fifth puzzle yesterday. It required some effort but was totally straightforward. Step one was basic, if time consuming, and yielded three clues, the first explaining what to do and the other two how to do it. An hour and a half and I was done.

That still left me with puzzles three and four. Letting them age was not working so I took out puzzle three again. I noticed that a few potential components had not been used and in attempting to identify all that might be missing began deconstructing the blamed thing when the answer just popped out. Actually, it more oozed out and I paused part way through when it suddenly seemed to not make sense any more only to realize it consisted of two parts and I was seeing the juncture. Now I'm wondering what the hidden extra steps in puzzle four might be.

Puzzle six will be released tomorrow and I still have number four on backlog but I no longer doubt my ability to work through this challenge. Whether or not I can work through it faster than anyone else is the question.

The Games Continue

O.K., Ken Jennings is currently kicking my butt.

The Smithsonian's puzzle contest started off well enough. I solved the introductory clues in the magazine fairly easily and unlocked the secret password needed just to get into the contest in plenty of time for the official start. The first on-line puzzle was a riddle and, after a little judicious Googling, I felt confident in my answer.

However, the next two puzzles have now been unlocked, one on Wednesday the other yesterday, and my brain seems to have shut down. My only consolation is that, from what I can gather on Jennings' puzzle blog, a lot of other people are in the same boat. On the other hand, anyone who is breezing through these isn't going to be complaining to Ken.

At least I have the long holiday weekend (thank you Cristobal Colon!) to wrack my brain before the next test becomes available on Tuesday.

Book Review, Now With Bonus Puzzle

I just finished a book, The Mobile Wave: How Mobile Intelligence Will Change Everything by Michael Saylor. It was a fun read, with a number of intriguing ideas by someone who ought to know, although it suffers from the boosterism of every title involved in the subject of "how X will change everything!".

One thing that has change in publishing, and not for the better, is the lack of serious editing and proofreading, a decision made, undoubtedly for financial reasons, by virtually all publishers. And very few authors value the services enough to pay out of their own pockets. The results are noticeable, often distracting, and do not do credit to either authors or publishers.

In this case, the book is well written but poorly proofed and, especially in the second half, an increasingly distracting number of extraneous words pop up in the text. Mostly they are conjunctions, articles and prepositions and do not change the meaning or clarity of the author's arguments but occasionally where the author selected a better choice for an existing word the old one was never deleted. Noun/pronoun mismatches and noun/verb disagreements also grate.

The best part, however, is: the author used staff from his own company to work on the book and at least some of them took advantage of the lack of adult supervision to hide their own names throughout the Reference section. (Yes, authors, there are people who will look at your notes, appendices and references.)
I had noticed what appeared to be randomly bolded letters throughout the section which, on closer inspection and connecting the dots as it were, formed the names of several employees whom the author credited with helping. (I've mentioned before that I like puzzles.)

So now I confess: I sent a somewhat snarky e-mail to the VP of Communication (who is also credited with working on the book put did not participate in the prank) sort-of ratting them out.

Let the Games Begin

I'm a sucker for puzzles. Crosswords, acrostics, Sudoku, you name it I have to try it. I will often try to do them in my head, which I can manage for some crossword puzzles (although not the New York Times') and the local letter-substitution cipher (but not the Sudoku).

A button from the Twain's World
contest. I also still have the T-shirt
lying around somewhere.

I once participated, back when I lived in Hartford, in the "Twain's World" contest, a sort of scavenger hunt around the city for clues put on by the Hartford Courant over the course of a month or so with the final clue and solution to be determined by all the participants in a gathering in a city park under the direction of Merl Reagle. I was the first to come up with the correct answer, but my brain works differently and I did it intuitively, a sort of flash of insight, about two thirds of the way through. Merl and his gang were still setting up when I came up and showed them my answer whereupon he immediately made up a new rule, which wasn't in any of the written material, that we now had to "show your work" in order to claim the prize. I have held him in contempt (which I am sure bothers him immensely) ever since.

All of which is a mostly irrelevant introduction to the fact that the Smithsonian magazine is holding a contest designed by "Jeopardy" whiz Ken Jennings (who used to patronize the bookstore where I was a manager in Salt Lake but that's also mostly irrelevant). The first clue was in the magazine itself and I felt very Nic Cage-ish (unfortunately, without Diane Kruger) as I solved that one which gave me the password to get into the real puzzle that started today on line. It took a half hour to solve the first on-line clue. The next one will be released Wednesday and then every second or third day for the next couple of weeks.

It's totally ridiculous how much I am enjoying this.

The Wheel Turns

Rainy Season is almost over. It hasn't rained significantly here in four or five days and the humidity is dropping to bearable levels. The temperature is also falling slightly. The sun is setting quite a bit further south than before necessitating a change in which curtains I draw to keep it from blinding us during dinner. All of which can mean only one thing:

Catalog Season is here!

They trickle in all year, of course, one or two per quarter. But the pace is quickening now. From two or three a month to two or three a week now, soon to be a daily deluge. From Hammacher Schlemmer, Signals (the NPR catalog), and National Geographic, at the high end through Stauer, Herrington and Vermont Country Store down to Blair House and a slew of T-shirt and "collectibles" catalogs (some of which have some pretty cool stuff in a totally ironic hipster kind of way) they're already taking up half the mailbox almost every day. Clothes, puzzles, jewelry, books, swords, replica firearms, scientific experiments for adults and children, Irish food, electronic gadgets for home and office, Victoriana, health and beauty aids, coins, watches, furniture (indoor and out, modern and antique, replica and original), gargoyles and statuary, Hallowe'en, Thanksgiving and Christmas tchotchkes . . . it's all here in full color lovingly described.

And if Catalog Season is here, can the Season of Excess be far behind?

Status Report

I must say Mom is doing quite well recently. She has a lot of energy (almost too much. She wants to help out around the house and gets frustrated when she can't (or when we object)). Sometimes, she can't sleep and gets up in the middle of the night, thinking it's morning but, when I point out that it's still dark, she either goes back to bed or sits up for an hour or two reading. She's been reading a lot and she also has a book of large print find-the-word puzzles which she's been working on with some success. The current puzzle is African capital cities and the answers can be found forward, backward, vertical up and down, and diagonal up and down which I think is a fair challenge for a soon-to-be-91 year old. (After all, when she was a kid there were only three or four African national capitals: Cairo(?), Addis Ababa, Johannesburg and Monrovia.)

She hasn't had any difficulty finding the right words to communicate either, recently, and has been pretty good at remembering which day it is (with a margin of error of one either way) although despite remembering on Saturday that it was Saturday and tomorrow would be Sunday and therefore French toast day when she woke early on Sunday she forgot it was Sunday and fixed herself a bowl of cereal which didn't stop her from having French toast when I reminded her it was Sunday.

She knows who everyone is (although she still thinks someone else must be around helping out) and watches the news every night and understands what's happening in Japan and Libya.

In other news, something/someone ate two of the nearly ripe plum tomatoes last night and my brother is pissed.