I’m through, being cool…. at least, I’m through with strep.  But I still have this nasty tickle-based cough that prevents me from rocking out on SingStar 80’s or SingStar Amped as much as I deserve to.  I am pleased to report, however, that my Guitar Hero awesomeness is unimpacted by my throat malaise.

Find the Star

Speaking of “stars,” I found a pretty cool little online game/puzzle thingy.  It’s in Chi-japanese or whatever, but still you get the hang of it pretty quick.  I’ve only spent 5 minutes on it so far, and that was back on Friday, but as soon as I get a free moment I’m going back.

The goal is to find the star in each of a lot of little flash games.  The trick is - you have to figure out what the trick is.  YOU have to figure out what you’re supposed to do to get the star.  It tells you NOTHING about how to play.  I think that’s the cool part.

The ones with the little star in the upper left hand corner are the ones I’ve completed.

Lateral Thinking Puzzles

One of my favorite things to do with friends (and especially with my 13yr old daughter and her friends / cousins) is to do Lateral Thinking Puzzles.  You need to get people who aren’t impatient or will ruin the time.

Here’s how it goes:

• One person knows the answer.  (If more people know the answer, they voluntarily sit out.)
• The puzzle is read aloud by the person who knows the answer.  The puzzle describes a situation but is cryptic, and the other people are supposed to figure out what the situation is.
• The people can only ask yes/no questions.  The answerer can only answer with one of three answers: Yes, No or Irrelevant.

Some of the puzzles are like riddles, and others are just descriptions of an event.  They key here is to learn how to ask questions that narrow down the possibilities, and to question everything and make no assumptions.

If you google for Lateral Thinking Puzzles you can get a few good ones.  For some reason, most of them are a little morbid.  Here are some of my favorites

• A man leaves home, makes three left turns and encounters two men wearing masks.
• Anthony and Cleopatra are found dead on the floor with broken glass everywhere.
• A man is found naked and dead in the desert, with a piece of straw on the ground nearby.
• A man and woman are found dead in a cabin on the side of a snowy mountain. 

This kind of thing sure beats watching a bad movie.

Jaden on Guitar Hero

I haven’t dumped the pictures from Christy’s cell phone in a Looooooong while, so I did that over the weekend (while trying to get p2k commander to work and other tools for syncing off of a Motorola RAZR) and found this picture from i-dont-know-how-long-ago. 

This was probably 6 months ago.  He’s a lot more into Singstar now, and you can hear him belt out “We’re not gonna take it” or “Hold me now” and it’s completely awesome.  He also does “Rio” pretty well.

Best of LOLcats

No credit for where you found that game site? I got through all of them - if there are any that you’re stuck on, let me know.

Okay, my guesses, without being able to ask questions:

1. Baseball?
2. They’re fish of some sorts.
3. Something with him getting the short straw.
4. I’d have to ask - is it a log cabin or something like the cabin of an airplane?

Avi, oh yes, the credit thing. I usually am pretty diligent about giving credit where I find things but in this case I just could not remember. So I just now decided to be MORE diligent and did a search of all my subscriptions in FeedDemon and determined that I found out through Jester. Thanx for the nudge.

As to LTP questions, yes, yes, yes and yes. LTP’s don’t come across very well on blogs because everyone has Google. But in a nice little group setting, say on Christmas Eve around a campfire in the back yard with about 15 people of various ages, all staring into the fire, eating good food and the group participating in the Lateral Thinking, with everyone able to ask questions, it’s a lot of fun. You also get to see how people think (or don’t think, teehee) and everyone hopefully gets some new perspectives.

Other good topics are just plain logic puzzles, like how do you measure exactly 4 liters when you just have a 3-liter container and a 5-liter container and an unlimited supply of water? The containers do not have any measurement lines on them. Those things are fun.

I assure you I didn’t use Google.

And the container one is fun. I remember seeing that in Die Hard 3 and almost shouting the answer to the screen because it was frustrating how stupid everyone was!

Avi, oh I believe you. I was thinking it would be cool to try to do LTP’s online, like with chat or a blog post with comments, but it just wouldn’t be fair or come across very well. It works great in person when people can’t use their iPhones

Another good one is: You only have two pieces of rope and a lighter. All you know about the rope is that they each take exactly 1 hour to burn, but you do not know if they burn evenly. For example, if you light one end of one rope, the first 5% of the rope might take 50 minutes to burn and the last 95% burns takes 10 minutes, but you know for sure the rope takes 1 full hour to burn.

How do you measure exactly 45 minutes?

Light both ends of one rope and one end of the other simultaneously.

When the first one is burnt up, 30 minutes have gone by, so light the other end of the second one, and it will take 15 minutes to burn completely. And there you have it!

I think.

The puzzle thing is totally addicting, and Jayden is SUPAH CUTE playing GH!!!

PS - I DID NOT TYPE JAYDEN. I meant Jaden.

Poppay, it’s ok. Getting names spelt right isn’t the most important thing in the world. And maybe now is where I mention Jaden has completed “medium” on guitar hero 2 and encore. With the normal PS2 controller even (he doesn’t use the guitar much). Unsurprisingly, he’s not into GH3 much (song choices, methinks) but loves Singstar. I gotta get a vid of him singing “We’re not gonna take it”.

I think we should blame Britney Spears for corrupting my thought process on the spelling of Jaden.

Poppy, yes, or better yet, her little sister.

Only if she also names her second son Jayden James.