Re: A Gamey Taste

1

Is that really just the apps, not counting web browser time?


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 12-26-24 10:08 AM
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My Large Adult Son has cemented his new identity as a corporate drone by telling me that LinkedIn's daily games are pretty good. And they are! Set a little easier than I'd normally look for, but they kill five minutes over my first cup of coffee pretty well.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 12-26-24 10:34 AM
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We both went cold turkey on Wordle about a year ago. We were in too far, doing Duordle, Quordle and Octordle as well (with several different "games" at the latter. It is good that we are out now.

Daughter and sister recently got me doing Connections. And 3 or 4 of us do a non-NYT Spelling bee semi-competitively, having a call every evening to compare and then combine to see if between us we can get everything.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 12-26-24 10:59 AM
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I did the Wordle regularly for over a year until I read about a strike that was relevant to it and quit in solidarity. I don't know if I could rejoin now, but the streak is shot, so I'm not too motivated.

Wordle was great for what it was, but I admit I found myself cheating now and then, and it could rarely take up more than five minutes. I like the idea of a crossword for a longer-but-still-casual intellectual challenge, but the NYT never made it available for free anyway, and I haven't found one that feels good online, and I'm not going to get a physical paper just for that.


Posted by: Cyrus | Link to this comment | 12-26-24 11:06 AM
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3: I had to quit Quordle because it started to feel too mechanized and I have to be wary of accumulating rituals.


Posted by: heebie | Link to this comment | 12-26-24 11:48 AM
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I mostly do an ungodly amount of nonograms still.


Posted by: heebie | Link to this comment | 12-26-24 12:09 PM
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5: Eventually, it leads to a mandatory hat.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 12-26-24 12:12 PM
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8

Do you have to pay for the games, or only the news? If the latter, I'm not surprised that the free stuff is more popular.


Posted by: lurid keyaki | Link to this comment | 12-26-24 12:20 PM
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9

If Unfogged were to to deploy some daily games it would really improve our engagement metrics.


Posted by: Spike | Link to this comment | 12-26-24 12:22 PM
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I have an established morning puzzle routine. I do Wordle, then Spelling Bee until it kicks me out (because I don't have a NYT Games subscription, it only lets me get to "Good"), and then the Mini-Crossword, then Connections and then I leave the NYT puzzleverse to do the Chess.com chess puzzle of the day. As I recall before I got swept up in the Wordle craze I didn't do any puzzles at all.


Posted by: peep | Link to this comment | 12-26-24 12:22 PM
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8: Yeah, I just checked and you can play all the games that I play without any NYT subscription at all. If you want to do the big crossword puzzle or waste your whole day trying to convince Spelling Bee that you're a genius you need to get a NYT Games subscription.


Posted by: peep | Link to this comment | 12-26-24 12:28 PM
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9: Remember Boticell?


Posted by: peep | Link to this comment | 12-26-24 12:31 PM
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12: There's no i in team, but there's 2 i's in Botticelli.


Posted by: peep | Link to this comment | 12-26-24 12:32 PM
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The Florentine painter? I don't.


Posted by: Spike | Link to this comment | 12-26-24 4:40 PM
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The flashback quiz is kinda fun (I hadn't done it before), but like Connections, it's a little weird that it's just fully yoinked from another game. At least Flashback works better than Wikitrivia did (since it's better curated and has fewer answers that are kinda sketchy), while Connections is a dumbed down version of Only Connect.

Though I guess it's not so different from crosswords where everyone just took the form from each other. At the end of the day doing a good job with the idea is more important than the original idea.


Posted by: Unfoggetarian: "Pause endlessly, then go in" (9) | Link to this comment | 12-26-24 7:41 PM
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I find the utter lawlessness of the Spelling Bee wordlist too infuriating to do it. Sometimes I help RWM if she's stuck on getting to Genius. (Also I can't spell and am always forgetting about the "use the middle letter" rule.)


Posted by: Unfoggetarian: "Pause endlessly, then go in" (9) | Link to this comment | 12-26-24 7:42 PM
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I am slowly getting kinda good at the crossword. Way slower than RWM still, but I did finish all the ACPT puzzles within the time limit for the first time last year. Got my Saturday average down below 30 minutes.


Posted by: Unfoggetarian: "Pause endlessly, then go in" (9) | Link to this comment | 12-26-24 7:46 PM
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Did 4 flashbacks, missed two total by a few decades each. Both in the latter half of the 19th century, I guess that's my weak spot.


Posted by: Unfoggetarian: "Pause endlessly, then go in" (9) | Link to this comment | 12-26-24 7:55 PM
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And the leaves fell from the trees in a great wind as I went, for the autumn is passing to a dire winter.


Posted by: mc | Link to this comment | 12-26-24 10:30 PM
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So you guys enjoyed the "What Happens in Vagus" pun but not "A Gamey Taste" pun. Noted.


Posted by: heebie | Link to this comment | 12-27-24 9:51 AM
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I was too focused on whether or not the statistic was meaningful if it was just about the app.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 12-27-24 10:30 AM
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Stormcrow, you can play worldle. You might find it generally pretty easy, but those Pacific island nations aren't.


Posted by: CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 12-27-24 11:21 AM
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23

Without looking at a map, what country is immediately north of Ghana?


Posted by: CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 12-27-24 11:23 AM
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Cameron Kirk.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 12-27-24 11:26 AM
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Upper Volta


Posted by: Barry Freed | Link to this comment | 12-27-24 11:37 AM
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West Africa is my kryptonite...

It's one of Burkina Faso, Mali, or Niger... I'd guess Niger? Though I probably would have guessed that it bordered both Niger and Mali if you hadn't told me it was only one country.


Posted by: Unfoggetarian: "Pause endlessly, then go in" (9) | Link to this comment | 12-27-24 11:45 AM
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I think the problem that I make here is that I forget that Guinea has a big inland portion, and then I think that Burkina Faso is located where the inland part of Guinea is.


Posted by: Unfoggetarian: "Pause endlessly, then go in" (9) | Link to this comment | 12-27-24 12:08 PM
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I cheated, and Barry is right, except that I guess he's in a different time zone.


Posted by: peep | Link to this comment | 12-27-24 12:26 PM
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I'm doing my annual half-hearted purge of excess stuff in my house. It's like pulling teeth. I wish my house wasn't so tiny so that I could have closets to hide and forget things, instead of having everything out in the open, where every possession that is not either aesthetically harmonious or immediately in use becomes visual clutter.

All these books I never read anymore, or have never read. Someone gave me all these Henning Mankell books some years ago, and I read a few and disliked them. I remember someone here (was it Moby?) talked about them a lot. Do they get better? The ones I read were just this really unpleasant guy who kept getting tangled up in increasingly implausible incidents involving foreign criminal organizations. Can I just donate the rest of them, unread? There are so many.


Posted by: jms | Link to this comment | 12-27-24 1:46 PM
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I stopped doing wordle when I found myself grimly grinding through wordle, dordle, quordle and octordle every day, like it was a second job. My new obsession is wridges, which is so fun I'm going blind. I feel like I've found my one true talent in life.


Posted by: jms | Link to this comment | 12-27-24 1:48 PM
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I did like Wallander. But as covid wore on and things started to seem bleak, I lost my taste for that kind of story. I don't recall if they got better, but they didn't get different in terms of what you describe.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 12-27-24 2:07 PM
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I also never bought any of them. I got them from the library through Libby.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 12-27-24 2:11 PM
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33

I'm still transferring journal entries, and got to the 2008 primaries when Clinton made something of an alliance with McCain over a gas tax suspension, against Obama. This was in May, long after he'd decisively clinched the nomination. That was a jerk move of her.


Posted by: heebie | Link to this comment | 12-27-24 2:26 PM
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OT: The better Gumbel died. RIP.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 12-27-24 2:36 PM
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35

Apparently, also in 2008, Jammies and I went to go see Kids in the Hall, touring live. I love KitH, and apparently I loved the show! and yet I have absolutely zero memory of this whole evening. I would have told you, "of course I've never seen them live. Do they even tour?!" Memory is a depressing thing.


Posted by: heebie | Link to this comment | 12-27-24 2:43 PM
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36

I don't actually have anything against Bryant. I just don't trust morning TV people as a class.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 12-27-24 2:44 PM
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37

Tradle!


Posted by: Alex | Link to this comment | 12-27-24 2:49 PM
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38

And "Obama's NAFTA memo" - what the hell was that?!


Posted by: heebie | Link to this comment | 12-27-24 2:50 PM
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39

I think it's a kind of vole.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 12-27-24 2:52 PM
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38: I didn't remember what that was either so I looked it up. It seems that there was a brief foofeeraw during the 2008 primary when it turned out that at the same time that Obama was being highly critical of NAFTA, his chief economist was privately reassuring Canada that this was just politics, and that Obama wasn't actually a protectionist. This was around the time of the Ohio primary which Clinton won.


Posted by: peep | Link to this comment | 12-27-24 4:13 PM
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40 Simpler times.

31 I've just watched various TV versions. There's vicious serial killers on the loose, and only one guy can figure out how to catch them. But everyone keeps telling the guy he needs to take more time off.


Posted by: CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 12-27-24 6:39 PM
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