You posted <I'm an SOB, just as crabby and nasty as you.> Hey, I said I was a crabby old fart, I didn’t say I was nasty! Okay, Bill, I’m nasty. Now, is that settled?

You earned points with – somebody, at least -- when you posted to Ed Trice, <By the way, Joe's not one of my friends.> If not friend, then what?

I’m nitpicking here: You asked <Why are Norway, Iceland, Sweden, et al excluded from possible solutions?> Ike didn’t run in Ikeland.

Nothing is fixed by reworking the puzzle, Bill. The puzzle’s not the thing to catch the conscience of the king.

I solved the problem fast – too damn fast – so Trice in all his vaunted brilliance determined that I must have cheated: I must have read it somewhere before.

That puzzle was a home-made concoction! Can you imagine an editor who would let pass a dumb line like “An eye witness to the murder was unable to see the killer”?

I did not get past the eighth grade. We don’t have to dwell on that. Think Depression, think WWII. I was a runawaay and truant from age 12 to 17. Basta.

I had the smarts to survive, to solve problems, and to not be cowed by educated bullies.

And I have a macrochip on my shoulder.

So sue me.

And the only reason I didn't say you were my friend is that we have not really had a chance to engage one another--always had respect for you, your views (even when I find myself disagreeing at times--not here, though), and your forum. No insult intended. Hope I can call you a friend from now on. (Still learning Internet manners here!)

The real point, as you identify it--that the puzzle's not the issue--is absolutely true. My only goal in pursuing the puzzle itself (as I am, as recent post on <ET's> forum and elsewhere may indicate) is to show how really silly these things (puzzles) can become when pursued to their ultimate conclusion.

<Ed Trice: <DomDaniel> I have a tough time accepting contrition offerings when you continue to post negative items about me in your forums, and other forums as well. I do not respond to personal attacks. I merely use the process set forth by this site, I copy the text I find to be offending, and I paste it in an email to site administrator. If he agrees that it is offensive, he can take whatever action he deems is necessary. If he does not agree, I am not phased <<<sic>>>in the least because I have already ignored it.>

<Ed>, if you use <deems> you don't need to follow it with the verb <to be>.

You see, it's already a verb in the first place.

<fazers> on STUN!

The solution was, "No."

The rat I smelt was of course the attribution of 'poluphloisboiotatotic' to the Lawn. I think he took his Greek too seriously; and while he might have made a playful coinage, it would have been more closely related to the Greek form (the superlative of 'poluphloisbos' in Greek being 'poluphloisbotatos', and the form 'poluphloisboio', familiar from Homer, being an archaic genitive). Tennyson does in fact translate this very word, if I am not mistaken, when Ulysses tells his men

the deep
Moans round with many voices.

I confess it took a little googling to establish that the coinage you give is from Thackeray, who dropped out of Cambridge while the Lawn was becoming an apostle.

As for the Leeds terraces, I took Thackeray to have inverted the order of 'o' and 'a' in his representation of Greek superlatives which would cause the best-known terrace chant of the 1990s 'ooh, ah, Cantona' to be rendered something like 'uh-oh, Cantona', a chant which might admittedly have had some application when the said gentleman nearly wrote his career off by launching an acrobatic kick on an obnoxious and xenophobic fan.

Tat to You

You gotta watch these viagra types
They got nothing to lose except – oh, cripes!
Got code numbers on his wrist!
What's the manual say? Will he resist?

Zoom in closer, get these digits down
And use the computer, or we’re in code brown!
No time for backup. Nelson, call Assist
Looks mid-eastern – he’s a Terrorist!
Okay, he’s old, wears a nice new suit
You’ve heard of cover? Orders are to shoot.
Just run these numbers through the system,
Parking fines, you say? No need to list ‘em.
We have him now, no more time for screening,
I (crackle) never heard you say they had another meaning.

Beautiful, my friend. As an occasional editor-type I had registered a general screw-it-up and-bin-it tenor to the overall level of syntax, grammar and sanity in the puzzle text, but I admit no single example as clearcut as this jumped out at me.

But so many kids, journalists, inventors and, ah, logicisticians are practically illiterate these days anyhow ... we just can't keep up to the old standards.

I can never remember how the American school system works -- do you start with first grade and get older, or do you begin with some arbitrary larger number, and shrink? Is there a grade zero? Is there a rigid age/grade correlation which is hardwired into everyone's consciousness, so if I say "I was in third grade in 1971" everyone will know exactly when I was born?

Actually, in 1971 I was in something called "second year". And I was in "second year" again in 1976. And again in 1978. And again in 1982. And, possibly, in 1986.

We learn by rote and repetition over here in Yurp.

And they somehow squeeze all the other stuff you mention in too.

I wonder what it would take to actually consider dismantling the school system -- clearly a relic from a much earlier era, largely modelled on proto-industrial society, when books were scarce, social status was static, roles were fixed, and information transfer was top-down.

Just like universities ... the 'lecture' is a hangover from the middle ages. Think Abelard or Aquinas in Paris, solemnly reading from the *only* manuscript copy of a book, while everyone takes notes.

They're still doing much the same thing, but with computer backup.

He must be gettig on 2500 years old now, and he seems <sharp as a tack> still.

I'd just like to point out how much I've been enjoying your <User Name>.

I can't read it without seeing the word <Quilty> in my mind and thinking of <Peter Sellers> in <Lolita>.

And smiling.

What on earth does your name mean?

What is the history behind you choosing it?

Probably you're already aware of it but the list is huge, and I"ve played through the first four games.

<Nimzo> plays a beautiful, beautiful game of chess IMO.

As imaginative as <Tal> and as <Cold-bloodedly Precise> as <Capablanca or Fischer>.

Why was he never <World Champion>?

Yrs of age = grade

five = Kindergarten
six = First
seven = Second
eight = Third
nine = Fourth
ten = Fifth
eleven = Sixth
twelve = Seventh
thirteen = Eighth
fourteen = Ninth *
fifteen = Tenth *
sixteen = Eleventh #
seventeen = Twelfth #

* Junior High
# High School

There's a Middle School
in there someplace. It's
probably aka Junior High.

This is top-of-the-head
knowing. Probably more
than you asked for.

5-18: <Kindergarten>

18+ <No University for you if you don't have lots and lots of money- no more loans and grants for the working class>

http://angband.oook.cz/monsters.php... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quylth...
http://www.geocities.com/ollitoi/pu...

I see my passionate rant-cum-plea to <Le Trice> -- saying in effect <"Joe Williams is a human being, dammit, a real person, not a 2-dimensional cutout from a logic puzzle who must be X if he does Y..."> was immediately followed by this immortal offering:

<Are any of the people who opened the package family members of the person whose body the arm came from?>

Er, quite. Gosh, I love these surreal juxtapositions. Mr Mack would be amused, unless he got angry first like I did. Which is very rare, as you probably know.

I promised Le Trice that I would continue to dissect him, as an object of interest to <Frogspawn>. I dunno, it may be possible to clone weapons of mass destruction from him, or something. Highly logical sneezes, let down by the fact that they infest dogs and cats and armchairs as well as humans. Wizzywig, and all that.

This is of genuine psychological significance: like I said, punsters are often banal, but rarely anal. This exception does not 'prove' the rule: it makes us rethink the fundamental properties of the anus. As it were.

So I didn't see your post there. Would I find it easily? Do I need a page reference... or ... do I already possess <sufficient information>.

Shoot, there I go again. Life can be so puzzling, and there's never enough information.

Anybody see an obscure French art-movie from the 1970s named "La Cicatrice Interieure" -- The Scar Inside, directed by Philippe Garrel ...?