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Dec-14-10
 | | Annie K.: Heh... :) |
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Dec-14-10
 | | Open Defence: < Annie K.: <Dom> Naw, groceries. :) I go looking for things when I need them. Shopping as recreation doesn't do it for me. As in, pointless and boring?
Most unfeminine of me, I know. ;p> i'm speechless!! |
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Dec-14-10
| | Annie K.: <Deffi> um, sorry? ;) |
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| Dec-14-10 | | achieve: Blimey <Dom>, on days like this it's really a pain not to be able to watch the Live Game page here at CG; I just saw you posting on the main kibbutz board... It's written in the stars that I renew my premium rather sooner than later, at least prior to Corus/Tata (what an AWFUL namechange btw). |
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Dec-14-10
 | | Domdaniel: <Niels> To an old fart like me, it'll always be Wijk first, Hoogovens 2nd, the rest nowhere. They let all kind of riffraff comment on live games these days, but the voice of the good doctor is missed. Also, Jess is being very quiet. And I can't win any quiz prizes. So it's just me and Annie here, making faces at one another ... |
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| Dec-14-10 | | achieve: <Dom> I get you. Wijk aan Zee and Hoogovens for me as well; no personal feel and relationship, really, to the name Corus even. Hoogovens it was for me, until I physically went to Wijk aan Zee. But more importantly, yesterday after a rather long drought I thought I'd best write Jess and more or less get the whole "healthy distance" thing over with and reach out and tell her I miss her presence here, having finally succeeded in moving past a certain hurdle, ... but I was apprehensive and didn't write... but no choice but to write this week, for sure. Who the heck am I kidding?
Not wanting to get get too technical, but the faces you mention as I see it are all friendly and warm, and Annie as far as I can judge is a first rate companion. As is Jess. And OD... We're lucky at the quality of female companionship and honest involvement by the women at this site. Can Carlsen defend? Some of my virgin comments you can find on the tourney page, and indeed frogbert has pitched in his expert opinions; he is a really good chess analyst. |
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Dec-14-10
| | Domdaniel: <Niels> Yep. Over the years I've come to understand that <frogbert> is generally right. Other people have opinions: he states facts. Well, *almost* always. |
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| Dec-14-10 | | crawfb5: Well, "To d8 and back" was the first unsolved clue I saw this year that I didn't get. I did think of a King walk right away, but it popped up only a few minutes before I had to leave for the day, so I only had time for a couple of quick spot checks of King walks before rushing out the door. I'm not surprised <MAJ> got that one. It should have been relatively easy with his method of analyzing the zipfiles. |
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| Dec-14-10 | | dakgootje: How do you even search for such kingwalks - without actually downloading the whole Deutsche Bahn and having it automatically analyzed in some fashion? |
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Dec-14-10
| | Domdaniel: <crawf & dak> I searched on Fritz/Chessbase for positions with a White King on d8, and began to click thru the results. Except, for some weird reason, the Miles game was not among them, even though it is in the database. MAJ has a faster method, using previously downloaded CG databases and special search routines. |
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Dec-14-10
| | Domdaniel: <crawf> Yeah, they've *all* been gettable. Where are the 48-hour headscratchers of former years? And as for "several clues per day", unquote. There's been one in the last 12 hours. That's daytime here. Should I become nocturnal? A. Lemur |
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Dec-14-10
| | Domdaniel: Fermat. This is downright embarrassing. |
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Dec-14-10
| | Domdaniel: If I didn't understand Latin, I'd have googled the whole phrase. Instead, I was looking for cubes with peculiar properties, even though Andrew Wiles demonstrated that they don't exist. |
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| Dec-14-10 | | crawfb5: IIRC, <MAJ> writes script files to analyze the zipfiles he's downloaded. Searching for a White King on d8 gives a bit over 1100 games. Searching in that subset for a White King on e1 <after> move 25 cuts it down to 127 games. After move 35 gives 86 games. After 50 moves, 26 games. After 60 moves, 13 games. Of course not all of those had Kd8 played <before> Ke1. The best way to do it is to write some code to look for a White move of Kd8. If it is not played, move on to the next game. If it is played, continue searching for a White move of Ke1. If it is not played, move on to the next game. If both moves occur in the correct order, send the game or identifying info to a results file. <MAJ> does something like this, but has the basics pre-written with it flexible enough to change search criteria fairly quickly. |
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Dec-14-10
| | Domdaniel: Maybe everyone is getting smarter. Or it's the quiz version of rating inflation. But, nonetheless... Ou sont les headscratchers d'antan? |
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Dec-14-10
 | | OhioChessFan: <Should I become nocturnal?> We could join forces and become an octurnal. |
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| Dec-14-10 | | MostlyAverageJoe: <crawfb5: IIRC, <MAJ> writes script files to analyze the zipfiles...> Indeed, your description is quite accurate. The games are also pre-processed for easier searching. Once a search pattern is determined, simple patterns of moves, such as "white Kd8 followed by white Ke1", require about 3-4 seconds for a complete scan. More complex patterns may take a bit longer. Some of my scripts produce URLs to plug into a browser, so I just save the results into an HTML file, open it with SnapLinks-equipped Firefox and scan 2-3 games per second (game viewer turned off) Still, dumb mistakes such as forgetting to turn on case-insensitive variant when searching for 'Sagan' sometimes cost a prize :-). |
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Dec-14-10
| | Domdaniel: <tpstar>, who solved clue #1 in 2007, also got the most recent (2010/#19), bringing his total to 5 in 4 years. Quythulg is still in the lead with 11, despite no wins yet this year. A bunch of others have 8 and 9 ... Nobody has ever got 5 twice.
Sigh. |
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Dec-14-10
| | Domdaniel: Deuterium. Something else I looked up in the last week. I'm getting old and tired and slow, and everyone *is* getting smarter. That's why there ain't no more hard ones. This bunch would have HYFIN for breakfast. Sigh. At least I actually got a shot at two or three clues today. Who's counting? |
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Dec-14-10
| | Annie K.: I got as far as learning that the term to look for was probably Deuterium, before the clue was solved. :s |
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Dec-14-10
| | Domdaniel: <Annie> Nice going. I was chasing words to do with glass and scales ... Mohs, Heidenhain, indexes of refractive crypto-density, that sort of thing. While it was really quite simple: that clear stuff is water. Some of the water is heavier. It must be Deuterium. Is there a guy called Heinrich Deuterium? Nah, never, move on ... Eh. |
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| Dec-14-10 | | MostlyAverageJoe: <Annie K.: I got as far as learning that the term to look for was probably Deuterium> Did you find this page, too: http://www.tebyan.net/Science_Techn... ? Alas, I just noticed that CG zipfile archive is missing the entire year 2010. Darn. |
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Dec-14-10
| | Annie K.: First step: paste pic into http://www.tineye.com/
Second step: paste URL of matching page into Google Translate. You don't actually have to <know> anything... ;s |
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Dec-14-10
| | Annie K.: <MAJ> yup.
I probably started a little late, too.
Congrats, btw. ;) |
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Dec-14-10
| | Domdaniel: <Annie> I'm impressed. I know nada about pics - one reason why there are (almost) no verifiable ones of me in existence. You didn't even have to translate that page: the chemical symbols D2O were clearly visible, and 'D' is heavy Hydrogen. I guess I should use the interweb more and forget about book-learnin. |
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