Big Blue Huddle

Quote from: LennG on January 28, 2022, 08:42:32 PM
Question on todays game

I started with HOIST--nothing
Went with READY- Got E and Y correct
Went with FLUKE and K correct and a yellow E

Wouldn't that indicate that there was another E somewhere since my first E was green with the READY word? This thru me off until I just ignored the yellow E and proceeded to get the word.
I thought it was mentioned that if there were 2 of the same letters, one would be green if it were in the correct spot, and then if there were another it would be yellow.

No. When you went with READY, you had the E and the Y in the correct spots already.

When you then went with FLUKE, since you moved the E out of the correct spot, it switched from green to yellow. It wasn't going to keep it as green since you moved it.

Really enjoying doing my daily Wordle. I've now done ten days worth of them. Sadly, while I wish I could report a perfect record, I missed one two or three days ago so I'm at 90% so far. On the one I missed, I was very sloppy/lazy with my 3rd and 4th guesses and didn't put nearly enough thought into them. Lesson learned. But I think this is a fun little daily exercise that gives your brain a quick workout to start the day without taking too long.

I think it's an impressive lineup and should be very good. As far as hip-hop goes, these are among the biggest and most known stars. I was surprised when they didn't do something like this when the Super Bowl was in Atlanta. Doing Maroon 5 for that show and not a hip-hop act was a mistake on their part in my opinion, and I have nothing against Maroon 5 and thought they did a good job. Better late than never though I guess. I'm looking forward to it.

Got today on the third try. My second guess was a very fortunate one.

There is for sure a lot of luck in the first two rounds in this game. I went from having one green in the first round to four in the second round. So the third pick was easy.

I read that it's best to start with a vowel-heavy words in the first round, which makes sense. If you hit a vowel or two early you have a bit more of a tangible base, since there are so few vowels compared to consonants.

Very fun game. I agree that it's a nice little brain exercise. I've done about 8 or 9 of them, and I showed my 14 year old daughter, and she is also a fan. I'm happy to say that so far I have not missed any, but they are generally taking me 4-6 tries. I have gotten two on the sixth try, so I'll certainly miss one soon. I have not gotten one in two tries and I think I only got one in three tries once, and that one was pretty lucky.

What is your way of attacking these things? This is how I have been approaching it:

First try: Just pick a word with a lot of reasonably common letters like "paste" or "boats"

Second try: Still have to be creative here. Just try to get something that fits the clues, but using all new letters, again favoring common letters.

Third try: By now, hopefully you've got at least one green to work with. You should also have a decent number of eliminated letters. Since most of the eliminated letters will be very common ones, depending on how many yellows and greens you have, you can start to piece together some possibilities. You also may have a better idea of where the yellows should be located as you may have two different wrong spots for the same yellow letter.

Fourth try: In this round you should be taking a genuine stab at the word with some sort of confidence. There aren't many letters left that that aren't part of the word, so it's just a matter of thinking about what the word could possibly be given the clues. In this round, you're probably going to have to start thinking about random letters like J, W, X, etc.

Fifth and sixth tries: If you haven't gotten it by now you should be really in trial and error mode with very few possibilities and it's just a matter of process of elimination. I have seen some annoyingly weird words like "oxide", so they'll definitely throw some tricky ones at you.


Jolly, if you have any tips I'd be happy to hear them!

Quote from: ozzie on January 18, 2022, 06:23:15 PM
Yes. My daughter introduced me to it this past weekend. Fun game that makes you think. Very enjoyable but I wish you could play more than once a day!

That second link provided in the OP allows you to do that.

Love it. Just tried and got my first one right on the final try. Stressful!

Quote from: T200 on January 14, 2022, 10:44:20 AM
I was super excited for them to make up for the crap they fed us with the previous series finale.

The first five episodes of New Blood were as expected, setting up his kill list. But it seemed a little rushed to me, even with the 10 episodes.

I wish they would have had Bautista confront Dexter. Logan getting soft and letting Dexter get close enough was lazy writing and it seemed they were rushing to finish.

I didn't like them having Harrison kill Dexter, although I can see the door being open for Harrison to start in his own series.

Overall it was very good and a much better ending.

T,

Very solid points and critique.

As I said in a different thread, I thought it was an excellent season. Solid A- for me and probably well above average among all Dexter seasons. Good flow from episode to episode, I liked the new setting, very good villain (albeit he was no Trinity), the usual superb acting from Hall, pretty good supporting acting, very solid dialogue (especially Dexter talking to himself), and just good general tension throughout.

One criticism I had was I thought they played up the whole "small town" theme a bit much. Some of that got a bit hokey and trite. In particular, I thought it was silly that in that whole town, and I appreciate it is a small town, there were basically three cops, one of whom was the chief, one of whom was the high school wrestling coach, and the other was some guy at a desk. I found that to be not believable at all.

I agree about having a scene where Bautista confronts Dexter. That was a bad miss on their part, and I felt sure it was coming. If they were going to bring him back into this season, they should have used him more.

I was initially disappointed by the ending because 10 minutes prior I was under the impression we were going to be getting some "Dexter LA" seasons in the future, but upon reflection I thought it was done very well. I tend to believe that that's it for Dexter. I doubt the do one with the kid. He may be a decent actor, but it just wouldn't be the same. The only way they could possibly do it is if they have Dexter's ghost talking to the kid the whole time, the way he used to do with his Dad and with Deb in this season. Then I suppose it would be feasible. But my guess is that they won't. If Hall wanted to continue doing this, I doubt he would agree to be killed off.

Just wrapped up "Dexter: New Blood." I was a fan of the original series, but I thought the final season was pretty weak, which left a bad taste in my mouth. So I went into this with only limited expectations, but I thought I'd give it a shot.

I can report that it was EXCELLENT. I'd give at no worse than an A-. Really tense and gripping plot, very good villain, good side characters, elite acting from Michael C Hall and solid acting from everyone else, very good dialogue (particularly when Dexter is talking to himself), and just good overall flow to the plot from episode to episode. I liked the wintry, small town setting too. I can firmly recommend this series. My wife and I took it down in basically four nights.

Quote from: LennG on January 12, 2022, 08:23:16 PM
What you interpreted was exactly what I was asking or questioning.

We have an investment broker who we have been using for many years. On this thought, I called him today to also ask about this very thing. He advised that one should have enough cash to make it thru a couple of weeks if you could not access your money.

Personally, I think I would feel better knowing I have maybe a good month's worth of cash.

Other than the very basic things like food, gas, etc, it's hard to know exactly what you might need money for in a situation like that. For basics, I feel we have at least a month's worth, probably more than that. It's not like I'd be out buying lobsters and caviar in that situation.

I remember about 15 years ago (maybe more) in NYC we had a major blackout. For a period of time you couldn't get money out of the ATMs. I didn't have much cash in my wallet that day, but the main boss asked the team if anyone needed to borrow some cash. Several of us said we did. We went into his office and he had a substantial amount of money (must have been about 5 grand) in his safe in his office. I borrowed $200 from him and paid him back the next day, but it made an impression on me that it's just smart to have some money on hand in a secure but accessible place. You really just don't know what you might need it for.

Quote from: LennG on January 12, 2022, 07:34:19 PM
I have thought that Gold would be a better option as money will never increase in value, but from what I have been hearing, if such a catastrophe occurred, and gold is the money, who do you sell it to, and what do you do with it?

Exactly. While I get the point about holding gold as a physical asset versus actual cash, I'm not talking about an amount of money that is substantial enough that I'm especially concerned about it from an investment/future value point of view. It's more for peace of mind that if I could not access my accounts for some period of time, I would have enough cash on hand to not have to worry about basic needs for myself and my family for a period of time. I thought that's all you meant. I'm not really envisioning a scenario where physical US Dollars would be worthless.

Quote from: MightyGiants on January 12, 2022, 06:56:31 PM
Certainly, excessive worry is never a good thing.  However, if you were to ask, "why avoid it"?   I would say two things:

1)  To the unvaccinated Omicron is not nearly as mild

2)  We can't afford to have everyone sick at once, we need to spread things out or everything could come to a crashing halt as we run out of critical workers and healthcare workers and resources

Solid points.

I do think it's safe to say though that it does not deserve the level of fear (at least not among the vaccinated) that we have had of other strains. And while I agree with your points, they're not enough to convince me that this strain is a reason to say never go to a restaurant, a sporting event, or on a trip somewhere. I'm not currently at that extreme of a level of worry/caution, personally. Moreover the government clearly is not recommending such a level.

I do, yes. I certainly don't keep a major amount outside of our accounts, but having some physical cash that is readily accessible has always seemed like a good idea to me.

If everyone is going to get it then why worry excessively about it?

Quote from: MightyGiants on January 09, 2022, 02:32:06 PM
One thing I have noticed is that kids do more communication via text and social media than they do face to face.   Still, beyond that, it seems to me, that much of what you cite is more speculative or intuitive rather than factual.    I do keep an open mind though, so if you have a peer review studied (or a pre-review that sounds like it's quality) I would be willing to listen in terms of the detriment of masks for kids.    I will qualify that any study will be scrutinized because we both know that people have made the masks in school a political issue and when it comes to politics misinformation is way too common.

That's true that masks in school (and masks in general for that matter) have been highly politicized. To be perfectly frank, I'm not even saying they definitely should be eliminated in schools. I'm merely disputing the notion that there is zero cost (or a very negligible one) associated with students having to have them on all the time. It may well still be the right thing to do given all considerations. Having said that, at the very least, I feel policy makers should be very dynamic around this issue and consider cost/benefits analysis at every turn. Just having an indefinite, blanket policy that masks need to be on at all times moving forward, no questions asked, is not one that I am supportive of.