Well, I didn't win the contest. I guess the jokes were too obscure, and using Flash wasn't much of an advantage. Though I can't figure out, if I think Flash is better than Paint, why I keep returning to Paint. I mean, Paint pixelates everything, and redrawing a portion usually involves deleting the offending bit, meaning the... OK, I'll just get to the pictures.

The first is a lateral symbiotogram (to take John Langdon's terminology) of the words "true" and "false." ( First image )

The next one is an experimental 120-degree rotational ambigram. I actually worked on this in Flash, but put it into Paint for some reason. I really should have exported it, and then as a GIF, but it's a jpeg screenshot instead.( Second cut )

This next one is a rotational figure-ground relation set on a gray background. If you're not logged into LJ, try to guess the words in it before opening the lj-cut. ( CutforBandWidth )

All right. This fourth and last idea is something I actually lifted from ceruleanst. However, since today's Chinese New Year, and since he hasn't posted about it yet, I think I can safely post it here without being accused of theft. (Though maybe I shouldn't, since he's just gone through that thing with that other ambigrammist and it only got settled four days ago, but I'm hoping to start up a friendly competition. Hmm, maybe I should wait on this last one.)

UPDATE, FEBRUARY 10: ( Grand Finale below )

Spell-check watch: "pixelates" and "screenshot." But at least it caught "imbedded." FURTHER UPDATE: Which is an accepted variant.

After seeing the hexagonal Black Box on MathPuzzle.com, I decided to push my hexagonal Magnets-like puzzle, called Nucleus. The groups of three circles are either protons or neutrons, the gray circles are gluons, and the uncolored circles are quarks. Quarks are either red, green, or blue, and though in neutrons they cannot be distinguished, same-colored quarks never touch among protons. Of course, each proton consists of one red, one green, and one blue quark. Given the numbers of distinguishable quarks in some lines, determine the placements of all the protons.



(Oh for crying out loud, why doesn't the spell-check recognize the plural of "gluon"?)

In an effort to push my previous "Heroes" entry off the front page, I will be making two entries in (preferably) a short amount of time. This one is about TV.

Now, the new season of "Heroes" is plenty engaging, and I have a couple ideas on what's going on.
1. Nathan (seems to have) contracted Jessica Syndrome, so named for obvious reasons.
2. The dystopian fate where Sylar has become President Petrelli could well be right on track, depending on how fixed the date of "Five Years Gone" is.
3. I think the murderer could be one of the dead guys. Why not? It could reveal what their powers actually were.
4. Again with the date retconning! It originally said Hiro had traveled to 1607 (a nice, round 400 years ago), but that was overwritten with 1671. I'd guess the writers didn't want to predate Jamestown or Plymouth Rock.
5. Wikipedia is your friend. It'd be a shame if Monica Dawson (that black girl) could only do things she saw on TV.
6. Finally, we see some powers duplicated! I'm a little bothered that family members were never shown to have similar powers until the twins Maya and Alejandro Herrera came along. (Peter doesn't count.)

I'd like to perform a statistical analysis at the end of the second season, thus: take the number of characters with powers demonstrated in the first season (24), divide by the fraction of such characters that debuted in the second season (6 so far) whose powers have been observed in the first-season characters (2 so far), and the result is an estimate of the number of potential powers in the "Heroes" universe. This estimate is currently 72.

On that note, let's look at "NUMB3RS." The reintroduction of Colby Granger was a little confusing, but not much of a problem. The annoying part is the new cinematic style that accompanies Charlie's explanations. I thought it made a little sense the first time, when Don was distracted, but it got on my nerves when it kept happening. It was nice to see Amita use the old style in the latest episode, "Thirteen." (The change isn't as bad as USA's "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" opening theme remix, though. Ew.)

Now I'd like to turn to the newcomer to my lineup, "Chuck." Produced by Josh Schwartz of "The O.C.," it seems only natural for "Chuck" to run headlong into the tropes of the genre, that genre being spy thriller. (Wikipedia is not your friend. If we called every spy story with questionable technology "science fiction," the genre would nearly have died with "Dr. No.") This enjoyable romp gives "Psych" a run for its money. The only problem I really have (keeping in mind that only four episodes have actually aired) is some overuse of last-second near-misses (and maybe some genre blindness in the episode "Chuck Versus the Helicopter").

Words you'd think spell-check would find acceptable: dystopian, retconning, ew, and Wikipedia.

I'd rather not check whether I've set a personal record for longest time between posts, thank you very much. I'll give my thoughts on "Heroes," "NUMB3RS," and also "Chuck" later. For now, a puzzle.

The letters that represent Roman numerals are IVXLCDM. In this puzzle, we won't worry about what they mean, just their relative positions in the alphabet. First, notice that C and D are right next to each other, as are L and M. We say each of these pairs of letters defines a difference of 1. If the alphabet is thought to wrap around as in a Caesar cipher, then the various unordered pairs of letters define all integer (of course) distances from 1 to 13.

Fill in the dashes below, one letter per dash, so that the string contains two of each letter and all thirteen distances are defined by neighboring letters. For example, IVXLCDM defines distances of 13, 2, 12, 9, 1, and 9 again, and the repeated 9 is not allowed.

D L _ _ C V _ _ I M _ _ D M

Today's spell-check folly: IVXLCDM => OVERCLOCKED.

It is 12:30 in the morning, and the Word of the Day is dysphemism. Merriam-Webster defines it as

the substitution of a disagreeable, offensive, or disparaging expression for an agreeable or inoffensive one; also: an expression so substituted.

For example, somebody may say "This is some great s***!" Clearly, the speaker thinks highly of whatever was referred to as "s***," despite referring to it as such.
Let's see what spell-check says!

Edit: Hmm. That's never happened before. Spell-check picked up only on "dysphemism," but didn't have any suggestions for fixing the word.
Edit 2: Ha! For "Hmm," it has the suggestions HM, Hm, MM, Mm, HMO, Ham, H'm, Hem, Him, Hum, HMS, and Hm's.

It was nice to see a skateboard chase scene on "Numb3rs" last Friday, though I don't quite see how Sinclair was able to outrun that kid. On an unrelated note, Sacha Baron Cohen's first name is apparently pronounced "Sasha."

All right, here's a new puzzle. Put the following words and phrases, currently alphabetized, into the proper order: condense, enthusiast, event horizons, height, thrown in, Turkish firs. Hint: I doubt this list can be "complete," for two reasons.

Oh, I almost forgot! Something was just revealed in "The Order of the Stick," but no one on the message boards noticed! Look at the eighth panel here; the audience was left in the dark about Miko's parentage. This inspired a couple of speculatory threads, but there wasn't enough data to draw any conclusion (preliminary or otherwise). Now check out today's comic, first panel. It's buried in the middle, but now we know Miko is the "daughter of Eyko!" That means... OK, not much, but I can reasonably say that "Eyko" hasn't appeared in the comic (barring a surprise twist) and may be female. On the other hand, we now know the previous speculation was to no avail! Eh? Eh? I feel so smart!

(Why does spell-check pick up "href" and "speculatory," but not "Sacha"?)

I was planning for my third entry to be my fourth entry. I mean, my fourth entry was going to be my third entry, but my third entry is this instead.

Anyway, I want to clear up any misconceptions from my second entry. (While nobody seems to be reading this blog yet, I want to attract readers, including those who read archives.) First of all, I'm not really sure I have phobias-- they're more like aversions. I'll pick up a penny from about anywhere, for one thing. Second, "genophobia" wasn't a correction for "germophobia." (Suggestions from spell-check for "germophobic" are "homophobic," "geomorphology," "comeback," "giveback," and "camouflage," in that order. It doesn't recognize "blog" either.) And that's about it, really.

Oh, and Lassiter is poking out into two-dimensionality.