First Time Around!

Living in a post-work world has been lovely thus far. I wake up late and well-rested, I've been exercising, reading The Audacity of Hope, seeing shows, and slowly (and unsurely) working on a musical of my own. I get randomly anxious, of course, but I tend to do that when I'm not working. I also get not-so-randomly anxious...I should probably pick a day to move out and contact some movers, eh? Pshaw. Pura vida. Om.

Today, I achieved my first goal of the summer: Jogging all the way around the reservoir in Central Park without stopping. This is part of my getting into shape plan, which now involves continuing to jog around the reservoir once a day without stopping. Hopefully I'll gradually get faster.

My initial goal was to start with one lap and work my way up to two. I guess I underestimate how unfit I really am/was...or maybe I just underestimated how long 1.5 miles is because all of my in-shape friends say obnoxious things like "Oh, I just did a nice easy three mile run today," or "Yeah, that was a good seven mile run," or "I'm working on getting my 6.5 minute mile down to 6 minutes." (I'm looking at you, Greg.) In any case, when you haven't run since you were nine, 1.5 miles is hard.

So my first day I had hoped to run a full lap but wound up running half. And I was in a lot of pain. The second day was worse. Much worse. I didn't even make it a quarter of the way around. The third day, sore of leg, blistered of foot, and broken of spirit, I speed walked. I took the fourth day off. Yet somehow, with some stretching, serious pacing, more selectivity of my music, and the misery of those first three days behind me, I started improving this week. Monday was the first day I did better than day one, making it over a mile before walking. On Tuesday I made it almost all the way around. And today, for the first time, I made it all the way around the track! Yay! 1.5 miles of pure jogging, baby!

Now, when I say I paced myself this week, I mean I really slowed the fuck down. I've been operating under the jogging philosophy that my legs should always hurt more than my lungs. It hasn't entirely worked out that way, but it certainly helps me at the beginning when I just want to run and know that if I do, I'll never make it around.

All right, time to switch the laundry. More updates TK.

Changing Taxonomies

I am amused—as it is so easy to be—by the number of basic facts I learned in elementary, nay, pre-school that have changed since I entered higher education (middle school).

Most obviously, the planet Pluto is dead. Long live dwarf planet Pluto! I guess there was always the possibility we'd discover another planet, and our solar system wouldn't stay at 9 forever. Yeah, that would have been cool to discover another planet. Maybe two other planets. We discovered there were probably about 200. So the IAU voted, and decided that it wasn't enough for a planet to orbit the sun and be sufficiently massive that it is nearly round, but it also has to clear its own orbit. Eight planets stayed in. Pluto was out. We never really learned that astronomers didn't have a good definition of a planet. Who knew this was even a possibility? That would have been an awesome lesson in ambiguity and human imperfection. Or it would have been an awesome excuse for some wise guy four-year-old not to memorize his planets. Maybe it's a good thing we just learned them.

We all learned how to eat according to the food pyramid. It looked like this. Apparently, to live healthfully, you should carbo-load like there's a worldwide grain shortage (er...) and run like hell from fats and oils. Today we know the true evil of the carbohydrate and the vast healing power of the omega-3. Or something. The food pyramid now looks like this. Apparently the pyramid was either too good a shape to lose or too good a url to change. It doesn't really matter that the pyramid no longer has a base and really looks more like a 2-D prism than a proper pyramid. The important thing is it's a pyramid. I just tried to play with the MyPyramid menu planner, but apparently a coke with a steak for dinner already puts me over my recommended "extras" maximum. We need to set realistic goals, people. I'm not becoming a raw foodie anytime soon. Anyway, the food pyramid is gone, the food prism has arrived, and Michael Pollan's approach of "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." is probably the wisest option yet.*

The good Lord made four apocalyptic horsemen, four Gospels, and four sons with varying question-asking abilities. He also made four tastes: Sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. Or so we were told. Long before my birth, those c-razy Asians knew the power of MSG to make food taste delicious. But only recently did Western taste taxonomists catch on and dub "umami" a fifth fundamental taste. I guess I understand why we were confused...it's a little hard to distinguish "savory" from "salty;" but the distinction is there, and the four elements of taste aren't the complete set of orthogonal bases I was raised to believe they were.

So, now that I've finished mocking my elementary education and our general confidence with current knowledge, here's what I think the punchline is to all this: These were all good mistakes. Well, maybe the food pyramid was never based on anything especially solid, but certainly we had decent cause to believe that we had 9 planets and the tongue tastes four flavors. We didn't wildly misinterpret our evidence. We didn't miss an obvious interpretation of data because we were sticking to dogma. We just needed to wait until the right evidence became available for us to change our taxonomies. And it's also important to note that these are taxonomies, not theories. These aren't rules of science with great explanatory power from which we could make lots of predictions. It can be upsetting when we get those wrong. These are just discrete categories. If new evidence shows up, it's very easy to add and amend. And so we have done just that. I guess this just shows us that the things that lend themselves to elementary school memorization—which happen to be the things that stick in our heads for our entire lives—aren't usually the things that have the most meaning or pack the most punch. But hey, at least those multiplication tables will never go out of style.

*_{Yes, I realize that steak is not a plant and coke is not food. Shut up.}

Dublin Trip(lin)

I have returned from Dublin! I thought it would be faster to record a video than to actually write about the trip (I may have been wrong), so here's the video. Sorry for the weird high-pitched buzzing. I'd get rid of it...if I cared! Oh! Snap! Right:



(I hope that worked...if not, I'll fix when I return)

When I'm Drunk, I'm Beautiful...

Hello, blog-reading friends! I am a bit smash-ed right now, which, as you know, is somewhat unusual for me. I'm not averse to a glass of fine wine/beer/liquor here and there, but I am usually averse to five glasses of fine wine/beer/liquor here or there. All of this apparently changes when I go to a phenomenal dinner with V at a fine restaurant where he's buds with the sommelier. Some advice: Try to go to a fine restaurant where you or your date is buds with the sommelier. There will be perks (which are substantially better than blood). Chris (said sommelier) gave us not only some complimentary wine, but also two additional scotches to go with the Macallan 25 we splurged on. One of the two was a Macallan 50. Oh my God. I don't even know how to describe it. Suffice it to say I feel superior to you all, now that I've had the Macallan 50. I'm like the 14 year old boy who's the first in his class to have sex. Or something. While my taste buds are elated, but metaphors apparently suffer after a gin and tonic, a glass of champagne, half a bottle of chateau-du-pape, a taste of 10 year scotch, a serving of 25 year scotch, and half a serving of 50 year scotch. Maybe I exaggerate. But barely.

The food was great, too. I had a "PB & J" (their creative foie gras-based appetizer) and bacon-wrapped duck. V had a goat cheese salad and the short ribs with truffle mousse. All dishes were phenomenal. And Chris arranged for a complimentary lollipop tree with dessert, which was amazing. In short, even if you have to pay full price for everything. I recommend davidburke & donatella. The portions are far more generous than you'll get at any other super-upscale restaurant, and the food is redonkulous.

So V and I got wasted. We were about even until Grand Central. He had missed his train by five minutes, so we stopped at the bar. Realizing that 130 pounds of Jew can only take so much, I ordered a coke. He got another cocktail, which tipped him from loose-lipped to incoherent. Which was fun, but it also marked a pretty clear end to the festivities. The loose-lipped stage was great, though. I'm sure tomorrow morning I'll regret many things I didn't get out of him. But the things I did get out of him were pretty good...mwhahahahaha.

Oh! And I should mention what we were celebrating, considering it's been my most important life development in a while: I got into YUUS this past week! Woo! I'm not positive I'm going to go there...I'm still looking pretty seriously at one other UUS (mentioned in an earlier post), but I think it's the most likely place, and I'm very, very excited to be offered a spot. When I visited Brad there at the beginning of the year, one thing he said to me was, "this is the most intellectually secure group of people I've ever met." That's a pretty compelling reason to choose a school. So I'm a little bit thrilled.

In other life news, Jess and I went to a Rufus concert at Radio City on Valentine's Day. The concert was just great; I've been listening to 14th Street constantly ever since. Rufus is pretty sweet live...all of his crazy Rufisms come across even better than they do on the albums. And his outfits are (there's no better word) fabulous. All right, I should probably get to bed early so I'm ready to read for Seed tomorrow morning. Good night, my friends!

MMVIII

At long last, it is 2008. A year of elections. A year of Olympics. A year of the prime factors 2 x 2 x 2 x 251.

Vacation, which I was glad to have, was excellent. I read a truly great novel, watched the first season of a hideously addictive TV series, and caught up with lots of old friends (no link provided). I attended one very good play, two very good movies, and three of the best coffee shops in the world. Not that I'm biased, or anything. So that was vacation. Low-key and friend-filled. Just as I like it.

Other than that, UU stuff is going delightfully. I wouldn't want to gasconade on the blog, lest UU committees read this and have their perception of me go catawampus. (V and I worked on an exceptionally difficult Saturday crossword over break.) But I've heard good news from two excellent places: the "New York City of UU" and a place that would have me study UU in New York City. Woot woot.

Speaking of cities that count, Natalia has flown off to Londres! I'm pretty excited to go visit her there in a couple of months.

There was plenty more I wanted to say, I think, but it will have to wait for my post-caucus update. For now I leave you with this blog post, which sucked up too much of my late afternoon, and the following quote on the "Greatest Generation:"

“What makes them so great? Because they were poor and hated Nazis? Who doesn’t fucking hate Nazis?”

Who says Broadway is dead?

I Like Mic

Midnight Madness X

What more could I want from life than 18 hours of sleepless, delirious puzzle solving? Well, 18 hours of well-rested, clear-headed puzzle-solving would be nice. But that's not what I got from Midnight Madness X, an alternately frustrating and exhilarating puzzle hunt that started Saturday at 8 pm and ended Sunday, just before 2 pm. Greg had participated the past two years (he's also done a few Microsoft hunts) and brought me onto Team Plaid, otherwise comprised of people who work with him at the hedge fund. I will now tell you the exhaustive and exhausting tale of Team Plaid's glorious victory (over teams who finished in eighth place or later), complete with pictures, provided by flickr users who actually took them.

After a sushi dinner with Jess and her friend Jack, Greg and I headed over to the (misleadingly) convenient starting point, Riverside Park, just west of 103rd St. I gradually met Greg's coworkers (and the one other female who came along) and we got a map of the Columbia campus (our area!) and our first two clues. One was a clear box that revealed a poem (I didn't work on this one), and the other was this (courtesy Brian of Team Red):



One guy quickly realized the abbreviations referred to places on the Columbia campus, and Greg quickly realized it was a tangram (you have to cut it up and rearrange the pieces). It took him about 10 minutes to convince everyone of this, and they never actually believed my solution of the tangram (it wasn't perfect), but we were both right. When we got to the (very general) location, there was a hangman puzzle on a whiteboard. It very clearly was going to spell out "TIME MACHINE" when it was solved, and there were some econ equations scribbled next to it. We spent a few hours trying to solve this puzzle. One problem: IT WASN'T THE REAL PUZZLE. I kept on saying to Greg, "wouldn't it be funny if this weren't the real puzzle," and he did not approve of my sense of humor. Without finding the real puzzle, we couldn't solve the other puzzle, because they relied on each other. Eventually we found out we were working on the wrong thing and found the other half of the puzzle. We solved it too late...by the time we got the next puzzle—a hilarious craigslist ad for a BBW (big-breasted woman, apparently) looking for a VGL (very good looking, that one I knew) man—we were off to Union Square, where we were all supposed to be at midnight.

We got there around 1 (we hadn't originally bought the Union Sq thing as not-a-trap) and waited for the rest of the game to start. Teams that had done better in the first half got a head start. We got two digital pictures: one of a street, one of a storefront. So part of our team went to the storefront (14th and C) and the other part went to the street (9th, just E of Bway). And we looked for the clues. And looked. And looked. And Game Control was MIA. So we looked some more. Shortly before FOUR FUCKING AM we managed to reach game control, who told us that there were no clues there and the direction of the photographs mattered. So with that we got that we had to head to the intersection of the two sightlines: 9th and C. While hunting for the clue there, I ran into a drunk coworker, which was fun. I also realized it was kind of strange that I was out at 4 am and neither drunk nor somebody else, which together would have made the situation make sense. Anyway...

That almost ended the excruciatingly frustrating portion of MMX. There was just one more. The packet at 9th and C sent us to the lower east side and contained three clues. The easiest of the evening (there was a dude in a Subaru), a tough but ultimately satisfying one (explanation TK), and this (thanks Strle):



Greg and I easily translated the wingdings by pattern. Greg then suggested that it was probably an intersection, so the middle word should be "AND." (Go, Greg.) I plugged that in and found that the Ds fell in the first word in such a way that ELDRIDGE fit perfectly. That put an R at the end of the 6-letter last word. I looked on the map they gave us. BROOME was the only 6-letter street crossing Eldridge. Alas! We had solved it incorrectly! Well, either that or their map just wasn't detailed enough to include Hester. UGH. Turns out the numbers indicate the letter in the name of the font (Times, Courier, Wingdings or Helvetica) to use there. Grr. In any case, had Hester been on that map, we would have gotten that one an hour earlier than we did.

In any case, we wound up working on "statements" (via Brian, again):



Our team figured out that it had something to do with states. Game Control eventually clued to us that an official state abbreviation is hidden in each line. We went through them, and I realized (Go, me) that the states were all kind of contiguous, and we should try tracing a line through the states in each stanza. When we did this, we came up with ESSEX + BROOME.

There we found a line of animals...each animal present twice. Here, Greg again solved the puzzle but with an execution that they didn't want (he took the difference in the animals' positions, not the number of animals between them, heaven forbid, and found that number letter in the animals' names), so the answer didn't work. Oh, the pain!

As we were working on that, around 6am, we ate breakfast, and about half of our team left. Greg was fading fast. We soon got my favorite puzzle of the day (Strle, again):



You're probably thinking what we were thinking: "What in God's name do we do with this?" Greg was apparently thinking, "Why am I sitting on concrete in a desolated area of Chinatown when I could be sleeping?" because he departed. I was left with three guys (a fourth would rejoin us). We perhaps too quickly got a hint on the clue: The spiral is the key to solving the strip. See if you have any inspiration...

We sat down at base camp and stared. And then I started folding the strip. I folded on every line indicated in the spiral. And when I was done with the segment between the outermost two black circles there was a "K" in my hands. Turns out the inside was the beginning, but we got it, and the bikers biked off to 103 Norfolk.

Much of the rest of the game was blurry for me, less because of exhaustion than because things got very fast very quickly, and the three guys on bikes got places much more quickly than myself and Jaime, the other pedestrian on the team. Other highlights included a fake crossword that gave us GPS coordinates, a video of a woman dancing in 22 dance segments that gave an intersection when we took the first letters of all the dances (Josh and I—mostly Joshmdash;managed to get enough of the dances that we could figure it out), and an awesome puzzle using the dongles that kept track of how many hints we had where the dongles responded to the angle they were placed at. Awesome.

At long last, when my legs were completely shot and I could feel the blisters forming, we got a direction to the amphitheater in East River Park. When Jaime and I arrived, our biking crew—Peter, Andrei and Josh—had come in 7th, seconds behind 5th and 6th, but an hour and a half behind the winners, who may have somehow gotten there without figuring out all of the clues. Everyone there felt good about finishing, and people from different teams were warmly congratulating each other (a girl I'd been scribbling down dance moves with clapped for me as I walked up the path).

Peter suggested going out for a drink, but it was 2 o'clock, and I was ready to treat myself to a cab and take a shower. Which I did. Thank God.

Sadly, this was the last Midnight Madness. Despite the early frustrations, I would love to do it again. It was a marathon, but the few times I figured things out were incredibly gratifying, and I got to know the LES pretty well, which was cool. And puzzle people rule. But I knew that already.

UPDATE: Kevin of Team Cerulean posted a picture of Team Plaid on flickr! You can see a little bit of me behind Greg:

Spoiler Alert: I'm Just Wild About Harry

This post has spoilers. MANY spoilers. So if you're in the middle of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows or haven't read it but plan on doing so, leave! Leave now! The blog will still be here when you get back, I promise, and if it's not, that means there's something horrifically wrong with Google, and we all have bigger things to worry about.

So, um, everyone's predictions were right. Sure, some predictions contradicted each other, so they weren't ALL right, but if you took all the most common ones—Snape's on the right side and was in love with Lily, Harry's a horcrux, Neville's the one who becomes a teacher at Hogwarts—you'd more or less have all the answers.

Then again, the answers have never been the REAL draw of these books. The terrific characters and beautiful moments are as terrific and beautiful as ever here. I've always found the Weasley family to be the most emotionally stirring set of relationships in the book...the way Molly cares about her husband and children, the completely good-natured partnership of Fred and George, who are constantly joking but so emotionally close and mature. So when the Weasleys suffered in this book, I cried. I did. I also cried when Molly uttered what I believe to be the first swear word in the series: "NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!" Bloody brilliant.

When Harry dives into Snape's memories and realizes that he must sacrifice himself, those are also a great few pages. His last mile felt incredibly real...as I imagine facing death would be...as any bizarrely extreme situation is.

There were actually long stretches that were sort of slow. I mean, relative to the rest of Harry Potter, which is to say that I was reading a page a minute instead of a page every 50 seconds.

In any case, the ending was extremely satisfying, if somewhat predictable, and I'm happy. Stories about midnight madness TK.

Almost All Hallows Eve

With 100 pages left in Book 6, The Great Harry Potter Reread is about to come to a close, and The Great Deathly Hallows Read will soon begin. Who knows how we'll look back on this time? I certainly have no particular envy for the newspaper readers who received Great Expectations in installments, but then again, I hated Great Expectations.

As many have undoubtedly heard, some clever schmo uploaded gifs of the entire book on the web, and now spoilers are wildly circulating, as I try to dodge them like a seeker dodges bludgers (Quidditch reference, ho!). I've already happened upon one, which I hope was false—not that I'm so opposed to what was indicated in the spoiler, I just don't like plots spoiled. It was in an RSS feed for one of my favorite blogs, and it was in bold. So maybe there was some context in the non-bold text that made it clear the spoiler was made up, but I didn't stick around in case there were more spoilers.

Not cool, Slog poster. Not cool.

I'm not even reading comments on this very post until I finish Deathly Hallows, because I wouldn't be surprised if some eeeeevil child were technorating all HP posts and commenting with spoilers, just to stroke himself. Bad boy. Go to your room.

But really, I'm not too concerned with the things that will probably be in these spoilers. I'm less concerned with who dies than with the progress of the book itself, how the final battle is framed, what the final comment on human nature is. I'll need to actually read the book to figure all of these things out. And I'm so psyched.

How to Sell Your Grand Treatise on Everything

I wanted to title this post "How to Be a Convincing Crazy," but I figured that might put off my target audience. Don't go, Grand Treatise writer! Hear me out: This post is just a list of hallmarks of good, convincing, sane writing. Whether or not you're a bit nuts, you can use my advice to make your Grand Treatise on Everything (GTE) more appealing to your intended reader. In my line of work, I've received more than a few GTEs (and I'm still young!), so I'm not a horrible example of your target audience. Here I will tell you what you can do to prevent me from immediately tossing your GTE.

Disclaimer: This is not a response to any individual person or document. Any one GTE could be stricken from my data set and the advice would still hold. Here we go...

1. Don't spill the beans!
GTEs from crazies are a dime a dozen. GTEs that are accurate and provide true insight into the nature of the universe are, well, really, really rare. So the second your reader realizes you are writing a GTE, you're in trouble. Your reader knows that the chances that you're a crazy who's BSing his way through the essay are pretty darn good, and he or she will likely stop reading (or at least stop taking you seriously) right there. So don't start sounding too grand too early. Keep words and phrases like "revolution," "meaning of life," "secret of the universe," and "theory of everything" out of your opening paragraph. In fact, leave them out of the whole piece. Don't capitalize "truth." Try to be modest and specific in your impact claims. Talk about how the ideas in your paper could have an impact on a specific field or help people achieve a certain end. Instead of saying that your theory "will revolutionize physics," say it "could provide insight into outstanding problems in high-energy particle physics." Instead of saying your ideas will "let people see the true meaning of life and achieve what some would call Nirvana," say they'll "let people explore a method of thought that could help lower everyday stress." And for the love of God, don't mention Thomas Kuhn and paradigm shifts. If you keep your language modest and specific, your reader might think you're on to something. Everyone is interested in the meaning of life and a theory of everything; if you let the reader make the connection between what you're saying and these grand topics by himself, you will stand a better chance.

2. Support your claims
How did you think of your GTE? Was it a flash of inspiration? Did God personally talk to you? Was it through a lifetime of painstaking thought? I don't care. I don't want to hear it. Nothing is going to convince your reader that your ideas and theories are accurate except solid evidence and strong arguments. Your reader doesn't trust you, and unsupported claims like "everything is energy" get you no points. This step is where you should spend most of your time and energy as you write and revise your GTE. If you have no support for your claims and just feel you achieved your knowledge through revelation, think of how you can support your assertions. Build up arguments that are rational and as rigorous as possible. Don't talk down to your reader; it doesn't make you sound authoritative, it just makes you sound crazy. Yes, you can appeal to your reader's intuition, but...

3. Avoid arguments that amount to "Duh!"
Prominent advocates of creationism often use "duh!" arguments, but hey, they seem crazy. Don't use them. You know you're using a "duh!" argument if you start using phrases like "of course," "obviously," "clearly," "common sense tells us." Most really, really bad theories appeal to common sense and intuition. It's a sign of lack of rigor. If you're trying to disprove quantum physics (I wouldn't recommend it), saying, "Obviously a particle can't be spin up and spin down at the same time!" is a dead giveaway that you don't know what you're talking about. Appeals to common sense and intuition are a sign that you simply don't understand something well enough to argue it. Which brings me to...

4. Do your research
If you are challenging an established idea, you should be very familiar with all of the arguments for that idea. If you're challenging quantum mechanics (again, not recommended), you should know about Bell's Inequality and why violation of it demonstrates entanglement. Is there something you don't understand? Is there something that seems obviously wrong to you? Spend a nice, long time trying to find an explanation in the literature. It will serve you well.

5. Keep your language simple/Use English
Keep your voice active and your words short. Long, florid sentences are just annoying, and they make your thinking appear muddled. Plus, strained sentences are a great opportunity for using overblown language. Avoid the overblown language. And don't define too many new words. Sure, if you want to create your own term for the "space-time-mind-connectedness continuum" or whatever you've come up with, go ahead. Knock yourself out. But when you start defining tons of subtopics that are key to your theory, you sound awfully caught up in yourself. (Unlike this post, which isn't at all self-involved, I know. But hush.)

6. Watch you're grammer
Do you think I'm a moron? I would too, had I read this section heading. Sure, anyone can sub in a "you're" where there should be a "your" or misspell a word. These aren't actual signs of low intelligence. But when you make these sorts of simple errors, you come across really poorly. Curl up with your good friends Strunk and White and get to know their rules. A couple of little errors won't spell doom (I'm not proofreading the post, I'm sure it's got its fair share of crap), but it's better to be safe than sorry. Oh, and in these modern days you can end sentences with prepositions, start them with conjunctions, and split infinitives til the cows come home. Enjoy.

OK, GTE writer. That's all my advice for this evening. I'll update the post when I've thought of more. Oh, one last thing: A lot of people are really into GTEs. You can recognize them by their copy of The Secret or the latest Deepak Chopra. I'm not one of these people, so I haven't read any truly popular GTE books. By reading a few of these and seeing what methods they use, you can probably derive more techniques for successfully framing your theories and ideas.

Good luck, GTE writer. If you have it all figured out, I look forward to learning about life, the universe, and everything. If not, I eagerly await your best efforts. Godspeed.

Fun, personal posting will resume soon. You'll hear all about my hot dates and wild tropical adventures...if and when they ever happen.

Obscure and Cryptic Old Cube: A Cryptic Crossword Primer

It's actually a square, not a cube. But today, with a whoosh of satisfaction, I completed this weekend's cryptic crossword. I swear, I could build a frickin' bridge, and I wouldn't feel half the sense of accomplishment that comes with every answer in this beautiful, beautiful puzzle. Woo!

If you're one of the many people whose faces drop as soon as they turn to the back of the magazine section and see barely parsable clues, this post's for you. If you DO like, say, the regular Saturday puzzle, and you treasure great puzzle themes, you'll probably love the cryptic, once you get the hang of it.

The first thing to know about the cryptic is that almost every clue has both a physical clue and a definitional clue. The definitional clue is exactly what it sounds like: the meaning of the answer. The physical clue is a little bit trickier—it somehow describes the word either through its syllables or through an anagram...somehow it lays out the letters of the word for you. A classic cryptic clue that's purely physical is "senselessness (1)." The answer has one letter (that's the number in the parentheses). Give up? The answer is "e." If you take the word "sense" less (i.e., minus) "ness," you get "e." It's the only letter remaining when you take the letters n-e-s-s away from the letters s-e-n-s-e. Get it? Good. If not, I'll go through a few examples soon. Occasionally clues are doubly definitional—"Plain hot dog (5)" points to "frank"—but that's not too common and usually fairly easy to spot.

Now it's time to learn a few conventions. Woo! These may seem superfluous, but it can be a huge pain in the ass if you don't realize, say, a proper noun often just points to its first letter. So here are a few. If any (of my legions of) commenters suggest more, I'll put them in:

Fuck punctuation. It means nothing to you. OK, that's not true, occasionally punctuation is meaningful in cryptics, but know that it really, really doesn't have to be. If there's a comma between two words, they may still be a phrase. Perhaps more importantly, your definitional clue and your physical clue can break without any indication in the punctuation. They'll just flow right into each other. When you assume you make "an ass out of you and me" an appropriate clue. (Ok, that's not true: "An ass out of you and me" would probably put "ass" or a synonym around "we" or something. Anyway...)

Anagrams are everywhere. Something like a quarter of your answers in a given puzzle will be straight-up anagrams of something in the clue. Look for three things if you want to anagram:1) Words or phrases with the same number of letters as are in the answer. Anagrams are always directly from the clue, so you'll never have to find definitions of words and then anagram those. If you don't have any words or phrases with the right number of letters, it's not an anagram. 2) A word that gives you an excuse to anagram. These words can vary from the relatively obvious ("mixed up," "stirred," "disorganized") to the bizarre ("sad," "broken," "fixed," "hurt"). If you get a clue like "windy east central Manhattan thoroughfare (11)," you can look at "windy" as an excuse to anagram "east central" and get "Canal Street," a Manhattan thoroughfare. 3) A hella-awkward phrase. If two adjacent words just make absolutely no sense together, they might be an anagram.

Sometimes, instead of anagramming, you need to actually find the answer within two words that run together. I'm pulling this off the top of my (dirty) head, but "Shorten the hard organ to create passion (5)" might be a clue for "ardor," which you can find when you shorten the phrase "hard organ." And it means "passion." Look out for those in awkward phrases as well.

More often then not, your physical clue will just spell out syllables for you. More from the top of my head: "Pleasant odor for each stew (7)" could be "perfume." Pleasant odor would be "perfume" itself, and "for each" would be "per" and "stew" would be "fume." Like, in the anger way. So there you go. Per. Fume. Perfume. I don't think the syllables you decipher have to be pronounced or spelled in the same way as they'll appear in the ultimate answer. One of the two, always, but not necessarily both.

Look for Roman numerals. They'll show up. And as I mentioned briefly, sometimes proper names just turn into their first initial. Sometimes other words go by their first initial, but there will be some indication that you're looking at the start of that word.

Look for other physical clues. Often (very often in this week's puzzle), one word will go inside another: "Woods around California make predictions (9)" would be "Forecasts." "Forests" goes around "CA" (for California) to make a synonym for "predictions." Other times you might be clued to read a word backwards. Be flexible about this stuff.

Did I mention, "be flexible?" It's really the most important thing and the whole reason these puzzles are so much fun.

OK, enough tips. Now to go through the ENTIRE puzzle. Answers and explanations are in black. Highlight them to read:

1A. Guide the woman in spring (6)
Sherpa
Meaning = guide. "The woman" points to "her," which is inside "spa," a synonym for spring.
4A. Roof application to set in spring (8)
Housetop
Meaning = roof application. I believe "set" here points to "use to," which is inside "hop," another synonym for spring.
10A. Say, Harry Potter's pal in spring (8)
Pronounce
Meaning = say. Harry Potter's pal is "Ron," and he's in "pounce," yet another...synonym for spring.
11A. Discourage Democratic relative (5)
Daunt
Meaning = discourage. Just take the D from Democrat (that proper noun). Your aunt's a relative. Send her flowers.
12A. "Superman" actor taking part in free verse (5)
Reeve
Christopher Reeve played Superman. If you take part of free verse, you get Reeve.
13A. Grabber of winks – or a lynx? (9)
Catnapper
This one's just cute and plays on the double meaning of "nap," sleeping or stealing.
14A. Wastes what you've got coming (7)
Deserts
This is just a double definition, I believe. Wastelands are deserts. And what you deserve are your deserts.
15A. Broadcast medium misrepresented diorama (2,5)
AM Radio
Finally, an anagram! AM Radio is a broadcast medium. "Misrepresented" should clue you into the anagram. Play around with diorama, it should come quickly.
17A. Song about villain in an idyllic spot (7)
Arcadia
Meaning = an ideallic spot. "Song" points to "aria," and "villain" is "cad." About means one's outside the other.
20A. Soldier talk – it gives you a lot of info (7)
Gigabit
This one took me a while. A gigabit is a lot of info. "GI" is a soldier (no trouble there), "gab" is talk (right-o), and in true cryptic fashion, the next word after "soldier talk" is "it." Just stick in on.
22A. Old Greek restored a lost rite (9)
Aristotle
He was an old Greek! And you have to "restore" (i.e., anagram) "lost rite" to get his name.
24A. Neckwear for a companion of Burns (5)
Ascot
Really, how many five letter neckwears are there? And good ol' Rabbie Burns was a Scot. His friends were, too.
26A. Private meal not starting (5)
Inner
"Inner" and "private" can be synonyms. The meal is "dinner." It's without it's start. Womp womp.
27A. Former medicine for John Jacob in spring (6,3)
Castor Oil
That was a medicine at one point, right? A spring is a coil. Barring Mr. Jingleheimerschmidt, Astor's the only John Jacob around.
28A. Superficial need changed in spring (4-4)
Skin-Deep
Meaning = superficial. The spring here is "skip" and you stick a "changed" (again, anagrammed) need in there.
29A. Approach of the French in spring (4-2)
Lead-Up
Meaning = approach. Leap is clearly spring. I don't know why "du" is the French. "Le," is "the" in French, right? If you know, tell me.

Downs!
1D. Great new purse (5)
Super
Meaning = great. Make "purse" new by anagramming it.
2D. Runaway lovers break up or sleep (7)
Elopers
Meaning = runaway lovers. You break up (anagram) "or sleep."
3D. Started with π + 1 before 500 (9)
Pioneered
This may be my favorite clue in the puzzle. Meaning = started. π = pi, 1 = one, before = ere, 500 = D (Roman). String 'em together.
5D. Orioles trainer somewhat fat? – not really (7)
Olestra
Great exercise in how to kill punctuation. The physical clue is "Orioles trainer somewhat." Take part of Orioles trainer to get something that's not really fat.
6D. Singer's first thought for 45-r.p.m. feature (4,1)
Side A
Meaning is "45-rpm feature." Singer's first (letter) is S. Thought is idea. Ta-da!
7D. Beat time like Quasimodo? (7)
Thumped
Meaning = beat. Time just turns into "t" here; it's one of those things. Quasimodo was humped.
8D. Sadly, our septet loses pep (6,3)
Peters Out
Meaning = loses pep. "Sadly" is one of those anagram cues. Do it to "our septet."
9D. N.B.A. team said no (6)
Knicks
They're an NBA team. "Said" clues you in to a homophone. Say "nix," a synonym for "no."
14D. Shot a jerk's overtheatrical behavior (9)
Dramatics
Meaning = overtheatrical behavior. "Shot" is "dram." "Jerk's" = "tics." And, love those cryptics, "a" = "a."
16D. Arrange mom part in confusing procedure (9)
Rigmarole
This took me a while, too. Meaning = confusing procedure. Arrange = rig, mom = ma, part = role. There ya' go.
18D. Greek character opposed to Italian wine (7)
Chianti
So elegant! Chianti is an Italian wine (a delicious one, no less). One Greek character (letter) is chi. "Opposed to" is "anti."
19D. For example, a botched recital (7)
Article
Meaning = example. Botch (anagram) "recital."
20D. Oil country, from the sound of it (6)
Grease
I'm not sure if you can REALLY know this is "Grease" and not "Greece" from the clue, but the acrosses tell you. You've got the "sound of it" homophone clue. "Oil country" is pretty clear.
21D. Obscure and cryptic old cube (7)
Becloud
It's the title of the post! Meaning = obscure. Both the word "cryptic" and the weirdness of the phrase "old cube" should clue you into the anagram.
23D. Shot, like a car's wheels? (5)
Tired
I hope you got this one :) It's a double definition, woo!
25D. Oddly lit up item in a bed (5)
Tulip
Meaning = "item in a bed," because, you know, there are beds of flowers. "Oddly" tells you to anagram "lit up."

And that's the puzzle. I've spent way too much time on this. I hope some poeple actually use the examples to learn how to do cryptics. They're the puzzler's puzzle. They're Will Shortz's puzzle. Spread the endless joy!

In The Height

We are currently living in some really bad times, artistically. (Apparently, we're actually living in good times, geopolitically. Who knew?) Popular music has been in a nosedive since the 70s, with only a few groups (U2, REM on a good day) producing brilliant stuff. Television is producing some of the worst shows ever; the reality TV craze just won't die. Broadway can't fill up its houses. And, well, I don't follow the visual art scene much, but we seem to have relatively few superstars around. But I'd like to take a few lines to recognize some of the genres that are at their peak.

Puzzles
Will Shortz is editing the New York Times crossword. 'Nuff said. But I'll say more. We shouldn't underestimate the value of having an editor with Shortz's enthusiasm and his commitment to the "puzzle" aspect of the crossword puzzle. We could so easily have an editor who prides himself only on hitting the right level of obscurity. But Shortz hits the perfect balance of wordplay and trivia, namely one heavily weighed toward the former. There's no great satisfaction in solving a trivia puzzle. There's smugness, but you never want to run off and share your favorite trivia clue. I often want to share some of my favorite puzzle clues: "X-ray for Rex, say" 8 letters. Guess in the comments.

And we have some super-clever puzzle writers that contribute. When the writers submit and Shortz edits, every puzzle is a work of art.

We're also living through a huge Sudoku craze, and a bunch of other puzzles are migrating from Japan (or from Canada, via Japan). The puzzle section is growing at Barnes & Noble, and I'm optimistic that people will slowly come around to the cryptic (best puzzle everrrr) and we'll see an American renaissance there. We're living in the Golden Age of Puzzling, and I couldn't be happier.

Television
I know I knocked it in the intro to this post, but in addition to the worst TV of all time, we're also getting some of the best TV of all time. I feel privileged to be able to watch new episodes of "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" nearly every night (even if they do take a lot of vacation time). Two of the greatest and most likable comic personalities are churning out brilliant and timely original content almost instantaneously. Of course, they're helped by stellar, fast-working writers, graphic designers and techies. These guys are the closest thing we have to Johnny Carson or Ed Sullivan; they're much more endearing than Letterman or Leno (maybe not Conan, I'm not sure). I know someday I'll look at an evening comedy talk show that's popular with the younger generation and thing, "My God, this is total crap compared with Stewart and Colbert."

There are also some great dramas on the tube. I haven't watched "Lost" or "24," but I hear amazing things, and I do watch "Heroes," which is finely crafted—or at least leads you to believe it is...the ending could be vastly disappointing. I was also never a big "West Wing" person, but people think it's truly brilliant, and I buy it. They had some ridiculously politically qualified writers. If it was entertaining, and it appears to have been, it must have been awfully worthwhile.

Harry Fucking Potter
The genre could be "literature" or "children's fantasy," but why try to make this what it's not? Harry Potter is the best international craze to come along since...well, maybe ever. Maybe since the Beatles. I don't know. But how often do you get the entire world excited about reading? How often do you get us all excited about a story where we root for a good guy, and harmless fun is praised, and harmful actions are condemned, and violence is only used where it's needed. It's a great series from a creative and meticulous mind, and I can't think of anything I'd rather share with 10-year-olds in India and grandmothers in Australia. The world's largest book group meets this July to experience the final chapter of the novel. I'm thrilled to take part in the conversation.

That's all for now; I'm sure there's more. If you'd like to add something, throw it in the comments.

V Cast Advertising Exclusively To Gay Men?

So, unless you've been living under a rock that doesn't have a cable hookup, you've probably seen the ubiquitous commercials for V Cast, Verizon's phone-based video/music network. I've only seen two commercials, but they both involve someone putting his headphones on you so you can hear the music he digs. Which raises the question: Who are you? Check out the first ad:

OK, so you're pretty clearly a guy. The dude takes a call from his "lady," so you're not a girl he's trying to woo. Plus, he calls you "bud." So you're male. And about his age. That's all we can REALLY conclude from this ad, but it's worth noting that the dude is a bit of an idealized jock stereotype. He's cute and jacked and a little dumb and sure, he's straight, but he shows fun-loving camaraderie and respect for the girl. I'd think he'd be, well, a little bit intimidating to straight guys, but he shows up in nifty stories all the time.

The second ad is more blatant:

He is clearly supposed to be gay, right? And doesn't he look like he's sort of trying to pick you up? I mean, sure, he's doing the over-the-top seduction faces that are appropriate for the Timberlake song, but still. He wants you.

Anyway, if this is on purpose, it's kind of cool...if you're competing against Apple, it's probably better to take an ax and try to carve out a niche instead of trying to clean up the whole market. Or maybe I just look everywhere and see gay men.