September 17 2003 RussCon Report

News

Friday September 19 is Talk Like a Pirate Day! Arrrrh!

The photo of the pirate, Whendy, and Sea Biscuit is of course from the recent San Francisco trip. Whendy made a spiffy little desktop-published book of captioned photos from the trip which may be perused by RussCon visitors curious about our journey. Since she makes professional brochures as part of her job, she said doing the book took less than 2 hours, which impresses me!

I know an increasing number of friends and cow-orkers who have livejournal blogs... despite my already having set up moveabletype here on the russcon server (and having my mostly-political blog and my Esperanto blog (which were fun geeky hobbies to get tweaked, especially the Esperanto one which is totally localized), I've now been sucked into the livejournal world as well due its neat features of friends/community/linkage etc. So now it's silly having 3 distinct blogs... I'm probably going to phase out the 2 older movabletype blogs and just consolidate at my lj blog from now on. I'm interested to chat with other bloggers about the pros and cons.

Game Results

DurchDieWueste	4	MarkG 3 RussW 1 JP -1 Whendy -3
Tichu	2	( Ben Fred ) 1 ( Tim MarkH ) -1
Exxtra	3	MarkH 2 Ben 0 Fred -2
6Nimmt	6	Marty 5 RussW 3 MarkG 1 JimG -1 JP -3 Whendy -5
BalloonCup	2	Jeremy 1 Robby -1
Blokus	4	JP 3 Fred 1 RussW -2 Tim -2
Transamerica	4	Jeremy 2 Robby 2 Clayton -1 Fina -3
Carcassonne	4	Clayton 3 PJ 1 Matt -1 Justin -3
Guillotine	4	MarkG 3 MarkH 0 JimG 0 Ben -3
Streetcar	3	Jeremy 2 Robby 0 Fina -2
Blokus	4	JP 2 RussW 2 Whendy -1 Tim -3
BalloonCup	2	RussW 1 JP -1
Vampire	3	Jeremy 2 Robby 0 Clayton -2
TooManyCooks	4	RussD 3 PJ 1 William -1 Pauline -3
Transamerica	3	Clayton 2 JP 0 RussW -2
TajMahal	5	Matt 4 MarkG 2 Justin 0 JimG -2 Ben -4

As always it was good to play Durch die Wüste again. Since it involves placement of nonmoving pieces, no luck or hidden information, and surrounding territory, Whendy felt at a disadvantage playing it with 3 go players, heh...

I seemed destined to tie for last or first in Blokus this evening.

JP & I played Balloon Cup without doing the silly tile flipping (as per last week's discussion). Unless several of us are totally brain-farting, it seems equivalent and less confusing.

Ratings

Rank Ratings:      
 3.7534 MarkG
 3.5835 Jeremy
 1.7918 Marty
 1.3863 RussD
 1.2040 Matt
 0.9808 Clayton
 0.9163 RussW
 0.8109 PJ
 0.4055 MarkH
 0.0645 JP
 0.0000 Fred
 0.0000 Robby
-0.4055 William
-0.9808 JimG
-1.3863 Pauline
-1.3863 Justin
-2.3026 Ben
-2.4849 Fina
-2.7726 Tim
-3.5835 Whendy

Win Ratings:
 3.5835 Jeremy won 4 of 4
 2.3671 MarkG won 2 of 4
 1.7918 Marty won 1 of 1
 1.3863 RussD won 1 of 1
 1.3863 Clayton won 2 of 4
 1.3218 Matt won 1 of 2
 0.5108 JP won 2 of 6
 0.2231 RussW won 2 of 6
 0.1178 MarkH won 1 of 3
 0.0000 Fred won 1 of 3
-0.2231 Ben won 1 of 4
-0.2877 William won 0 of 1
-0.2877 Pauline won 0 of 1
-0.5108 Justin won 0 of 2
-0.5754 PJ won 0 of 2
-0.6931 JimG won 0 of 3
-0.8109 Robby won 1 of 4
-1.0986 Fina won 0 of 2
-1.1632 Whendy won 0 of 3
-1.6740 Tim won 0 of 3

Jeremy and MarkG are Co-Devils! Marty is Vice-Devil. RussD is Vice-Vice-Devil. Matt and Clayton are Co-Vice-Vice-Vice-Devils. JP & I share the Dedicated Award. Fred wins the rare and coveted Extra Average Award.

The partial order seems unusually tall and thin this week, approaching a total order more than usual.

If you are confused how the ratings work, you could peruse the FAQ.

Meta Game

William was the Meta Devil. Here is the Meta Game he mailed out:

Match the game with the subtitle.

Not all games will have a subtitle. Use *** or RED HERRING for those games. Not all subtitles will be used.

Rely on your memory, deductive skills, and luck.

Do NOT look at your games. Do NOT search the internet or databases. If it feels like cheating, it probably is.

Send me the answers or print them out and bring to RussCon.

First list the game name (or number) then the number for the subtitle.

For example:

Monopoly = *54
or
45 = *75

Ties broken in favor of those who attend Russcon in person this week. Further ties broken by best 2 out of 3 games of Rock, Paper, Scissors (The game you play with nothing but your hands!)

Note: Some of the formatting came out funny. The little ampersands are really ellipses. [Note from Russ: that's because you were pasting from MS Word instead of using plain text, and Word uses various silly nonstandard MS-proprietary characters.]

Game Titles
01 Acquire
02 Attila
03 Babel
04 Big City
05 Blokus
06 Bluff
07 By Hook or Crook
08 Caesar & Cleopatra
09 Can't Stop
10 Carcassonne
11 Cartagena
12 Cloud 9
13 Conspiracy
14 Cosmic Encounter
15 Domination
16 Drahtseilakt
17 Durch die Wuste
18 Edison & Company
19 El Caballero
20 El Grande
21 Express
22 Exxtra
23 Ghost Party
24 Gother Than Thou
25 Guillotine
26 Hoax
27 Honeybears
28 Kahuna
29 Lost cities
30 Manhattan
31 Master Labyrinth
32 Othello
33 Puerto Rico
34 Ra
35 Raj
36 Rook
37 Samarkand
38 Spammers
39 Streetcar
40 Survive!
41 TajMahal
42 Tally Ho!
43 The Secret Labyrinth
44 Tichu
45 Titan the Arena
46 Too Many Cooks
47 Union Pacific
48 Vampire
49 Vinci
50 Web of Power
51 Wyatt Earp
52 Zirkus Flohcati

Subtitles
*01 A card game for 2 players.
*02 A challenging game of gods men and their monuments.
*03 A fierce game of deadly combat...
*04 A game of strategy and supremacy.
*05 A minute to learn... a lifetime to master!
*06 A railroad game for builder & investors.
*07 A sea full of danger and oceans of fun!
*08 A spy game of bluffing and betrayal.
*09 A thrilling game of outlaws, sheriffs, and fast guns.
*10 An outrageous bidding game for 2-5 players.
*11 Battle of the gods for supremacy of the earth.
*12 Camels go baaa.
*13 Control the cardinals & kings of Europe.
*14 Daring adventure for two.
*15 Escape from the fortress.
*16 Farmers, thieves, monks, and knights.
*17 Festival, festival!
*18 Flohe, tier, attraktionen!
*19 From the far tundra.
*20 Get the honey, avoid the bees.
*21 Go, red bear, go!
*22 Head for the oasis.
*23 Heaven is in the clouds.
*24 High adventure in the world of high finance.
*25 How far can you push your luck?
*26 Intrique in the New World!
*27 Keep on running... the ghost is coming!
*28 Keep your balance, lest you fall.
*29 Mad inventors-crazy machines.
*30 Make your city grow...
*31 Oh God, do you have mail.
*32 Place your tiles with care...
*33 Race for magic in a shifting maze.
*34 Raffiniertes machtspiel fur zwei.
*** RED HERRING
*35 Roll the dice and lie.
*36 Shipping and trade in the tropics.
*37 South seas magic for two.
*38 The Count is pleased to meet you...
*39 The crazy cookin' card game!
*40 The cutting-edge of strategy.
*41 The ever-popular bidding card game.
*42 The game of imposters.
*43 The game of power and majesty in India.
*44 The game that breaks its own rules.
*45 The great bluffing game from Germany.
*46 The king & the intrigant.
*47 The most pretentious card game ever made.
*48 The New Orleans trolley game.
*49 The profit's in the bazaar!
*50 The railroad card game.
*51 The revolutionary card game where you win by getting a head.
*52 The rise & fall of civilization.
*53 The secret's in the broth!
*54 The skyscraper building game.
*55 The ultimate magical maze game.
*56 Trick taking with a twist.
*57 Wer immer nur gewinnt, verliert.
*58 What goes up must come down. So better look before you leap.
*59 Who's hunting who?
*60 Wurf mit X... ...war wohl nix!

Answers here. William reckoned the scores as follows:

Russ W. = 42
Jeffles = 37
Clayton = 35
Dan B. = 31
Clay = 26
Mark H. = 24
Whendy = 23
Russ D. = 21
Marty = 19

So Russ W. is the MetaDevil !!!

I was amused by those who picked subtitles for the games with none. Tichu, Pork Burrito, Bluff, Carcassonne, Honey Bears, and Durch die Wuste.

Links

The latest works at Akiyoshi's illusion pages are pretty damn cool

Hoom! Maps and walking directions (from Bag End, Hobbiton, The Shire to The Cracks of Doom, Mordor)

Motivational posters from somethingawful.com

Bush asshole mosaic poster

Hand To Mouth To India by Tom Glaister

Little known new law could cost drivers $200 if you have one of those ornamental license plate brackets that obscures view of the plate