The genealogy conference schedule had turned out to be very convenient for me, since a crossword tournament I like a lot was conveniently in New York on the weekend after the conference in Philadelphia. So I had arranged to go to Lollapuzzoola on Saturday and throw in some theatre going on both Friday and Saturday nights.

The Outsiders: I’d gotten an okay price on a room at the Algonquin, which I like because I always feel wittier when I stay there. (It is also quite convenient for theatre going.) I had time for a nap before getting dinner on Friday night and wandering a few blocks west to see The Outsiders. I’d wanted to see this largely because the book it was based on had been one of my favorite books when I was in junior high. I don’t know how many times I read it, but it was a lot and I sobbed my way through it every time. The musical was reasonably true to the story (or, at least, as much of it as I remembered after some 50+ years). Unfortunately, the music did not work for me. And the choreography seemed very much out of place for 1967. The story is still a great one and I liked that a lot of the cast were new to Broadway. I just wished the music had grabbed me.

Lollapuzzoola 17: Lollapuzzoola is an annual crossword tournament, held every year on a Saturday in August in New York. The puzzles tend to be, let’s say, challenging, especially as I was definitely not at my best. I apparently made one mistake on the first puzzle, but, oh well, that happens. I solved cleanly on the second puzzle, which was (for various reasons) completely in my bailiwick. Alas, I was too slow to finish any of the other three puzzles, though I did come close. On puzzle 3, I got the theme for the most part, but just wasn’t fast enough. However, I was completely lost on puzzle 4 and somewhat lost on puzzle 5. So I finished embarrassingly badly for the day. I did, however, get to see several friends, which is really the point of the event.

Suffs: I wasn’t really sure how interested I was in this musical about the struggle for women’s suffrage, but I decided to take a chance on it because the subject is one I’m interested in. This turned out to be an excellent decision. The music was enjoyable - lively, suitable for the era, and entertaining. The characters were fleshed out reasonably well and the issues about divisions between the groups of women (based on political divisions and on race) felt realistic. I was only familiar with a few of the performers - Emily Skinner, Jenn Colella,and Hannah Cruz, for three. But the cast worked well overall as an ensemble. There was one casting note that nagged at me a bit. Namely, there are times when color-blind casting gets confusing and I kept being jarred by Dudley Malone being played by a black woman. My issue was that Woodrow Wilson was notorious for his racism so I couldn’t buy Wilson being willing to have a black person in various prominent positions. (In real life, Malone was white.) I just wish there had been a way to handle that more smoothly. By the way, I saw the show on August 24th, which was the 104th anniversary of the 19th Amendment and they had a “roll call” presentation at the end, highlighting each of the states that had voted for the amendment. Overall, I enjoyed this show and was glad I saw it.

And home: Back pain, alternating with knee pain, continues. I really need to make a doctor appointment.

I think this will get me caught up on everything up until this month.

I’ve been using the same format for my year in review entries for several years now. It seems to work. Note that I took off the Volksmarch category this time since it’s been a couple of years since I managed to actually do anything there.

2023 started out stressful with mail being stolen, including a check which was washed and used fraudulently and a credit card which had to be replaced. It all got resolved, but I could have lived without the stress. There was a lot of stress later in the year, with the incompetence of the person at the local Social Security office who sat on my Medicare application for over two months without doing anything. That took way too many phone calls to get resolved. And, of course, there was the whole Middle East situation to make 2023 the Age of Anxiety.

Fortunately, things were otherwise good during the year.

Books: I read 53 books over the year. 39 of those were fiction, 3 were poetry, and the rest were nonfiction. Only 3 were rereads.

Favorites included Our Ancestors Did Not Breathe This Air (a poetry collection by Muslim women at MIT), Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozu Adichie, The Ghostwriter by Alessandra Torre, and The Caxton Private Lending Library and Book Depository by John Connolly. I also read 6 novels by Dick Francis, whose books provide a reliable antidote to ones in which not enough happens to keep me satisfied. Favorite non-fiction was The Best Strangers in the World by Ari Shapiro. Least favorite book was Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen.

I got rid of 39 books and have at least another 33 ready to go out.

In addition to my longstanding book club (called READ for Read, Enjoy, And Discuss), I joined another book club, Crones and Tomes, which was started by a friend from the puzzle world.

Other book events included the Moby Dick Marathon in New Bedford, Massachusetts, which was an amazing experience, and a talk by Ari Shapiro at Sixth and I.

Ghoul Pool: I finished 4th out of 14 players, with 220 points. People I scored on were Naomi Replanski, Steve Harrell, Bob Barker, Tony Bennett, Al Jaffee, John Goodenough, Robert Solow, Daniel Ellsberg, Sandra Day O’Connor, James L. Buckley, W. Nicholas Hitchon, and David Oreck.

Travel: In January, I went to New Bedford, Massachusetts for the Moby Dick Marathon. In February, I went to Tucson, which included going to Saguaro National Park and Biosphere 2, as well as winning some money at a casino. March included a trip to New York City to go to the symphony and the theatre and visit with a high school friend. April’s travel was to Connecticut for the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.

In May I took a river cruise, which included going to the Kentucky Derby. The Derby arrangements were kind of a fiasco, but the stops at various small towns were a lot more interesting than I expected.

June took me to Svalbard, which featured amazing scenery, though the wildlife (or, more accurately, lack thereof) was disappointing. This was somewhere I’d wanted to go to forever, so I am glad to have had the opportunity.

In July, I went to Montreal for the NPL con. That also included eating a lot of Montreal Jewish food and following in the footsteps of Leonard Cohen. Later in the month, I leveraged off a genealogy conference in London to take a trip to Ireland (including a day trip to Belfast) and the Isle of Man. That included fulfilling a life list item by having a beer at the South Pole Inn in Anascaul. After the conference, I did a few more things in London, including side trips to Canterbury and to Ipswich and Sutton Hoo. Soon after I got back, I took a quick trip to New York City for Lollapuzzoola and theatre going.

LoserFest was in Philadelphia in September. Highlights included the Masonic Temple and the Magic Gardens.

In October, I took a quick trip to San Antonio for the annular solar eclipse, which was awesome. While I was there, I also did a day trip to the Hill Country, where I saw several sites associated with Lyndon B. Johnson, as well as visiting the town of Fredericksburg. Later in the month I went to Boston, mostly to go to a concert by Jonathan Richman.

I’m not sure if taking a day trip to Harrisonburg, Virginia in November counts as travel. But my trip to French Polynesia (Austral Islands and Aranui cruise to the Marquesas) definitely does.

Virtual travel talks I went to included one on Jewish Barbados and a few Travelers’ Century Club zoom sessions. There were also a few in-person TCC meetings.

Puzzles: I participated once again in the MIT Mystery Hunt as part of Halibut That Bass. I think the team worked particularly well together, but we had some issues with the way the hunt was structured, which resulted in our seeing only about half of the puzzles.

I was disappointed in my performance in the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. I finished solidly in the middle of the pack and I wasn’t surprised to have trouble with Puzzle 5, but I left a blank square in Puzzle 3, which was sheer carelessness. I did worse at Lollapuzzoola 16 in August, because I failed to completely read parts of some clues in Puzzle 5 there. I blame jet lag from my trip just before that event.

As I mentioned above, I went to the National Puzzlers’ League Con in Montreal. Highlights included a couple of games by Cute Mage, as well as Rasa’s over the weekend cryptic.


Genealogy: I continued to volunteer as the Subject Matter Expert for a Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington Litvak Special Interest Group. I also went to several JGSGW virtual meetings. And, of course, I went to the IAJGS conference in London at the end of July / beginning of August. Aside from several interesting talks, the highlight of that was meeting a distant cousin.

Baseball: I went to a little bit of a Nationals game in May, but it got rained out. In September I went to the new Texas Rangers stadium (Globe Life Field), putting me back at having been to a game at every Major League Ballpark. I also went to two minor league ballparks to see the Aberdeen Ironbirds and the Fredericksburg Nationals.

Culture: I’m not a big television watcher but I kept Apple TV+ long enough to watch Schmigadoon and Schmicago, both of which were tremendous fun for musical theatre geeks like me.

In terms of movies, I saw 18 overall, 4 of which were in theaters, with the rest on airplanes. Favorites were A Man Called Otto, In the Heights, Blackberry, Cocaine Bear, Searching for Sugar Man, Barbie, and Remembering Gene Wilder. Most disappointing was Weird: The Al Yancovic Story.

I went to 5 Gilbert and Sullivan operettas at the G&S International Festival in England, with the best production being of Ruddigore. I went to two other operas, both by Jeanine Tesori (Blue and Grounded). I also saw two ballets and one modern dance performance, with the ballet of The Crucible being the most satisfying. As far as classical music goes, I saw the National Symphony Orchestra twice and was privileged to see Michael Tilson Thomas conduct the New York Philharmonic. The only popular music concert I went to was one by Jonathan Richman, who is always wonderful.

I saw 14 plays and 9 musicals, assuming I counted correctly. Favorite plays were All Things Equal (about Ruth Bader Ginsburg), The Lifespan of a Fact at Keegan Theatre, Selling Kabul at Signature Theatre, and The Pillowman, which is a Martin McDonagh play I saw in London. I also loved The Enigmatist, which is a mixture of comedy. magic, and puzzles and, hence, I consider sui generis. Top musicals were In the Heights at Next Stop Theatre Company, Signature Theatre’s production of Pacific Overtures. and Shucked and Kimberly Akimbo on Broadway.

Storytelling: I went to several storytelling shows, including one by my Grimmkeepers group. I performed in two shows for Artists Standing Strong Together, and also told at the C&O Canal Visitor Center with Voices in the Glen, at the Washington Folk Festival, and in a Better Said Than Done show at the Stagecoach Theatre. Some other shows I particularly enjoyed were Ingrid Nixon’s show about Shackleton and several of the performances at the National Storytelling Festival. And, of course, the Women’s Storytelling Festival (which I also emceed at) os always a highlight of the year.

On a rather different note, the Grimmkeepers discussions about the Grimm fairy tales continue to be enlightening and enriching.

Museums and Art: I went to 32 museums over the year. Highlights included the New Bedford Glass Museum, the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, two exhibitions of miniatures (the Mini Time Machine Museum in Tucson and the Small is Beautiful exhibit in New York), the MIT Museum, the Virginia Quilt Museum, and the Museum of Failure. I also really enjoyed seeing the Book of Kells, the Manx Museum, and Sutton Hoo during my travels in July. My absolute favorite for the year was the Museum of Broadway.


Other Stuff: On New Year’s Day, my friend, Cindy, and I went to the Winter Lantern Festival at Tyson’s, which was impressive.

I went to various Loser events, including the post-Post Loser Party, the Flushes, LoserFest. I should probably count Poetry and Punchlines (a poetry reading associated with Light, which is a magazine of light verse) as a Loser event, too.

My crafting group changed to meeting on-line every other Thursday and in person at one members house on the weeks in between. I make it when I can. Similarly, I occasionally managed to get to my other (mostly) knitting group, which meets at the police station twice a month.

I went to a virtual organizing conference in September, which was moderately useful.

I played board games a few times a week, when I was home. Yes, sometimes I was home.

Goals: So how did I do on my 2023 goals? I went through maybe 10% of the photos from my parents and realized I have no idea where I put the slides, so I’ll give myself a 10% there. I did go to some sort of lecture or other formal educational event, either in person or on-line, every month, so I get 100% there. I get full credit (i.e. 100%) for taking 4 international trips. I finished only 1 craft project, so only get 33% there, though I did make progress on two others. I read 53 books, out of a goal of 75, so get 71% there. I get 100% credit for going to three new (to me) ballparks. I made it to at least one museum each month so get 100% on that goal. I only went to one national park, so get 33% on that goal. And I averaged significantly less than a half hour every day on housework, so I’ll give myself 10% there. Averaging things out, I’ll give myself a 62% on the year, which is not great but not terrible either.

Which brings me to goals for 2024:

• Circumnavigate the globe going westward. The backstory is that way back in 2000, I did an eastward circumnavigation, from Los Angeles to Russia via Germany by plane, overland through Siberia to Mongolia and to China, and back to Los Angeles by plane. I’ve got ideas for how I want to do the westward circle.
  
  
• Go to at least 3 national parks.
  
  
• Clean out my saved files of genealogy related emails.
  
  
• Read 80 books with a stretch goal of 125.
  
  
• Finish organizing my bedroom.
  
  
• Finish 3 afghans.
  
  
• Find and sort through my parents’ slides.
  
  
• Go to games at at least 4 AAA ballparks.
  
  
• Exercise for at least 20 minutes at least 3 times a week, with a stretch goal of at least 30 minutes at least 4 times a week.
  
  

This years National Puzzlers’ League convention was in Montreal in mid-July. In accordance with NPL practice, I will prefer to people by their noms instead of their real names.

I flew up on Wednesday. Air Canada was mildly annoying because they sent me four reminders to check in on-line after their system wouldn’t let me do that. It turned out that I just needed to show them my passport at the airport, which took about 10 seconds. Also, the flight was on a CRJ 900, which is my least favorite airplane, but it’s a short flight, so it was okay. I got through immigration and customs and found the kiosk to buy the bus ticket to get downtown. I didn’t notice that the particular bus I got on terminated at the Lionel-Groulx metro station, instead of continuing all the way to Rue Mansfield. It was easy enough to take the metro three stops to Bonaventure. Getting to the hotel was more complicated. I foolishly followed the Place Bonaventure sign, which did eventually get me to the Hotel Bonaventure, but was less than direct and went through some of the bleakest parts of the underground walkway system.

The hotel was nice, but kind of weird. The entrance is on the 10th floor of a building and, from there, there are a lot of short staircases, e.g. three or four very shallow steps. My room was fine, though the door was a bit sticky and the window had a less than awe-inspiring view. It had a very comfortable bed and lots of hot water, which are the important things.

The first event of con was the happy hour (apparently called a cine-a-sept in the Quebecois dialect). There was a cash bar and heavy hors d’oeuvres. But the point was mingling. I eventually ended up having dinner with a group of people at the hotel restaurant. The food was okay (or, at least, the lentil curry I got was. But the service was glacial.

But the real reason for going to con is puzzles and games. On Wednesday night, I played Cute Mage’s game “Ms. Puzzles Stabs the Consequences Button.” This involved guessing the most common wrong answer (and avoiding the right answer) to a number of multiple-choice trivia questions, which triggered a series of mini games, which could result in certain players becoming ghosts. For example, as a result of one of those, I couldn’t choose answer B through the rest of the game. The whole thing was very entertaining and well worth staying up for.

On Thursday, Eddy led several of us on a walking tour of the Mile End and Outremont neighborhoods. I’d describe this as the Montreal equivalent of Brooklyn and you may interpret that however you please. The main reason for going there in my opinion was following in the footsteps of the web series Yid Life Crisis. Many of us ate at Wilensky’s, where you can get a special (a salami and bologna sandwich on a toasted roll.) The most famous Montreal food is, of course, their version of a bagel and we went to both Fairmount and St-Viateur along the way. I preferred the former, largely because they had a lot of roasted sesame seed flavor. (But I still prefer real, i.e. New York, bagels. And bialies are even better.) There were also a couple of bakeries and a place that sold gnocchi and an ice cream place, though I only tasted a couple of flavors at the latter because we were going to stop at a sorbet place at the end of the route. However, we’d eaten enough by that point, however, that we skipped that stop. There were also several bookstores along the way, but those are goo dangerous for me to go into. Anyway, it was a mostly pleasant walk, despite some weather (a downpour early on, heat later).

Back at the hotel, I took a nap. And got awakened by a tornado alert on my phone. I had also signed up for a group to go out to dinner and managed to miss that. Several of us tried to go to a nearby food court, but were thwarted by flooding. I ended up walking over to a different food court (in the train station), where I got a tasty banh mi sandwich.

The official program started Thursday night. True / False Wordplay by Willz was fairly amusing, though he made a few mistakes. Stock Footage by Spelvin involved forming words in various categories but the values of the letters kept changing, making it more challenging. Take Two by WXYZ involved making words out of bigrams spread out on the table. There were two teams at each table, which complicated the point system. All of these games were fun. After hours, I played a music and film trivia game by Many Pink Hats (including Canadian content rounds!), Noam's Jeopardy! game (aka Fauxklore demonstrates her extreme confidence in wrong answers) which is always excellent, and Bracketball by Murdoch.

I had one more bit of tourism I needed to do and the weather on Friday morning was nice enough to allow me to take a walk based on having googled Montreal sites associated with Leonard Cohen, aka the Crown Prince of Chronic Depression. The highlight of that was this mural:




When I got back to the hotel, I spent much of the day working on two of the three con cryptic crosswords. I did Becoming Canadian by Elfman with Katze (a new NPL member) and Summer Hockey by McMongol with Sue++. Both were fun and I think our teamwork was good on both of them. I think Nimbus and I started the third con cryptic (O Montreal! by Rasa) on Saturday morning, but got stuck. I won’t explain further, but something about Friday night’s dinner led me to the breakthrough we needed and we finished the puzzle on Saturday before dinner. I will say that I found that puzzle particularly satisfying. I’ve said this before, but I might as well repeat it. The reason I love cryptic crosswords (and many other types of puzzles) is the aha moment, when I catch on to what the constructor was doing.

As for Friday’s official program, Green Team Wins by Squonk and Janders was silly and amusing. Tough Choices by Fraz was a clever trivia game in which you had to choose whether to go for hard or easy questions in each category. (Do not ever doubt me on Broadway musicals. Feel free to doubt me on pretty much anything else, however.) The best of the games that evening, however, was Exquisite Wordle by CuteMage. I will not attempt to explain it, however. Just trust me.

Saturday afternoon’s paper and puzzle competitions were Virtual Trigrams by Bluff (which I came close to finishing) and Time Test by Willz (which I made good progress on but still failed to complete). I skipped doing the flat competition because I needed rest. Or maybe that’s when Nimbus and I were working on Rasa’s cryptic. The downside of writing this over a month after con is that my memory is fuzzier than usual.

The Saturday night extravaganza was shorter than it had been in some previous years and my team finished it fairly efficiently. I liked having an extravaganza that took only a few hours.

I know I played Cazique and Saxifrage’s Jeopardy game some time over the weekend, as well as Dart’s Only Connect game, but I have no idea when I did either of those. As usual, there were a couple of other unofficial program games I’d have liked to have played but didn’t get a chance to. C’est la vie.

Overall, I had a good time. Noam was an excellent con host and things appeared to go pretty smoothly.

I had a reasonably smooth trip home. My flight was delayed about 20 minutes, but I got upgraded, which makes up for a lot. And Montreal is a short trip.

Next year’s con will be in Dallas. And 2025 will be in Minneapolis. If anyone is interested in seeing what the NPL con is like, feel free to ask me for more info. Or just go to con.puzzlers.org

Here’s a run-down on other things I’ve done so far this month, focused on the good things. (I’ll save the stressful stuff for another post, which will probably be a non-public one.) But first, an announcement of an upcoming event

Shameless Self-Promotion: I am going to be part of a show of an on-line storytelling show of Fractured Fairy Tales on Thursday February 9th at 8 p.m. Eastern time. Tickets and more information are available here. If you can’t make it live, it will be recorded and you can watch the replay.


Routine: I have a lot of standing meetings. Book Club is every 6 weeks. My Lithuanian Jewish genealogy mentoring session is monthly. I have a standing crafting get-together every Thursday afternoon. And I play board games with a couple of different groups regularly. I have another book club starting up, too.


Three Genealogy Things: I went to a genealogy talk last week specifically for grandchildren of Holocaust survivors. Since both my father and grandfather were survivors (of the Kaunas Ghetto and Dachau), I qualify as both a 2G and 3G. I don’t think I really learned anything new from the talk, but they sent out a good list of resources.

I submitted a proposal for a talk about Telling Family Stories at the IAJGS conference in London. I have no idea whether or not it will be accepted. I plan to go to the conference anyway, since it has been way too long since I have been to London.

And I got a reply from a cousin who I contacted a couple of years ago. Now I need to get back to her. I am hoping she has some info about my grandfather’s mother’s family.


Two Jews Walk Into a War: I went with my friend Cindy to this play at Theatre J last weekend, i.e. a week ago Saturday. The play is very loosely based on the actual story of the last two Jews in Afghanistan, who loathed each other. I am reasonably sure that neither of them was descended from a concentration camp survivor, however, since the Soviet Jews who came to Afghanistan in the 1930’s and 1940’s were from Central Asia. And they certainly would not have spoken any Yiddish. Nor was the klezmer music played between scenes at all appropriate. I can’t imagine why they didn’t even try to find something mizrahi to use.

On the plus side, much of the play was funny, albeit a bit cruder than I’d have preferred. The biggest plus was the actors. Bobby Smith and Sasha Olinick both gave excellent performances.

Bit of historical trivia is that after Ishaq Levin died and Zablon Simintov emigrated to Israel, it turned out that a distant cousin of Simintov’s, Tova Morandi was still living in Afghanistan. But she left (to Albania!) a month after he did.

Museum of Illusions: On Friday, Cindy and I went to the pop-up Museum of Illusions in downtown D.C. A lot of the exhibits are familiar optical illusions, e.g. things where two lines look different lengths but are the same or staring at something makes it seem to move and so on. But there are some fun interactive exhibits. You really need someone else there to take pictures of you playing with them.

For example, here is a picture taken from a short distance:




But, if the picture is taken from the right spot (marked on the floor), I turn into Edith Ann:




In some cases, you have to manipulate the photo, e.g. by rotating it to get the effect, as in this one:




And here I am, just beside myself because I’m playing cards with untrustworthy sorts:



Overall, it was a fun way to spend about 45 minutes, but it was pricy and rather more crowded than was optimal. The museum is there until late March if you want to check it out for yourself.


Post-Post Loser Party: This past Saturday night (i.e. a couple of days ago) was the annual Style Invitational Loser post-Holiday party. The WaPo may have dropped us, but Loserdom lives on and we’re continuing on Gene Weingarten’s substack page. There were about 75 people there and we ate and mingled before the obligatory sing-along of loser-written songs. Usually there’s a certain amount of topical (i.e. mostly political) humor in the songs, but this year’s were all focused on the Post having canceled the contest. Overall, I had a pretty good time.

Two Minor Triumphs: I got Redactle #287 in 1 guess. That falls in the category of things that are unlikely to happen ever again.

And, yesterday, I reached #1 in the Diamond League on Duolingo. So I’ve gotten all of the achievements except the ones for playing consecutive games. That satisfied my competitive spirit since I can reach that remaining achievement independent of what anyone else does.

I’ve been rather swamped with some entertainment events, planning for things to do, and (this week) with a Yiddish conference. So here is something I’ve been meaning to write about for a while. Part of my daily routine is doing a bunch of puzzles on-line. This is my current lineup.


Ten Words - This is a game that requires selecting one letter at a time to form (up to) ten words in a grid. The constraints change every day, e.g. sometimes you have to put letters only next to ones already in the grid. You need an account to play, but it’s free. You can also play in free play mode to get the hang of the game. (Disclaimer: Max, who wrote this, is a friend of mine from the National Puzzlers’ League.)


Artle - This game, from the National Gallery of Art, gives you four works of art, with the goal being to guess the artist responsible for them. One hint - once in a while, something is signed. Usually I get things in two or not at all. I am particularly weak on photographers and on 17th Century Dutch painters.


Chrono - In this puzzle, you get six events and you need to put them in chronological order. Usually, I can figure out that, say, gunpowder was used in China before the atomic clock was invented. But, sometimes, there are events that are within a few years of one another.


Toddle - This is another puzzle game from an NPL friend. The way this works is that you get a four-letter word and a category / clue. You keep guessing letters until you figure out the answer.


Worldle - In this game, you’re given a picture of the shape of a country and you get 6 guesses to figure out what country it is. Each incorrect guess gives you the distance from the correct answer and an arrow telling you what direction it’s in. If you get it right, you then get a bunch of bonus rounds: 1) identifying its neighbors, 2) naming its capital, 3) identifying its flag, and 4) guessing its population (out of a choice of 4 ranges) and its currency,


Statele - This is, essentially, the same idea as Worlde, but for U.S. states, instead of co8ntries. Guessing states flags is actually easier than country flags because a lot of them have the state name on them.


Emovi - The way this one works is that you are shown a group of emojis and have to guess what movie they refer to. They could be a hint to the actual content of the movie, but are just as likely to simply refer to the title. It’s mostly easier than it sounds.


I do various New York Times Puzzles every day. Right now, I’ve been doing both the crossword and the mini every day, as well as wordle. I’ve gone through phases of doing some of the other puzzles regularly, e.g. I find Tiles relaxing. I often print out a bunch of the Friday variety puzzles (especially cryptic, but I do some acrostics). And I do Fred Piscop’s monthly bonus crossword regularly. Note that the actual NYT crossword does require a subscription, but it’s worth it to me. (I believe the Mini and Wordle free, Some of the others may also be free, but limited in how many you can do, e.g. Tiles lets you do one a day free.)

I also do the Sunday Washington Post Puzzle and print out the Wall Street Journal crossword when I get around to it. But I am not quite as consistent about those.


Redactle - This is a weird and sometimes frustrating puzzle. Essentially, you have a wikipedia article, with most of the words redacted. You have to guess words until you figure out the title of the article. It’s usually challenging, Note that while most of the above puzzles reset at midnight Eastern time, Redactle resets at noon.

Contry was the 2022 National Puzzlers’ League convention, held in Nashville. For those not familiar with the NPL, people go by noms, rather than their real names and I will refer to them this way in this post.

Wednesday: Con officially started on Thursday 21 July, but there was a picnic on Wednesday evening. I flew in on Wednesday morning, mostly because the airfare was a lot cheaper. It was a long hike from the gate I arrived in to where the hotel shuttle picked up. The hotel was the Sheraton Music City, near the airport, which was not very convenient since nothing was really within walking distance. And it was extremely hot (close to 100 F) most of the time, so walking would have been unpleasant, even for heat seeking creatures like me. Fortunately,, the hotel had good air conditioning. Even more fortunately, my room was available despite my early arrival. So I was able to settle in for a nice long nap.

There was plenty of time to socialize before the picnic, which was more of a full meal than what I think of as picnic food. There were appetizers and a very nice pasta bar. No dessert, alas, but that’s all for the better. A few of us discussed possibly going to an escape room on Friday afternoon, but it didn’t happen because everything was booked up.

What did happen was going to Pacho’s palatial suite to play his (unofficial) con game, Only Connect: The Musical. For those not familiar with Only Connect, it’s an excellent British television game show. This was a music-themed version, with Team Rock facing Team Roll. I was on Team Rock, along with Murdoch and Lyric. Team Roll had Beyond, Elf, and Saxifrage. Pop music is not my strong suit, but I did know certain things that my teammates did not. (For example, I am really good on show tunes. Or, at least, those before 2000.) The game was tremendous fun, with amazing production values and ended up being one of the highlights of con for me. Also, we won.

Thursday: I didn’t really want to spend all of my time in the hotel and got together with Lyric and Shrdlu for some sightseeing on Thursday. I’ve been to Nashville a couple of times before, so wanted to go to something new to me. We ended up taking a Lyft downtown to the National Museum of African-American Music, which we agreed was more likely to be to our taste than the Country Music Hall of Fame. This proved to be an excellent choice. When you go in, they give you a wristband with a sensor, which you can use to save the music you listened to. They send you playlists of what you saved. There’s more to do than we had time for. There are stations where you can mix songs, for example. There are also lots of videos to watch and exhibits discussing the history of various genres, as well as memorabilia from different artists. My favorite part was a series of stations where you could select an artist, listen to some of their music, and move to the artists who influenced them, who they influenced, and who their peers were. This is a great way to discover performers you might not be as familiar with. If you happen to be in Nashville, I highly recommend scheduling half a day to spend there.


The official program started on Thursday evening. After introductions by newcomers, there were three games. There were three puzzle and game activities. The first was Nom Call MY Bluff by Beyond in which four people told stories about the origins of someone’s nom. Of course, only one was the real story while the others were made up on the spot. This was fairly amusing. How challenging it was varied a lot. In several cases, I could dismiss stories because I knew the person’s real name, for example. The second event was Quartets by Rock *. This was, essentially, a twist on Triplets, which we’d played at past cons, but with having to give 4 answers to trivia questions, instead of three. The catch in these is that members of the team are not allowed to communicate with one another. Finally, there was Solution Set by Jangler and T McAy, which was a mixture of trivia and wordplay, e.g. finding all the names of flowers in a wordsearch-like grid. The catch was that you had to choose 8 answers that you thought wouldn’t match those of the other teams at your table. Neendy and I were good at the first part, but not so good at guessing who else knew what. It was still fun. Finally, the over-the-weekend cryptic crosswords (for pair solving) were handed out and Witz introduced a creative contest called Making Every Second Count, about which more later.

There is also an unofficial program, consisting of various games brought by attendees. I know I played Knowledge Base by T McAy and Trick, but I have only a vague memory of it. I know there was a mix of trivia and wordplay and that the wordplay part did include good explanations of flat types. (Flats are a particular type of wordplay puzzle unique to the NPL. There are a lot of types of them and a whole guide to those types.) I remember that this game was played with teas of two and I am fairly sure my partner was JrMan. And, beyond that, my memory is blank. I am sure it was an excellent game because: 1) both of the people behind it always create great stuff and 2) I wrote on FaceBook that it was amazing. But too much time has elapsed before my writing this up to have more to say. Sorry.

I also played Noam’s Jeopardy! XXIII that night. He always writes great Jeopardy! games with interesting questions. I was more aggressive in guessing things too early than I should have been and came in somewhere in the middle.

I am fairly sure there was other stuff going on, but I was trying to get enough sleep for a change. That was largely an attempt to keep my immune system happy and proved to be a good idea, since at least 6 people got COVID at con. (There were tests available in the hospitality suite, so I did verify that I stayed negative.)

Friday: After breakfast on Friday, I worked on one of the cryptics (The Good Ol’ Country Band by Elfman) with Coop. We got through the grid fairly quickly and got through the first step in extracting the answer. But we never were able to figure out the second step and get the final answer. We set it aside and each tried looking later on, but never did figure it out, which was quite frustrating. Later on ManyPinkHats and I solved Ryman Reason by Sidhe, Sprout, and Y_0. We got through it fairly quickly, with my knowing one word he was unfamiliar with and him knowing one I was unfamiliar with. That one we were able to complete all of and I turned it in later that day. I know I also spent some time working on Making Every Second Count and some time taking a nap. But I am not entirely sure where the day went.

Friday evening had more (official) puzzles and games. First was The Dashes Game by Willz. He gave a category and the length of the answer. The room was divided into two teams and Willz gave a word puzzle. Everybody raised their hands when they got the answer and, when a team had at least 10 hands raised, the captain of the other team chose someone to answer. That person then got to choose a letter, to see if it was in the answer, a la “Wheel of Fortune.” The team could then attempt to guess the answer. The second game was Secret Stuff by Murdoch. Unfortunately, Murdoch had tested positive for COVID, so T McAy presented this. Basically, there were clues that were given one word at a time. You got more points for guessing them sooner. I don’t actually remember a lot of the details, but this was my favorite game of the evening. After that was Venn Will You Ever Learn? by Rubrick. This had venn diagrams you needed to fill in, starting with very little information. At each round, you got more clues, e.g. the first letters of answers or what categories were involved. I found this particularly challenging, but it was interesting.

I think that the only unofficial game I played Friday night was one from Tinhorn that I don’t remember the name of. It had to do with giving your partner clues that would enable them to guess words that would lead to the a phonetic phrase for the answer. I was paired with Arcs and our age difference led to enough of a knowledge gap that we sucked at this. For example, I thought that the name “Winchell” would lead easily to “wind chill,” but he had never heard of either Paul Winchell or Walter Winchell. It was still fun, but very frustrating.

Saturday: Saturday morning started with the business meeting. This was more controversial than usual, because the better bid for the 2024 con was clearly for Dallas (the person proposing Portland, Oregon was not at con because he’d lost his wallet on the way to the airport). But Texas politics are problematic for many members. Several people urged those present to abstain, while others defended Dallas as a Blue island in a Red state. (My personal position is that a lot can change in two years. When I first moved to Virginia, my Congressional district was represented by a Republican. Now, I describe my district as so Blue it is practically indigo. I am also highly skeptical of the effectiveness of boycotts, which I think often hurt people who are fighting many of the policies of places with problematic politics.) At any rate, Dallas did get enough votes to host in 2024. It will be interesting to see how things unfold and how many people refuse to come to con there.

In the afternoon, there were a couple of paper and pencil competitions. Extreme Wordle by LeXman required finding the one word that could be the correct answer given the first guess in a Wordle puzzle. This was fun, but I wasn’t quite fast enough to finish it. I don’t remember exactly what Two Bits by Manx was, other than that it required moving around bigrams to form new words. I do remember that I didn’t quite finish that one either. The last thing on Saturday afternoon was the flat competition. I’m not fast enough at solving flats to spend time on this. Instead I went up to my room to finish my efforts on Making Every Second Count.

Making Every Second Count: The idea of this creative contest was to write a story in which every word had the same second letter. This is exactly the sort of challenge I enjoy and here is what I came up with:

An Unlikely Incident

Anthony Enderby, an unconventional entomologist, analyzed insects. Once, snorkeling in Angola, Anthony encountered an undulating undine, snacking on ants. “An unusual insectivorous animal!” Anthony announced, anticipating unexpected entries in entomological annals.

Unfortunately, Knute Anderson, an industrial entrepreneur, snatched Anthony’s annotations and indicated another interpretation. “Anyone knows undines ingest anything,” intoned Knute, “including snakes, snails, and unexpectedly, antelopes and gnus.”

Anthony endured unpublished anonymity in unaccredited universities until an infection ended Knute’s antipathy. Anatomical analysis indicated pneumonia.

Enough!


The Extravaganza: Saturday night featured, as usual, the Extravaganza, which involves a series of linked puzzles. I was teamed with Clio, Obelix, and Groucho. This year’s was called Lady of the Rings and was organized by Kryptogram, who dressed the part. As is typical, some puzzles were straightforward, while others were frustrating. We were able to back solve enough to move on, but we were not able to complete the whole thing. I was still attempting to get somewhat reasonable amounts of sleep and, given that I had an earlyish flight on Sunday morning,called it a night.


Wrap-up: Overall, I had a good time. There were a few after hours games I could have liked to play but didn’t get a chance to, particularly WXYZ’s A Puzzling Seance and Wandersong’s Only Connect games. I would have preferred it if the hotel were in a more convenient location, but I think we all made th most of what it was. Mostly, it’s all about the people and it was great to see so many of my puzzle compadres.

I am looking forward to 2023 in Montreal!

Sorry for how long it's taken to write this up. You're not interested in my excuses.

The MIT Mystery Hunt was held over MLK weekend. This was my third year participating (as part of a team named Halibut That Bass, which has roughly 50 members and favors fish puns). All of that participation has been virtual, although the first year the hunt was actually on campus, but I couldn’t get away since I was still working.

For those who are not familiar with the concept, a puzzle hunt involves a bunch of linked puzzles, which lead to metapuzzles - and eventually to some final answer. In the case of the MIT Mystery Hunt, the final goal is always to find a hidden coin. The winning team writes the next year’s hunt. So this year’s hunt was written by Palindrome, whose members include a number of big name puzzlers. People usually think of solving puzzles as a solitary activity, but hunt puzzles are generally too complex to be solved by a single person. They will also often require references. We spent a lot of time collecting information in google sheets, for example, and using the huddle feature of slack to talk through possible approaches.

There are some activities which are not quite as skill-based, but do require creativity. For example, there is always a scavenger hunt. I ended up contributing to that by putting two books in a Little Free Library up the block from where I live, which also had the advantage of letting me get a nice late afternoon walk. I also did one of the events - Crisis in Publishing, which involved collaborative writing of a book. This had been done as an activity at the National Puzzler’s League convention a few years ago and was just as much fun this time. The idea was that you were given a genre and constraints and had to write a page of a book that fit those constraints. This then got passed on to another person. You got a new genre and the previous page and new constraints to work from. There were some glitches with the software so someone in my group got his own page back three times, but I got a wide variety. The constraints were things like using only single syllable words, including particular words, including at least two palindromes, having a character call their mother, etc. This was easy and entertaining.


As for puzzles, there is always a theme. In this case, the theme was book-based. There had been a preview, called Star Rats, which was misleading, but the actual hunt started with one of the campus libraries having disappeared and books flying around. That round was based on children’s books and led to later rounds based on various genres. For example, Mysteries were in Noirleans, Horror in Lake Eerie, Cookbooks in Recipeoria, and so on. You had to solve a certain amount to open up more rounds. I should also note that the artwork was impressive. Between that and the sheer number of puzzles, it’s obvious how much work went into this. The downside is that I found the Hunt somewhat overwhelming. I know that I am never going to come close to looking at all the puzzles, but it’s hard to get the right balance between spending time on a puzzle that’s in my wheelhouse and looking at what else is there.

So, how did we do? We solved 123 (out of 192, I think) puzzles. Which means we were tied for 16th place (out of 393 registered teams). If you look just at the metapuzzles, we were 20th overall (that factors in time, as well as how many we solved). I’d call that respectable.


You can look at all of the puzzles (and their solutions) at the MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 website. A few of the puzzles I liked are listed below. Note that I started each puzzle name with which round it was, to make it easier to find.

The Investigation - The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. This is a Rows Garden, which is one of my favorite puzzle types.

The Ministry - Oxford Children’s Dictionary. There are some cute puns in this.

The Ministry - Charlotte’s Web. I always like crafting (crochet / knit) puzzles. One of my teammates got to it first, alas. I did offer some suggestions, however.

The Ministry - Kiki’s Delivery Service. I was able to make a few useful contributions to this one.

The Quest Coast - Magically Delicious. A cookie themed logic puzzle.

New You City - Everybody Must Get Rosetta Stoned. This was my favorite puzzle of all the ones I looked at during hunt. Yes, I am geeky about languages.

Reference Point - You Took the Fifth. Anything that makes fun of lawyers is good by me.

Sci-Ficisco - My Son, the Science Fiction Fan. I was raised on Allan Sherman records, so this is had a lot f potential. But we didn’t have enough time to get to the “aha” moment for it.


Let me finish with a few remarks on things that didn’t work so well for me. For one thing, I thought that the balance of puzzle types was somewhat too skewed towards cryptics, which is not surprising given the membership of Palindrome. I like cryptics, but I get tired of them after the 50th (or so it felt). I also found the pacing of unlocking puzzles frustrating. We had one point (fairly early on) when we didn’t really have enough puzzles for the number of people we had to work on. When you unlocked a new area, you only got two puzzles in it to start with, which makes things overly dependent on the skill sets of a small number of people.

The single biggest pacing issue we experienced had to do with one of the swag puzzles (and, in fact, the one I had gotten). There were three types of puzzles which had physical objects available. I had gotten one of the two boxes (there was also a puzzle using an envelope) and late on Sunday night, we still had not unlocked that puzzle. We even spent some free unlocks we had earned to try to get to it. And we were one of the teams that was doing fairly well! We did finally unlock the puzzle - more or less right after I went to bed. I got to look at it the next morning, but there was no way we could solve it in the few hours remaining. We did get some insight into the solution, so I think we would have gotten there if we had gotten the puzzle earlier. Oh, well, now I have some rather unusual 20-sided dice.



Overall, I had a good time and I expect to hunt again in the future. But it is also worth acknowledging that there are thing that could be done better.

I had a couple of technical frustrations today.

Well, one of them was actually yesterday. For some reason, the NY Times crossword puzzle wouldn’t work correctly on my phone. (I prefer solving on paper, but I end up solving on my phone a lot because it feeds my obsession with keeping track of my solving time statistics.) This seemed to be only the Thursday puzzle. I finally went and did it on my laptop because I wanted to see if there was a more general problem with that puzzle. It worked fine, though solving on the laptop is annoying because the scrolling is not really well-designed with respect to screen size. Anyway, that problem is resolved.

The other problem, which is resolved only as of about 2 minutes ago, involves trying to “buy” mystery hunt swag. I have a code for the item I want, so I just have to pay the shipping. But their shopify site says that credit and debit card payments are not available right now. But it doesn’t offer me any other way to pay. I finally decided to try it from my phone and that worked fine.

I also had some difficulty attempting to book a trip on-line. In that case, I called up the company involved and it turned out that the cruise I was interested in was sold out for this year. (It’s a once a year thing - a steamboat cruise that includes the Kentucky Derby. You may or may not recall that I had been scheduled to do a Road Scholar trip that included the Kentucky Derby in 2020, which was a casualty of the pandemic.) I went ahead and booked their 2023 cruise, because, well, why not? Both a steamboat cruise and the derby are things I’ve wanted to do for a while and by booking this far in advance I got a break on the price. I am normally not a big fan of telephones, but the booking agent I talked to was very helpful and enthusiastic.

Finally, my nextdoor feed continues to be a source of astonishment. This evening there was a post with the title “Breaking News - Serial Killer in Fairfax County.” It had a link to a news story and admonished people to lock their doors. Apparently the poster had not actually READ the news story, which was about a serial killer being captured. And he had killed women he met on-line who agreed to meet him at a motel. If you are dumb enough to meet a stranger at a motel, admonishments to lock your doors aren’t going to help you. (I don’t mean to write off the seriousness of this case. But they’ve got him locked up and the concern is that he many be linked to more than the 4 murders they know about.)

Celebrity Death Watch: Jonathan Bush was a banker and the brother of George H.W. Bush. Paul Van Doren co-founded Vans. Leigh Perkins expanded Orris into a major mail order retailer, mostly of fishing and outdoors gear. Spencer Silver co-invented Post-it Notes. Pete duPont served two terms as governor of Delaware. Art Gensler founded the world’s largest architectural firm, whose work included the terminals at San Francisco International Airport. Lester Wolff was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Long Island. Norman Lloyd was an actor and notable for continuing to work until he was 100 years old. (He was 106 when he died.) Jim Klobuchar was a journalist and father of Amy. Richard Rubinstein was a rabbi who defended the Moonies on the grounds of anti-Communism. Patsy Bruce wrote country songs, such as “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys.” Terence Riley was the chief curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art. Douglass Mossman was an actor, best known for appearing in Hawaii Five-O. Charles Grodin was a prolific actor, comedian, and talk show host. Paul Mooney was a comedian. and wrote for a number of other black comedians. Alex Dobkin was a folk singer. Roman Kent was the president of the International Auschwitz Committee. Dewayne Blackwell wrote “Friends in Low Places,” among other songs. Samuel E. Wright voiced Sebastian in Disney’s The Little Mermaid. Anna Halprin was a post-modern choreographer. Jerome Hellman was a film producer who won an Oscar for Midnight Cowboy. Mary Beth Edelson was one of the first generation of feminist artists and is best known for “Some Living American Women Artists / Last Supper.”

Eric Carle wrote and illustrated The Very Hungry Caterpillar and several other children’s books. He is also notable for founding a museum of picture book art. Another author/illustrator of children’s books, Lois Ehlers, best known for Chicka Chicka Boom Boom died a couple of days later.

John Warner spent 30 years as a Republican senator from Virginia and had earlier been the Secretary of the Navy. He was also Elizabeth Taylor’s sixth husband. Despite having been a Republican, in more recent years, he endorsed a number of Democrats, both for the Senate and the Presidency.

B. J. Thomas was a pop singer. Some of the songs he was well-known for include “Hooked on a Feeling,” “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” “I Just Can’t Help Believing,” and “(Hey Won’t You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song.”

Gavin McLeod played Murray on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and was the captain on The Love Boat.


I don’t normally mention animal deaths, but Bo, the Obama family dog, was prominent enough that I think he deserves a note. I don’t think many Americans had heard of a Portuguese water dog, a supposedly hypo-allergenic breed, before the Obamas got him for their daughters.

Errata: I made a minor addition to the Island Hopping entry. I had completely neglected Jones Beach. And Fire Island, which I might have gone to.

Cool Baseball Trivia: On Friday May 21st, Seattle back-up catcher Jose Godoy made his major league debut, becoming the 20,000th player in major league baseball history. (The Mariners got slaughtered by the Padres, however, losing 16-1.)

Blight Flight: I watched this short play by Iyona Blake on-line a couple of weeks ago. I know her work primarily as a singer and actor, who has made numerous appearances at Signature Theatre and Creative Cauldron. The play involves a white woman trying to befriend the black woman being forced out of the house next door by rising prices in the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. The black woman makes her question her assumptions, but the two connect at the end via a song. It was a challenging story and I’d like to see it developed into a full-length production mostly because I was left with a lot of questions about both women.


Don’t Analyze This Dream: I drove into the German embassy - literally, into the building. I pulled up next to a guard who told me to get out of the car and then took my temperature with a forehead thermometer. Another guard came over, walked around me, shook his head, but did not tell me what to do or where to go. At that point, three women came in, one of whom resembles someone I slightly know. They were given some papers by another guard and went into a door. I waited a while, all of the guards wandered away, and I decided I should go through that same door. The three women were gone. Just outside the door, I saw a small table with stacks of vaccination certificates. I walked over to a window where a guy told me I didn’t have to do anything but take a seat at a table and wait. He also invited me to an upcoming Valentine’s Day party at the embassy. While I was waiting, someone said they had gotten the number 30, which seemed to be a bad thing. The three women came back in, carrying clipboards with yellow papers. I don’t remember anything happening after that point.


This Way Lies Madness: I finally achieved Queen Bee in the New York Times Spelling Bee (a daily word puzzle). Not just once, but every day for a week or so and several times since. I have decided, however, that pursuing that every day is just too obsessive, especially on days when there are 60+ words to find. I did admittedly do it today, but there were only 39 words.


Retirement Gift: I got the retirement gift catalog from Circle-A and chose an iPad. The other possibility was an Apple watch, but I have really small wrists and thought I would find it awkward. It came on Friday but I haven’t set it up yet. I think the current offerings (which also include things like cookware and jewelry),are better than what people years ago complained about. Twenty some odd years ago,, they gave out mostly clocks, with only an engraved bowl as a non-time oriented option.

Art Fair: I went to the Old Town Art Fair in Alexandria a couple of weeks ago. I attempted to find someone to come along to be a shopping discourager, but none of my friends were interested and available. As a result, I bought a few things - a robot sculpture from Cheri Kudzu’s Bitti Bots, a brooch made from watch parts, and a book called Goodbye, Penguins, which has a rather Gorey-esque sensibility. I like some works of urban surrealism by a guy named Ralph Rankin, but he was horribly rude to me when I asked for his card, so I will never buy anything from him.


Renwick Gallery: I went to the Renwick Gallery a week and a half ago with one of the women from my crafts group. Mostly, we went to look at the Renwick Invitational, which had installations from four artists. Rowland Ricketts had a large piece made of squares of indigo-dyed fabric. He apparently grows the indigo himself. That installation also had music in the background. Lauren Fensterstock’s piece was titled “The totality of time lusters the dusk.” It was a complex mosaic piece made of glass, crystals, beads, paper, hematite, etc. and, while I thought it was interesting, it was too hard to see the whole thing at some time. Debora Moore had several pieces that involved glass flower petals blown directly onto wood and concrete bases. Finally, Timothy Horn had large pieces based on historic jewelry, as well as an interesting carriage made out of rock sugar. After looking at that exhibit, we went upstairs to look at the permanent exhibit. Janet Echelon’s 1.8 is one of the highlights, with a fiber netting that changes colors in response to lighting. My favorite, however, was Skeins by Mariska Karasz. Overall, it was a nice couple of hours.


Immigrant Food: After the museum, I had lunch at Immigrant Food, which is more or less around the corner. I had their equivalent of a banh mi, which was quite tasty. (The person I went with wanted to rush home, as she is caring for her husband who is in treatment for cancer.)

Good News: I got my blood tested a few days ago. And all of the numbers on the iron panel were within normal range. So I just need to continue taking oral supplements.

This is definitely the latest I am doing a year in review. 2020 was, obviously, a challenging year. The biggest thing that happened was retiring (in October) and I am, frankly, still adjusting to that. I am trying to stick to my usual format, though much of that may cover things I had hoped to do and wasn’t able to because of the pandemic.’’


Books I read only 26 books in 2020. I found that working from home definitely cut into my reading time, as did my general stress level. On the other hand, I did keep up with newspapers and mostly caught up on magazines. Anyway, my favorite book of the year was A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. Other books I liked include three of the novels in the Undead series by Mary Janice Davidson, My Mother’s Son by David Hirschberg, The Bastard by John Jakes, and West With the Night by Beryl Markham. Books I disliked included A Home At the End of the World by Michael Cunningham Puzzle For Fools by Patrick Quentin, and North Haven by Sarah Moriarty.


I got rid of 23 books. I have over 100 ready to go out, but I need to catch up on documenting that.

One other thing I should mention was going to a few virtual presentations as part of the National Book Festival. That is not, of course, as satisfying as a live festival, but was still interesting.


Volksmarch: Nothing, since I don’t generally do much walking in the winter. And then came the pandemic….

Travel: This is where my biggest disappointments of the year were, of course. I started out the year by flying home from Oman (via Dubai, with a long layover at DBX). The only other trip I took was a weekend in Las Vegas in February.

The biggest thing I missed out on was the Passion Play in Oberammergau, Germany, which is rescheduled to 2022. I also had intended various weekend getaways, including puzzle events in New York, Connecticut, and Toronto, my college reunion in Boston, and going to the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee. Some of that ended up virtual, about which I will say more below.


Puzzles: 2020 was my first time participating in the MIT Mystery Hunt, which I did virtually because my workplace did not have MLK Day as a holiday. Most of the usual events were cancelled, though some went virtual. The only one of the virtual ones I did was Lollapuzzoola and I did terribly, at least partly due to issues with the interface.


Ghoul Pool: I did fairly well, finishing in 5th place with 272 points (just 1 point out of 4th!) out of 17 players. The people I scored on were Kirk Douglas, Sultan Qaboos, Olivia de Havilland, John “Sonny” Franzese, Alex Trebek, Jean Edman, Freeman Dyson, Stirling Moss, Betty Dodson, John Lewis, Eric Bentley, Doug Supernaw, Nick Cordero, and John Prine.


For the record, my 2021 list is:
20. Prince Philip
19. Beverly Cleary
18. Al Jaffee
17. Naomi Replansky
16. W. Nicholas Hitchon
15. Anne Hutchinson Guest
14. Carmen Herrera
13. Renee Simonot
12. Bob Barker
11. Marsha Hunt
10. James Lovelock
9. Rachel Robinson
8. Lee Adams
7, Lawrence Ferlinghetti
6. Gilbert Seltzer
5. Roger Angell
4. Jiro Ono
3. Ned Rorem
2. James L. Buckley
1. Jimmy Carter

(The number is how many points you get if that pick dies, You then get to reload that slot. You also get 12 bonus points for unique picks.)

Genealogy: The biggest item here is that I was able to go to the International Association of Jewish Genealogy Societies conference virtually. I still need to finish writing up notes from the presentations I listened to after the conference was over. I also went to lots of (virtual) events with the Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington and a couple from other organizations.

I also made contact with a few cousins, including a Bruskin descendent in Argentina.

What I haven’t done is getting organized.


Baseball: None, alas, due to the pandemic.


Culture: Pre-pandemic, I saw 4 musicals, 3 plays, and one revue I don’t know how to characterize. Oh, and also one Cirque du Soleil show. Favorites were The Toxic Avenger: The Musical at Rorschach Theatre, The King’s Speech at The National Theatre, andSilent Sky at Ford’s Theatre. The one concert I went to was Jonathan Richman at the Lincoln Theatre and he was wonderful.

I only saw three movies all year, which is not super surprising given that I normally watch movies mostly on airplanes and at film festivals. The Iron Giant was my favorite of them.

As for storytelling, the biggest live event I went to was the First Annual Women’s Storytelling Festival in March. I was on the organizing committee fr this and also emceed part of the day on Saturday. This was just before everything shut down, so attendance was low, but it was still pretty successful. And we are doing it again (but virtually) this March. The other live event I performed in was the Folklore Society of Greater Washington MiniFest in February.


Virtual Events: Once things did shut down, I found myself “going” to a lot of virtual events, mostly over zoom. The bottom line is that I am good at staying busy. Those included:

• Several performances by the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, including sing-alongs with Zaman Mlotek, a concert of Allan Sherman songs, and a couple of concerts by Adam B. Shapiro,.
  
  
• Profs and Pints lectures on The Great American Road Trip, Epidemics in American History, Folkloric Felines, and The Truth Behind White Picket Fences.
  
  
• Jewish Food Festival
  
  
• Two plays and an opera, my favorite of which was the opera, Why Is Eartha Kitt Trying to Kill Me?
  
  
• The National Storytelling Conference (which I’ve written up in some length, The National Storytelling Festival (which I still need to write up), and lots of story swaps and performances. I also performed in at least one Better Said Than Done show (and hosted another) and in a Halloween concert. Among the best of those were two shows by Stories With Spirit (which I plan to write more about) that focused on fairy tale variations, one about Snow White and one about Hansel and Gretel. One plus of virtual events is that I can go to non-local story swaps, so I get to see my Los Angeles friends, as well as my local friends from Voices in the Glen and Better Said Than Done.
  
  
• A few sessions at Balticon and at Awesome Con..
  
  
• Book club
  
  
• Loser board games. I should probably explain that losers are devotees of the Washington Post Style Invitational.
  
  
• New York Adventure Club visual tour of City College of New York, which I am mentioning mostly because I’ve been going to more of their virtual tours so far this year.
  
  
• Art history classes, which are part of the Smithsonian Certificate program I am doing (and also need to write about)
  
  
• Various MIT related events, including my 40th reunion.
  
  

Goals: I had set 8 goals for 2020. I’ll give myself a 50% on updating household technology, since I still have to decide what to do about replacing my rather ancient television. I haven’t formally written a budget for my retirement income so get a 0% on that one. I did enroll in the Smithsonian Certificate Program in World Art History and took 2 core and 4 elective classes, so get 100% there. I haven’t finished organizing household paperwork, but I have made good progress and will give myself a 75%. I only got 23 books out of my house, so will round down to 10%. I learned 2 folk tales (where learning means to the point of being able to tell them) so get 33% on that goal. I did enter the Style Invitational 4 times (and even got ink once) so get 100% there. And I read 26 books, so get 50% on my reading goal. So it looks like I scored 52% for the year, which is decent, given the pandemic throwing a wrench in the works.


So, let’s see, goals for 2021:

• Get at least 200 books out of my house.
  
  
• Enter the Style Invitational at least 6 times.
  
  
• Finish the Smithsonian Certificate Program in World Art History. This requires 4 core classes and 6 electives but most elective classes are only a half credit.
  
  
• Get everything out of my storage locker so I don’t need to spend money on that.
  
  
• Organize my genealogy files.
  
  
• Organize my craft supplies, especially yarn.
  
  
• Read at least 52 books. I’m retired, so there’s really no excuse not to spend more time reading.
  
  
• Get at least 4 new stories to tellable form.