Warning: Math, Handwaving

I spent a lot of time doodling in middle school instead of whatever middle schoolers are supposed to do. Somewhere between the Cool S’s and Penrose triangles I found an interesting way to fill up graph paper by repeatedly combining and copying squares.

Imagine the typical everyday scenario in which you have been imprisoned in the wine cellar of an evil combinatorialist. She promises to let you go, but only if you can solve her riddle.

If you’ve fallen far enough down the Wordle rabbit hole you may have heard of Quordle, a version of Wordle where you solve four words at once. If you’re looking for more of a challenge, Britannica has you covered with Octordle, where you solve eight words at once. And of course any Wordler worth their salt should be able to handle sixteen words, like in Sedecordle. And no, it doesn’t stop there:

Don’t tell anyone, but despite majoring in Computer Science and Data Science at Berkeley’s College of Letters and Sciences I somehow ended up with a Bachelor of \({\color{#dd2222}\mathcal{A}}{\color{#dd8800}\mathfrak{r}}{\color{#00aa00}\mathfrak{t}}{\color{#0000ff}\mathfrak{s}}\). Anyway, it was thanks to a required art class that I encountered Incomplete Open Cubes by Sol LeWitt at San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art:

Don’t tell anyone, but despite majoring in Computer Science and Data Science at Berkeley’s College of Letters and Sciences I somehow ended up with a Bachelor of \({\color{#dd2222}\mathcal{A}}{\color{#dd8800}\mathfrak{r}}{\color{#00aa00}\mathfrak{t}}{\color{#0000ff}\mathfrak{s}}\). Anyway, it was thanks to a required art class that I encountered Incomplete Open Cubes by Sol LeWitt at San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art:

I fell down a bit of a rabbit hole the other day after seeing a post on r/sanfrancisco about a cryptic billboard in Nob Hill:

If you want to take the quiz you can find it here, the rest of this post describes how names were chosen and contains spoilers for the answers.

If you’ve fallen far enough down the Wordle rabbit hole you may have heard of Quordle, a version of Wordle where you solve four words at once. If you’re looking for more of a challenge, Britannica has you covered with Octordle, where you solve eight words at once. And of course any Wordler worth their salt should be able to handle sixteen words, like in Sedecordle. And no, it doesn’t stop there:

Shortly after Wordle became an overnight sensation, a natural question arose: what’s the best guessing strategy? Many theories sprung up as people claimed to have found the optimal way to beat Wordle, often times using the word optimal loosely. While scrolling through the comments of one of these allegedly optimal Wordle posts I spotted a comment promoting a botting competition to see who could put their money where their mouth was.

Imagine the typical everyday scenario in which you have been imprisoned in the wine cellar of an evil combinatorialist. She promises to let you go, but only if you can solve her riddle.

Warning: Math, Handwaving

I spent a lot of time doodling in middle school instead of whatever middle schoolers are supposed to do. Somewhere between the Cool S’s and Penrose triangles I found an interesting way to fill up graph paper by repeatedly combining and copying squares.

Welp, I zoned out for another year. Luckily I’m pretty sure no one reads this stuff, except maybe CS 186 students who want to investigate the TA who answers debugging questions at 4 AM instead of teaching a discussion section. Which brings us to today’s topic!

“blursed (adj): Simultaneously blessed and cursed by a situation, object, person, etc…”

– Urban Dictionary

I recently discovered something incredibly blursed while reading an article by faehnrick in PagedOut Volume 2.

For those unfamiliar with the finer details of competitive Pokemon, it’s basically just a fancy version of rock, paper, scissors. While RPS gives each player 3 options, a turn in pokemon consists of around 4-9 possibilities for each player. Each player then reveals his or her choice simultaneously, and the results of their actions play out. This makes it different than games like Tic Tac Toe, Chess, or Go where only one player is “in control” at a time, and instead more like a game of Poker where two players are forced to reveal their hands at the same time.

Full title: This title consists of two a’s, one b, two c’s, two d’s, thirty-one e’s, six f’s, four g’s, eight h’s, eleven i’s, one j, one k, three i’s, one m, eighteen n’s, seventeen o’s, one p, one q, seven r’s, twenty-eight s’s, twenty t’s, four u’s, five v’s, six w’s, three x’s, four y’s, and one z.

For real! Test it out (or just take my word for it)!