Archive for Games

Untruncating

Facebook notifications often show an abbreviated version of some of the text that they’re about. In particular, notifications about shared links show an abbreviated version of the linked-to piece’s headline/title, with an ellipsis at the end. Which sometimes makes me want to complete the truncated title. Which can have entertaining results. I’ve been meaning for […]

Skippers

I just accidentally turned two pages at once in a book, and read what appeared to be the following line: …swindle a Texan balcony of her mansion… (Hustlers & Con Men, by Jay Robert Nash, pages 311 and 314. The page break is after the word Texan.) I was going to call this accidentally-turn-an-extra-page-but-it-still-sorta-makes-sense phenomenon […]

Inapt review combos

I recently read Tom Holt’s 1987 fantasy novel Expecting Someone Taller. On the front cover is this blurb: “RECALLS BOTH TOLKIEN’S LORD OF THE RINGS AND TWAIN’S CONNECTICUT YANKEE … AN ENTERTAINING ROMP!” —Publisher’s Weekly I’ve never been terribly fond of the style of review where you describe a work as a cross between two […]

Trek house rules

For a long time, I’ve been intermittently collecting fortune-cookie fortunes that I find entertaining with phrases like in bed or between the sheets added. The other day, Kam came up with a new-to-us variation: adding between the sheets after lines of dialogue in Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes. I didn’t write down any examples […]

Name dominoes

A recent xkcd strip introduced the game of name dominoes (see also large version of image). I’m a little surprised to see that I haven’t posted before about making chains of names; I’ve been doing it now and then for a long time. But usually I only get linear chains of three or four names […]