...Tomorrow.

 

Yep, miss summer already.

 

I'll blog more during the year.

 

geniusonwheels

After a quick inquiry online, if you ever feel like flying into the airport in Garrow Lake, Ontario, Canada, you would be flying into an airport with the code GOW.

 

Believe it or not, I am once again leaving home. Tomorrow I am going back to the beach from Thursday to Sunday. But after that, I'm pretty sure I will be staying home until school starts.

 

I've been trying to make at least 5 questions/puzzles each day since Monday, and have been posting them on the Brain Teaser Chat Boards. Those people are just eating them through, and it is tough trying to come up with new, original ideas. But I will prevail!

 

GOW

Sorry about the haitus on this blog. A had been at the beach for a week, was sort of lazy in the next week, had a thunderstorm the time when I was suppose to make a new post, and had to go to camp for this last week.

 

Had to go to camp last week. Can't really talk about it that much, but it was really fun and can't wait to go back next year.

 

I'll try if I can have a post for everyday until Thursday.

 

Now a couple of puzzles.

 

 

What person comes next on this list? Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, Phil Hartman, Dana Carvey, Darrell Hammond, Will Ferrell.

 

My uncle taught me the mnemonic "Be my little girl" to remember what?

 

What color comes next? Blue, red, yellow, blue, green, ?

 

If I tell you to go hang a salami, I'm a what?

 

What journalistic news source was recently "purchased" by Chinese company Yu Wan Mei, a spinoff from the theme song of the 2008 Beijing Olympics?

 

What Black Sabbath album has a palindromic name?

 

 

This is blog named Academia.

 

It is made by user geniusonwheels.

 

Blogging is a way to ventilate, share, and discuss.

 

This post has 7 lines.

 

This line has eight words and ten syllables.

 

The blog may feature actual events tomorrow.

 

This post may feature a comment.

 

 

Well, yesterday our family came home from our vacation, and today I'm going to another camp. Couldn't come up with anything really good to talk about, so any real serious posts will have to come Saturday.

 

Upon coming home, I discovered that there was this new thing called "badglets". Immediately taking to them, I now have 13 of them. And that was only a 1 deal day.

 

And since I didn't come up with a spectacular puzzle, here is a more trivial challenge.

 

 

Our Dumb World is a 200+ page atlas created by The Onion. The atlas has information on every single country, and some of the information includes the nation's flag. Each flag has a caption underneath with some humorous message. Below are 20 captions that are underneath the flags. You have to determine the country. For record, I did not include any caption that has the nation's name in it, has a four letter word (you know the Onion), can't be determine unless you have the rest of the country information, or wasn't that funny. And please take this with a grain of salt. It is not trying to insult anyone personally. The Onion tries to insult everyone generally.


1.These five stars represent whatever you want them to represent
2.Flag currently on loan for MLB Home Run Derby.
3.They thought the racing stripe looked really cool.
4.The god Neptune is in his third term as secretary of state
5.40 years of independence represent here by a pointy hat
6.The half cogwheel almost represents progress
7.They crammed as much Islam as they could into that crescent.
8.Flag symbolizes fast, friendly service
9.Could the blue stripe running thourgh the middle represent a river?
10.Flag depicts official state sword laid near pile of severed human arms
11.Something is defenitley wrong with that aardvark
12.The outer thirds can be detatched in case of emergency surrendering
13.Only the Pope and Jesus Christ know what on Earth this flag symbolizes
14.It was the flag’s fault, honestly—it made them do it.
15.Denmark, Finland, and Norway often salute this flag by accident
16.One day Zeus will shatter this useless cross with his mighty thunderbolt
17.Bewaaare…the spookiest flag in all of Europe!
18.Previously flag was so pointy that hundreds of soldiers died folding it
19.The dragon gives wisdom to those humble enough to receive it
20.Citizens are challenged to name the quadrant with the correct flag
21.Sadly, this seagull ate some Alka-Seltzer and probably won’t make it to shore

 

Post answers in the comments, and I will separate the right from the wrong. See you Saturday!

This is the abbreviated version of the post I wanted to have, because I accidently clicked the wrong button while typing my blog post, and everything went away. I will discuss my former topic tomorrow.

 

But instead, I have the three puzzles I was planning to use for today's post.

 

 

Take the name of a musical instrument. Remove the last letter, and rearrange the remaining letters. You can now make a word that precedes the names of a bunch of other instruments. What are the words?

 

Take a two word phrase that is promoted by the Boy Scouts. If you write this two word phrase as one long word, you see three consecutive pairs of doubled letters (e.g. as in the word bookkeeper). What is the two word phrase?

 

What do these people have in common? Charlemagne, Lord Baden-Powell, Virgin Mary, and Reggie Bush.

After spending a couple of days, I just finished making a Sunday crossword.

 

The biggest difference between a Sunday and a Weekday is that a Weekday is usually 15x15. A Sunday can be 21x21, 23x23, or 25x25.

 

In order to make the puzzle, I had to come up with a theme, a grid, and the words to put in the grid. I spent 2 hours off and on for 3 days coming up with my theme words. Then I spent about 30 minutes yesterday finding the grid I want, using a website with all of the New York Times crosswords since 1993. And then today for about 4 hours, I came up with the fill.

 

The title of my puzzle is "Foul House". A common characteristic of NYT puzzles is circles, where after the puzzle is filled, the letters in circles will stand out from the rest of the puzzle. My puzzle features 11 phrases that each feature x amount of circles consecutively. What makes this puzzle unique is that the letters in the circles can be anagrammed into a place in the house. For example, the phrase FIGHTINGBOREDOM would have FIGHTING(BOREDOM), and the words inside the circles could be anagrammed into BEDROOM.

 

I can't put this puzzle on Funtrivia, and I can't post it in the newspaper I'm editing, so I guess I need to have bigger plans...

 

 

And now a puzzle. Take the name of a Rolling Stones song. Remove the 7th, 8th, and 10th letter, and you get a Beatles song. What are these songs?

More about camp later.

 

One of the cool features I put on my laptop is having two different toolbar searches, Bing and Google. Many different times the "autocomplete" feature will determine what you want to look for. For example, after "Funt", "Funtrivia" becomes the first choice.

 

I decided to compare the most popular result for each letter of the alphabet.

 

Google                                            Bing

Amazon                                           Aol

Best Buy                                         Bank of America

                          Craigslist

                          Dictionary

                          Ebay

                          Facebook

Gmail                                               Google

                          Hotmail

IRS                                                   Internet Explorer

                          JcPenny

                          Kohls

                          Lowes

                          Myspace

                          Netflix

Orbitz                                              Orkut

                          Photobucket

Quotes                                            QVC

Realtor.com                                     Runescape

Southwest Airlines                          Sears

                          Target

USPS                                                UPS

Verizon Wireless                              Verizon

                         Walmart

                         XM Radio

Youtube                                           Yahoo

Zillow                                               Zip Codes

 

 

So the letters C, D, E, F, H, J, K, L, M, N, P, T, W, and X share the same top result.

 

Personally, I think that these results show what kind of person the searcher is.

 

Bing users like clunker websites (AOL, Internet Explorer, Yahoo, Runescape) and intensive shopping (QVC, Ebay) while Google users like easy-to-use websites (Amazon, Youtube, Gmail). Google users like electronics (Best Buy) more than Bing users (Sears). Google users like traveling and buying houses (Realtor.com, Southwest Airlines, Zillow, Orbitz). If you use Google, you are more than likely liberal (USPS, IRS, Amazon, Gmail) and if you use Bing, you are more than likely conservative (UPS, Zip Codes, Sears, QVC, Yahoo).

 

Remeber, do not send me "Even though I use ___ that doesn't mean I ___" notes. These are general observations from one person.

 

Glad to back home. 

So, yeah, there is no more school for me. I haven't really felt like Funtrivia in the last week due to all the final exams I have. I don't remember ever studying so much like I did this year, but that is because many final exams were replaced by computerized End of Course tests.

 

My final exam grades:

 

Algebra II - 100

Biology - 99

Geometry - 100

Spanish I - 93

English II - 100

Economics - 100

 

Pretty good, except that low A for Spanish. But I had good grades for nine-week grades, so it is that bad.

 

I was honored on Awards Day at my school (which I didn't blog about). I had the highest grade in Government, Algebra II, Spanish I, and English II. I also was honored for receiving a 1400 on the SAT, and for making a perfect 800 on the Math section not once, but twice. Pretty sweet deal.

 

Tomorrow is the senior's class graduation. It's sort of weird watching on knowing that you have a higher SAT score than anybody up on stage, or could answer more questions correctly than any of them. I almost get cocky, but I don't.

 

And then Sunday, I'm off to a one-week camp at the USC. It will be just like the 3-week camp last year, but without 2 weeks and laundry.

 

And, a cool cartoon puzzle.

 

Take the name of an animated character that was the main character of a TV show in the last 5 years. Now, take the word for what describes this character. (So, you can feel in this sentence: ___ is the ___) These two words together have an even number of letters, half of the letters are vowels, and all of the vowels are the same vowel. What are the words?

In honor of the possible name-post series and Top of the Week Trivia, I give you this part of Funtrivia.

 

http://www.funtrivia.com/ql.cfm?cat=13128

 

Today is Jay Leno's last episode on the Tonight Show. I got hooked on Jay about 2 years ago, and since then I have seen 95% of the episodes since. Thanks to Tivo and NBC.com, watching Jay is so much easier. I feel bad that Jay is leaving, but it's not like he is leaving. I just feel bad for Conan because I personally think that he will fail as the new host. I just hope that Jay won't fail from being at 10 o'clock.

 

And now for three puzzles.

 

What is the inspiration of this blog post's title?

 

What do the four speaking characters in Act I, Scene III of Julius Caesar have in common?

 

What do these items have in common: Arrow, question mark, chest, faucet, ring, car, policeman, light bulb, locomotive?

In most classic novels, there are three types of villians. Nature, themselves, or another person. While some deep novels and novellas like Grapes of Wrath and Old Man and the Sea have non-human antagonists, there are some novels with good bad guys.

 

Othello's Iago and Richard III's Richard III are probably the two biggest villians in Shakespeare, ignoring Claudius and Edmund. Iago has those sneaky ways and incredible luck which gives him such a great bad dude. Iago has more lines than any other Shakespearean character, after Hamlet. Richard III is cool because he's that guy your English teacher told you that he was also a bad guy. In all honesty, he's a crazy dude with a broke back. And he has one of the best opening and closing lines of any Shakespearean character.

 

My vote for best non-human antagonists that might as well be humans are Moby Dick and Shere Khan from The Jungle Book. Both have that sinister feeling, even though they have 4 or 0 legs.

 

Some more honorable mentions:

Long John Silver - Treasure Island

The White Witch - Lion, Witch, and Wardrobe

The Traflamadores - Slaughterhouse-Five

Satan - The Bible, Paradise Lost, Divine Comedy

The North - Gone With the Wind

Napoleon - Animal Farm

 

If you have another good villian, or just want to get your name in blog post titles, post a comment.

 

Turns out, this blog is becoming more and more a weekly blog.

 

So, in order to come up with more ideas, all you have to do is post a comment.

 

I will use the usernames of the people who posted a comment on the last blog, and I will come up with a creative title and post that reflects that person's name. I had used satguru's name in the post "How to become an S.A.T. guru" which was all about my recent SAT. The name won't be exact, but it will be a great way to come up with ideas.

 

By the way, I will still provide puzzles and updates about my world.

 

This series of posts start with this one. If you want your name up in Funtrivia blog posts, place a comment.