52 thoughts on “August 17, 2015: Duffman is Thrusting in the Direction of the Problem”

  2. One of the Simpson's characters I've grown to love is Lance Murdock. A couple of his quotes:
    "The United States of America has the highest doctor-to-daredevil ratio in the world!"

    "It's always good to see young people taking an interest in danger"

  3. PunMan's Board Game of the Week!
    In my continuing series of going over some of the great Board Games I've been playing (most recently at Gen Con!) Today I present to you Istanbul (not Constantinople). Winner of the 2014 Kennerspiel Des Jahres (an award meaning best Connoisseur-Enthusiast Game of the Year), this game quickly rose up my ranks of games I'd really like to get. You play a merchant, who along with his four assistants must navigate the narrow lanes of the Istanbul bazaar, looking to be the most successful amongst all your cohorts. The goal of the game is to acquire 5 rubies (6 in the 2 player version).

    The game plays on a grid of 16 tiles, laid out 4x4. There are standard layouts for the tiles, but the game also allows for more challenging and even random layouts. Each tile represents a place in the bazaar. There are places to acquire goods, places to sell those goods, You can gain more capacity to hold more goods, you can buy rubies, etc. On your turn, you move your merchant & assistants 1-2 spaces. In order to take an action, you must either leave, or pick up an assistant (remember, you only have 4!). Thus, you must make the most of your route, and plan ahead to take the best actions you can with the limited amount of assistants.

    I only played a short demo of this game, but I immediately loved it. I can see why it won Kennerspiel. There's potential for good strategy, and replayability with the different layouts of the tiles. This could be a Christmas pickup for me, as it's one that I think the kids would enjoy (at least the older ones). I really wish it had an online version on Boiteajeux.net or Yucata.de though.

      1. Ya know, I didn't get that from my play of it. Maybe I need to work on my descriptions a bit more. :-~

      1. You're right, sorry. I mean to swap you out for FTLT, but I spaced it. I'm updating now.

        There you are, slotted in at #11.

          1. Magoo, the calc is wrong for Zee.
            Tab "Scoring Operations": Cell O22 has the same formula as the cell above it, rather than the cell to the left of it.
            I assume you've updated with some games. Right now, I have him in 7th with 7 points:
            1 hungry joe 10
            2 Homer Dome 9
            3 Jeff A 9
            4 Philo 8
            5 davidwatts 8
            6 MagUidhir 8
            7 Zee German 7
            8 Freealonzo 6
            9 nibbish 4
            10 Scot 4
            11 Daneeka's Ghost 3
            12 The Dread Pirate 3
            13 Beau 2

            1. Aye, I filled down, instead of filled right. Your table is correct. Thank you for the correction.

              Proof that open-source works!

        1. Actually, someone should reverse engineer the standings based on me being in first, and nibs being in second, to see what the final outcome will be this season.

          1. Averaging your two picks, then sorting by position (and alphabetically for ties) results in

            Team Philo's Position nibbish's Position Average Position
            Chelsea 2 1 1.5
            Arsenal 1 3 2
            Manchester City 3 2 2.5
            Manchester United 4 4 4
            Stoke City 6 6 6
            Liverpool 8 5 6.5
            Southampton 5 8 6.5
            Tottenham Hotspur 7 7 7
            Everton 9 9 9
            Crystal Palace 11 11 11
            Swansea City 13 10 11.5
            West Ham United 10 14 12
            Newcastle United 15 12 13.5
            West Bromwich Albion 14 13 13.5
            Leicester City 12 20 16
            Sunderland 17 17 17
            Watford 16 18 17
            Aston Villa 19 16 17.5
            Bournemouth 20 15 17.5
            Norwich City 18 19 18.5

              1. Yeah, AMR or bS can probably do something a little more complicated than (Philo+nibbish)/2 to get a little more accurate. All that data is open source, so have at it fellas.

                2. That's what I would have done.
                  Consider if Phil and Nibs rated all 20 teams A-T the same except C and H.
                  Phil just went alphabetical and placed C 3rd and H 8th.
                  Nibs hates team C and placed them 8th, and put H at 3rd, rather than pushing all of the other letters back.
                  Then both C and H are tied at an average place of 5.5.
                  Which moves up D and E to 3rd and 4th even though both were consensus 4th and 5th.
                  Then comes C and H, tied at 5th/6th.
                  F and G are then pushed back from their consensus 6th and 7th places to 7th and 8th.

                  1. But you don't get the same amount of points relative to whatever their positions are, and some spots are more important. And there are other participants. I want the one that maximizes our scores relative to the rest of the league, with me in first and Nibs in second. I might monkey with it later tonight.

                    1. OK then, Trial and error. I started with assuming your picks were right and then just changed a few (rotated your 12, 20, and 15) so that Nibs finished in second, not third.
                      Final Standings of:

                      Hide SelectShow

                      Produce final rankings of:

                      Hide SelectShow

                      There's probably a more optimal final standings, but I wasn't even sure if I should optimize your score minus third place or nibs's score minus third place, or the sum of those squares, or the square of the sum, or something else.

  8. Before attempting this week's Invisibles quiz, make sure to check out the answers from last week's, along with the leaderboard, you might find a recognizable basement there...

    Anyway, here's this week's quiz. I managed to get 5 of them, which I think is a new personal best. Let's see if we can finish out the set again.

    '1, 2, 4, 6, 8' SelectShow

    1. I feel like I've seen #3, but nothing's coming to mind at the moment.

      And #7 appears to be set in Chicago, but got nothing more than that.

      1. Yeah, me too. 5 and 7 feel familiar as well, but it might just be that they're generic enough scenes that something like that has been in a bunch of different movies.

      2. Also, I was in the right vein for #2 (I said Say Anything), and I think I would have gotten there eventually, so this week was my best ever, by far.

        1. Number 2 wasn't my first guess, either. First I tried...

          'Spoiler' SelectShow

  9. What happens first: Eddie Rosario hits double digit triples, or one of the three Twins with 9 stolen bases gets into the teens?

    1. The moment was awesome, but man, Bert's contribution is awful.

      Also, MLB really needed the White Sox feed for this video. I'm gonna go look for that one because I love me some Hawk silence.

    2. Facebook reminded me just a little while ago of a post I made five years ago today.

      "JI JIM"

    3. I watched a compilation of this year's walkoff HRs and 50 longest HRs. Observations:

      4 Twins walkoffs: Plouffe (1st in MLB this year?), Vargas, and 2 Dozier; did not notice any against the Twins

      Longest HR cutoff was 450' -- no Twins, but one off the Twins (Gallo). Giancarlo Stanton and Joc Pederson hit it a ton, btw.

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