And bonus points for anybody who figures out which of the farm animals goes with WOODS, SNOW, and SLEEP.

If the answer is “One away”, you’ve narrowed it down to 2 possibilities. Otherwise, you’ve narrowed it down to 3. Either way, you have 3 guesses left, so you win.

I’d be surprised if I was the first one to discover this, but it’s hard to search for. Any references? Any similar tricks?

Suppose you’ve got two categories, and have four guesses left. Say the remaining words are
COW SLEEP HORSE SNOW
PIG WOODS SHEEP GOAT
You’re pretty sure that one category is “farm animals”, but there are 5 possibilities. What you can do is guess 2 from each category, say COW, GOAT, WOODS, SNOW.

Combinatorial tricks for solving the New York Times “Connections” puzzle

A few days ago, I figured out a combinatorial trick you can sometimes use to help solve Connections. I tried Googling to see if anybody had previously found it, without success.

A poem for finals week

And now the last ordeal comes.
The task looms up, so uninviting.
Will it be clear or enigmatic?
Will it be boring or exciting?
Must we solve riddles or fight battles?
Set out on some mysterious quest?
Or search for clues in dusty tomes?
Tell us, what will be on the test?

Chinese state media is reportedly troubled by the latest exodus of X users flocking to Bluesky. State outlets, which put considerable resources into amassing millions of followers on Elon Musk’s social media platform — including by buying ads, deploying bots, and hiring influencers — have recently seen their growth plateau. The growing popularity of Bluesky, which has a largely liberal base and harder-to-manipulate algorithm, has sparked “worried chatter within Chinese state media circles,” a former Xinhua and China Daily employee wrote in his newsletter. He predicted the accounts will migrate to Bluesky, though it may take time. For now, the sector’s focus has shifted back to domestic, Mandarin-language channels and platforms like Bilibili, WeChat, and Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.

lol China's state media is sad about Bluesky because it's not an easy propaganda distribution channel like X (and Facebook)

www.semafor.com/article/11/2...

D&D Combinatorics xkcd.com/3015

You know the "🔹AI Overview" you get on Google Search?

I discovered today that it's repeating as fact something I made up 7 years ago as a joke.

"Kyloren syndrome" is a fictional disease I invented as part of a sting operation to prove that you can publish any nonsense in predatory journals...

Have you seen a better quantum-themed cake?
This is a transmon qubit!

It's incredible how accurately Shel Silverstein predicted AI decades ago