Default: 350275
Default with Spaces: 133581
NOTES: Ever since NPL Con I feel that I have been catching up on regular work while accommodating special offerings from puzzlers like Mike Selinker, Trip Payne, Matt Gaffney who all happened publish around the same time. I’m also trying to meet my own deadlines for puzzle and game construction, so this month word list development is easing back to a “summer vacation” level of productivity. I still jot a few things down that I read in the news: canvas fingerprinting (70) is an interesting/disturbing web-tracking technique that is too long to fit in most crossword puzzles. Actor/singer Troye Sivan (55; 50/50) crept on to Billboard charts last week with Happy Little Pill (72). I overheard some vegan friends discuss recipes for soy nog (75). And Word Spy is tracking the popularity of pinkification (72) as a term for making traditionally masculine pastimes appealing to women. If the term catches on, maybe the verb pinkify will be back-formated.
LISTS: I finished a Dave Shukan list that I had already pared down to the longest entries, i.e. ones not as valuable for crossword puzzles. Several are entries that he added from a side list of transposal pairs. Intolerable Acts (70) was on the list not because of Dave’s interest in Colonial American history but because it uses the same letters as Scotland’s Balintore Castle.
life as a puzzle 