I think people who use logical thinking in a deeper way than I'm comfortable with are unfeeling machines who need to explore their creativity and intuition. Like, sure you can plot it all out and make it make sense but would you turn the whole world into a grid at the cost of sudden inspiration and wonder and exploration?
but also
People who use less logic than me need to keep their mouth shut. Just think through something for like two seconds instead of spouting whatever thought pops into your head. All this pattern recognition and frontal lobe development and processing power like the animal kingdom has never seen and you squander it away on free association and noise that is essentially the same as barking.
Me? I use the perfect amount of logic.
Oh! Did I make an error in judgment? Well let me ask you this, are we human or are we dancer?
Am I taking something too seriously? Is it not actually that deep? I'm sorry. Sorry that my brain thirsts for problem-solving and analysis. Y'know, Prometheus didn't get chained to a rock to have his innards devoured by an eagle for all eternity for me to just go, duh I dunno. whatever, man. He stole fire from the gods so we could light the way with our intelligence. And I, for one, honor that sacrifice. I've done a Sudoku.
And you're probably reading this, sitting in your tower, thinking
Hohoho. Andy. You're so foolish. Fool boy. Don't you know that when you have a problem with literally everyone else then YOU are the problem?
What if I said that I lived on Earth and that any planet farther from the Sun is too cold and has no atmosphere and any planet closer to the Sun is covered in greenhouse gas? Just because I've rejected the two options that aren't me doesn't mean I'm wrong. I could be the Earth of options.
Thank you for watching me argue with myself and everyone else at the same time. You could probably liken it to watching some animal in an enclosure pick up its food dish and thrash it around for a bit.
5 comments:
youve done a sudoku before, sure, but have you done a Connections??? Specifically the Hank Green method where you try to go in reverse order, selecting the purple category first, then the blue, then the green, then the yellow?? That's a thinkin' person's game
Ok I'm going to live comment blog my attempt to do this right now.
I've played connections before but I don't understand how I select the purple category first? I'm just going to pick the first one that stands out to me.
Well looky-there! It's purple! My first instinct was to write this challenge off as unfeeling machine territory but maybe it's actually great and cool.
Let's try another category...Oh I see I've googled it and purple is the hardest.
Hmmm so crazy that the hardest category would be the first thing I notice. Hmmm. Hmmm. Interesting. Yes.
I failed the rest. Didn't get another category. The brightest flames burn the shortest and I'll leave it at that.
yeah!! So just, to explain further for the sake of any latent curiosity you may have, Connections has some typical categories it works into the puzzle, one almost always being a red herring category that contains 3-4 words that all might kinda fit together on a surface level but aren't the explicit categories that they have envisioned for the true puzzle. It's best when there are three red herring words but not a fourth, otherwise it feels like entrapment.
Beyond that, the yellow is usually the easiest and most surface-level connection you could make with the full 16 words where, like, four words might all be different colors or shades of a color, or a type of fruit or berry or something. My knowledge of the 'tropes' of Connections is also shaky and amateur at best, so don't take this as gospel.
Green is second easiest category and might just be a little bit harder than Yellow and typically it's going to be far away different from whatever Yellow's theme or 'schtick' is. Typically still just like nouns or verbs that fit a surface level theme.
Blue and purple is where we get into the weird shit. I don't know the usual tropes between these categories and I think the different 'types' of 4 word groupings can float between blue and purple day to day since the color is strictly a measure of how difficult the creator(s?) think a category is in relation to the rest of the day's groupings. But some common hard categories I have seen are word associations/abstract groups and then also phrases with shared words. For example, the four words (black, brown, polar, sun) are all 'types of bear' words. On their surface they have no connection between the four of them but they are all words that preface a type of bear. I saw that in a video sometime recently, I'll attach it.
Then there are also ____ words/groups, where the set of words, or sometimes even partial words, might consist of (wall, may, sun, snail) are wildly disparate but they are all parts of a word that contain '____flower'. I may have gone too dirty with that example, idk if they'd ever use 'snailflower' as a possible Connections word because I literally googled 'words with flower in them' for this example set, but I did ignore 'colli' because that may have been too obvious of an indicator for the hardest purple category, and 'de' seemed too racy. Idk, I don't make these puzzles. But that gives an example of how ridiculous some word groupings can be and that it isn't always in the pure definition of the listed word.
Sometimes they even give weird things like 'pars' and 'munch' where the group/category was 'Capitals with a letter missing' or something like that and so it was Paris and Munich and two other capitals I can't remember. They get really tricksy sometimes.
So all of that to say, Hank Green tries to be an extra smart cookie and basically attempts to determine ALL categories before he submits a single one and works to determine what the hardest or most inscrutable grouping is and submits it, hoping for a Purple. Then he submits what he thinks is Blue, followed by Green then Yellow. It's absolutely not necessary and way harder but it does make us smart folk feel like elevated beings when we get it. Here's an example from the end of one of his videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdpSfrD3Nzs&t=1147s
Every time I watch him do it I get inspired and think 'hey! yeah! I can do that!!!' then I go to whatever today's Connections is and try and immediately fail to live up to the hype I just set up for myself. But also I've done like a dozen Connections total and it feels like Hank's been doing these for years so I try not to get too discouraged.
You did the Connections from (presumably) today, December 21st, so I'll do the same!! I won't read too much into your attempt having attained purple first, I'll just go with my gut and hope for the best.
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I thought I'd also attempt to live blog my thoughts as I went through the words today but I got absolutely BODIED by this one and got so hung up on the green category that I had no spare lives remaining and immediately failed to lock in blue. I never touched purple nor yellow, haha.
I think a key component to Hank's approach is that, beyond having tons more experience solving these than I do, he also just does them much more methodically. He has the trained patience and discipline to form his groups mentally and not just send them for the instant gratification. I look through the lists, think I found a thing, and get an overwhelming urge to just send it.
A key aspect of solving for purple first, or really solving the whole puzzle at all, is that by solving three categories you are gifted the fourth. So in the example clip I sent you, he has no idea what purple category words are but he feels so confident in his previous three groupings as correct and so he just send the 4 unknown words and crosses his fingers. And because he's super smart and skilled, it just works. Meanwhile I think I found a group, feel kinda good about it, send it, and find out I was one off from being right. I then spend two more guesses subbing out the incorrect words and am down to my last attempt with still no correct submissions. It's hard out here in these mean streets.
The duality of human experience. December 21st was a real low. Barely limped into one category. I wrote my thoughts about it, internalized my failures, and looked at the clock and thought 'yknow, midnight is almost here, I could say at my computer and try out December 22nd's Connections...'
So I did.
AND I GOT MY FIRST PERFECT! Almost a Hank Perfect (Inverted 'rainbow'). I got all the categories, no misses, and I guessed them in order Blue, Purple (I had already found it but was trying to get all the others, kinda failed, and sent blue out of curiosity) then Green then Yellow. Feels good. I've already forgotten the travesty that was the 21'st puzzle. Never again to be remembered. This day though...
But also, to bring some perspective, today's puzzle might not be that hard (every day the puzzle will vary in difficulty compared to prior or upcoming ones, so maybe on a scale of 1 to 10, one day's puzzle is a 8 in difficulty while the next day is a 2 or 3 or something) so for all I know this was a lil baby puzzle that everybody has a decent chance to get. Give it a try!!
I think the best part about these things (despite being owned by the NYT who seems to want to own the entire concept of 'cute little brain puzzle things') is that they can be indirectly social as two individuals can bond over shared experiences with them.
Still not buying a subscription tho
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