I love puzzles! Jigsaw puzzles are fun but are mostly an exercise in patience. Except for this jigsaw called One Tough Puzzle. Wow. It’s only 9 pieces. There are no edge pieces, so all 9 pieces have 4 usable sides. According to the box there are over 300,000 ways to align them incorrectly, but ONLY 1 WAY TO DO IT RIGHT!
Just for fun, I crunched a few numbers on this one. If you average 10 seconds each time you do the puzzle, and you’re supremely unlucky thereby finishing it on the 300,000th try, you spent a little over 833 hours on these 9 puzzle pieces. THAT’S OVER 1 MONTH of steady puzzling, nonstop. No eating, sleeping, bathroom breaks, etc. Also assuming you average 10 seconds per attempt, and really that would be nearly impossible. 20 seconds makes it closer to 2 1/3 months of constant work.
My mom finished it. Of course she did. She’s amazing. The rest of us ordinary people just have to do the best we can. I’ve had this thing for YEARS and still haven’t gotten it.
So, the moral of this story is puzzles suck, but are also kinda awesome. I recommend you buy this for a friend or family member who loves puzzles. You can also buy it for a friend or family member you hate. I won’t judge.
Stupid puzzle.
As always, thanks for reading, and you’re welcome!
My wife is turning 40 this week, and is feeling a bit down about it. I remember a couple of years ago I kind of felt the same way. It’s kind of random in that it’s really just another year, but at the same time, emotionally, 40 is kind of a turning point. Many of us simply start to feel… well… old. Physically and emotionally there’s really no difference between one day and the next, except on our birthdays. For some strange reason, on that day WE’RE different. But not really.
Anyway, she was feeling a bit down this past week due to the demise of her 4th decade of life. Now, my wife normally LOVES to celebrate things. Birthdays, holidays, imaginary holidays (like monthaversaries and half-birthdays), etc. She decorates the house, buys balloons, etc. We don’t get rid of the balloons until they sag enough to get in the way. Last year our birthday balloons last about 10 months. We REALLY were hoping they’d go the whole year, but oh well.
Now obviously you can’t plan your own birthday party. Someone has to throw you one. But she was conflicted on if she really wanted to celebrate or not. So, I told her I’d organize a small get-together at a friends house. Just a handful of her favorite people. Something nice, but mellow. She thanked me, and I could tell she was bummed we weren’t doing something bigger.
It’s okay, because that plan was a total fabrication. A lie, if you will. But a little white lie. Because what I REALLY planned was right up her alley: A little kids style birthday bash at the little park in our community.
Now I’m notoriously bad at keeping surprise events from her. Not others. If someone else is doing something for her it’s no problem. But if I’M throwing her a party, or taking her to dinner, or something like that I almost always blow it before the event. Not this time (although there were some CLOSE calls!).
We left the house yesterday to “go to our friend’s place for the party.” I drove a couple blocks, and told her I needed to make a quick stop at a neighbor’s house to grab something. This neighbor lives right against the park. She looks over and says, “OH! Someone’s throwing a party! They have a bounce castle! Wait… that girl looks like my sister.” Huh… so it does….
She was TOTALLY surprised. I invited her friends, family, and co-workers, and told them all to bring their kids. Everyone sang happy birthday as we walked over to the party. Ordered pizza’s, played little kids’ party games, at birthday cake, sang happy birthday again (obvs). What else am I forgetting? Oh yeah, A GIANT BOUNCY HOUSE WITH A SLIDE!
Yup. I went there. A giant bouncy house for my princess who was turning 10 (x4). We had a great party. We also played ring toss, horseshoes, and corn-hole. Naturally we had to do a round of Pin The Tail On The Donkey.
I actually had a few other games planned that we never got to do: Egg and spoon races, water-balloon toss, 3-legged-races, and a few others.
Well, I suppose there was one other game we had to play, that no little kids party could do without… POTATO SACK RACES!
So we had loads of fun, the birthday girl got to feel like a little kid again, and everyone ha an awesome time. And, frankly, if giggles like these don’t indicate fun I don’t know what does:
Happy Birthday pumpkin-pie, I love you!
As always, thanks for reading, and you’re welcome.
Hooray! Another episode of Friday Fun! Today’s game is Slither.io, an online multi-player game that is RIDICULOUSLY addictive. Believe me, your whole office will want to get in on this one!
In Slither.io, you start as a little snake moving around in a world filled with little glowing dots you have to eat to get bigger. There is literally no limit to how big you can get! What’s stopping you? The other players! As this is a multiplayer game there are tens to hundreds of people playing at any given time. If you run into the side of another snake you die and turn into a bunch of glowing dots for them to eat.
I cannot emphasize how much fun this game actually is! There’s also a TON of strategy for a game that uses a mouse and one button to play. You see, you can speed up (temporarily) to zoom ahead of an opponent and cut them off. Remember, if they run into you they’ll turn into a bunch of glowing dots you can eat (see above). This is by far the fastest way to grow. If you’re particularly clever you can circle an enemy and trap them, slowly tightening until they’re done!
The game board is huge, but there is an edge so it keeps everyone fairly contained. Plenty of room to scrounge in the emptier spots or fight for your life in the center. My favorite strategy is to go straight to the center and hang around until one of the bigger snakes gets killed then try and grab as many of their dots as I can. Either grow fast or game over! FUN!
Anyway, go give it a try! The game is Slither.io and you can click any of the links in this post to get there. Enjoy!
It’s Friday! Hooray! And in honor of everyone’s favorite weekday I’m starting a new weekly post called “Friday Fun.” Every Friday I will direct you to a website/game/something interesting that you can use during any potential downtime you have.
Today’s featured game is GeoGuessr.com. GeoGuessr is a an online game using Google Street View to place you on the ground somewhere in the world. You can move around using Street View and your goal is to try and determine where you are (on the planet!).
Once you think you have an idea, you click that location on a small world map off to the side. It will then tell you exactly how far away you were from the right location and it assigns you points. You play five rounds and it tells you how you did overall.
I like this game for a bunch of reasons, but only a few of them matter.
1) It’s lots of fun! You move around trying to spot some kind of landmark or streetsign that might give you a hint.
2) You learn a little geography! I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m not nearly as knowledgeable about world geography as I should be. This game has accidentally become a great learning tool for me!
3) You can challenge other people and see who gets a better score! Yay competition!
Seriously though, this game is incredibly fun and ridiculously addicting. Give it a try and let me know what you think in the comments. Also, if you have any suggestions for games you’d like me to feature, email me at humbledavereviews@gmail.com!
had a great party. We also played ring toss, horseshoes, and corn-hole. Naturally we had to do a round of Pin The Tail On The Donkey.
Humble Dave 