A Puzzle Tough as Tentacles on Toast

Public Domain Image by Henrique Alvim Corrêa (1906). Source Wikimedia Commons.


A .pdf version of this puzzle appears on scribd.com here.
The puzzle has three parts: a clue list, a passage from a classic science fiction novel with words omitted, and a word search puzzle where all the words omitted from the passage are concealed. The object of the puzzle is to find all the concealed words in the word search puzzle and put them in the correct blanks in the passage. I designed this puzzle to have three levels of difficulty.

Clue List

Like a clue to a crossword puzzle, each word or phrase on the clue list suggests one of the words omitted from the passage. The clues are in the same order as the corresponding words omitted from the passage. For example, the fifth clue on the list corresponds to the fifth blank in the passage.

Word Search

Words concealed in the word search puzzle are written up, down, diagonally, forwards, or backwards.

The Dark Passage

The passage comes from a critical moment in a great science fiction novel, written long ago.

Levels of Difficulty

I've described the medium level of difficulty above.  For a harder puzzle, throw away the Medium Clue List.   Now try to work the puzzle.  I dare you.  For an easier puzzle, I've supplied an Easy Word List containing all the words omitted from the passage.  It's at the end of the answer section.  Tear off the Easy Word List from the answer section, turn it right side up, and use it to solve the puzzle.  Unlike the clue list, the order of the Easy Word List is scrambled.  Otherwise, the easy puzzle would hardly be a puzzle at all. 

Medium Clue List


(1) not deceased, (2) pertaining to the Roman god of war, (3) to picture in mind, (4) dreadfulness, (5) look, (6)  extraordinary, (7) yap, (8) sharp, (9) above your eye, (10) lack, (11) under, (12) ranking less high, (13) unceasing, (14) trembling, (15) Medusa or one of her sisters, (16) tempestuous, (17) weird, (18) weightiness, (19) soreness, (20) word specifying a type of attraction, (21) familiar planet, (22) fervency, (23) optics, (24) queasiness, (25) mushroom-like, (26) integument, (27) rhymes with celebration, (28) structural units of a symphonic work, (29) deep vertical holes, (30) planets 

Word Search



The Dark Passage






Answers

The Ghost

The Ghost

My little room

Filled with gloom, dread

And doom scares me,

And no key can

Let me outside,

For I died here

Inside this room. 

This bit of verse is an example of a chained than-bauk.  I learned about this form from an article by Lady Sunshine "Burmese Poetry: Than-Bauk."

The illustration is a public domain photo of "The Ghost of Oyuki" by Maruyama Okyo (1733-1795).

***

Today I posted a review of "We Aim to Please" by Tony Leather and Erin Miller on Amazon.  My article "Pied Piper Publishers," in which I exhort he general public to read and review more self-published and independently published books, graces Bizcovering.

A Puzzle Sharp as a Vampire's Kiss

Here's a double puzzle with three levels of difficulty.  Print it out, put it in your pocket, and amuse yourself the next time you're waiting in your doctor's office, the driver's license bureau, or an airport security line.  


I uploaded a .pdf version of the puzzle without photos to scribd.com. Find it at 


http://www.scribd.com/doc/82300453/PuzzleSharpasaVampiresKissPrintable-1


You'll need to make a contribution, that is an upload or a small fee, to download it.


Public Domain via Wikipedia


The puzzle has three parts: a clue list, a passage from a classic vampire novel with words omitted, and a word search puzzle where all the words omitted from the passage are concealed.   The object of the puzzle is to find all the concealed words in the word search puzzle and put them in the correct blanks in the passage.  I designed this puzzle to have three levels of difficulty.

Clue List

Like a clue to a crossword puzzle, each word or phrase on the clue list suggests one of the words omitted from the passage.  The clues are in the same order as the corresponding words omitted from the passage.   For example, the fifth clue on the list corresponds to the fifth blank in the passage.

Word Search

Words concealed in the word search puzzle are written up, down, diagonally, forwards, or backwards.

The Dark Passage

The passage comes from a critical moment in a great vampire novel, written long ago.
 
Levels of Difficulty

I've described the medium level of difficulty above.  For a harder puzzle, tear off the clue list along the dashed lines and throw it out.   Now try to work the puzzle.  I dare you.  For an easier puzzle, I've supplied an Easy Word List containing all the words omitted from the passage.  It's at the end of the answer section.  Tear off the Easy Word List from the answer section, turn it right side up, and use it to solve the puzzle.  Unlike the clue list, the order of the Easy Word List is scrambled.  Otherwise, the easy puzzle would hardly be a puzzle at all.



Public Domain via Wikipedia
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Clue List for Medium Difficulty

1) carnality, (2) repugnant, (3) curved, (4) lap, (5) edges, (6) to work at a second job, (7) dampness, (8) bright red, (9) language, (10) folded over, (11) cogs, (12) opposite of tail, (13) row, (14) chatter, (15) connect, (16) swirling, (17) to be able in past conditional, (18) emotionally exciting, (19) act of breathing, (20) passage through the neck, (21) stinging sensation, (22) meat, (23) exciting light touch, (24) nears, (25) quivering, (26) receptive to impressions, (27) sunken areas, (28) lingering for a while, (29) transport but not a truck, (30)red symbol on a card, not a diamond, (31) fire feeder, (32) vampire
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Word Search


The Dark Passage
________________________________________________________________________


Answer Section



Public Domain via Wikipedia

Word Search Answer

Dark Passage Answer

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Easy Word List

F Paul Wilson and the Pirates

Public Domain Image by J.J. via Wikimedia Commons

F. Paul Wilson, author of the Repairman Jack novels, is writing a series of articles on his experiences with e-publishing.  The third and latest installment discusses his trouble with pirates, that is, BitTorrent buccaneers.  Titled "E-publishing, Part 3: E-looters 101," the piece is well worth reading.

Wilson posted his article to Byte on Feb. 7, 2012.  I wasn't aware of it when I wrote a review of his novel "The Fifth Harmonic" and published it on Triond on Feb. 9, 2012.  My article received about 25 times as many views as I expected.  At first I thought I was finally getting the recognition I deserve beyond the elite few who read my work regularly.  After all I polish my prose until it burns with a hard, gem-like flame.  Popularity, however,  is unlikely for me.  I am a page rank 0 writer.

I searched the web to see if anyone had linked to the article.  I found no link, but I found Wilson's piece in Byte.  After reading it I wondered if he hadn't sparked a scramble to find his pirated books and download them.  I suspect eager readers hungry for free downloads are drilling deep into the Google search results.  It's a more reasonable notion than the idea anyone wants to read my writing.  Triond is notorious for articles with links to pirated books, games and movies.  My review sits near the bottom on page four of the Goggle search results for "The Fifth Harmonic."  I noticed that many of the new hits on my articles were from China.  The facts point to piratical activity.

F. Paul Wilson has good reasons for his anger with digital pirates.  Nevertheless, his libertarian LaNague Federation novels won't see much circulation in China except as e-samizdat.  He won't make any money from it, but he may see his ideas spread.

 As I've written before elsewhere, I am posting my new articles on Cuba on ExpertsColumn. I have at least one more in the works.

Pope Benedict, Fidel Castro to Meet March 27

La Tribuna, a daily newspaper of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, announced yesterday that Pope Benedict XVI will meet Fidel Castro March 27, 2012, on the pontiff's visit to Cuba. Fidel Castro himself seconded the report by tweeting a link to it. Vatican Insider, a website run by the Italian newspaper La Estampa, confirms that the Pope will visit Cuba from March 26 to 28 and meet Fidel.

Gingrich's Proposed Policies on Cuba Have Already Failed Once (or Twice or More)

Last week in the Versailles restaurant in Miami’s Little Havana, Republican candidate Newt Gingrich drank a demi-tasse of Cuban coffee. Then he tossed back a second cup of the strong and bitter brew. Finally, the hypercaffeinated candidate addressed a Cuban-American audience that had strong opinions and a bitter history. He carefully avoided offending them. After all, it was Friday the 13th. Why do something risky?

Romney Clueless on Cuban Internet

Republican Candidate Mitt Romney’s promises mirror Newt Gingrich’s.  Romney and Gingrich both attempt to link their Cuba policies to the memory of President Reagan, the Helms-Burton Act, and re-imposition of travel and remittance restrictions. By a strange coincidence, both campaigns also advance the same new idea, combatting the Castro regime through the Internet.

Wrap-Up of January 2012

As of Janus (Public Domain)

Triond

Triond put up ten of my articles in January, for which I thank them.  My earnings from Triond articles have dropped, but I expected they would.  There’s a considerable decrease in casual Internet use and blog reading after the Christmas holidays.  People have to get back to work.  Moreover, I believe past management mistakes and editorial misjudgments at Triond decreased their status with search engines.  Advertisers are sure to ask for discounts in 2012.

At the end of last year, I sent out a Happy New Year message to my Triond friends to see who was still active on the site (and who reads their Triond messages).  A surprising number of my friends and readers did not return the message.  Some have left the site, and some are too busy writing to read the material of someone else.  I pruned the list of some folks who have disappeared and taken their content down and of others who submit more than five articles a day.  The quality of the work of the latter group is horrible.  It’s mostly stuff run through machine translation or article spinning software.  Next I identified some other writers who might read and comment on my work in the future and made friends with them.  I look forward to writing more for Triond websites.

Even a casual examination of article earnings and unique views on Triond shows that some types of writing don’t find an audience there.  For example, my articles on Fidel Castro and Cuba garnered a total of 30 views last year.  I would have done better had I written those articles on a t-shirt with a marker.  I don’t write those articles to make money, but to take part in a conversation.  I wrote three pieces on Cuba for ExpertsColumn this month and none for Triond.  I hope a few more people read them there.  My reviews of short films are another example.  No one else reviews short films on Triond, and I can see why.  Triond readers don’t read reviews of short films.  I don’t know where to put future short film reviews.

ExpertsColumn

I put up three articles about Cuba on ExpertsColumn this month.  I haven’t had any feedback, but I can embed these articles other places, and I plan to do exactly that, starting with this blog.

Picatopica

Posting articles often on this blog increases the number of views.  This blog isn’t monetized, but I can re-post my articles on Gather.com for a few “points.”  When I google marqjonz, the screenname I use for my writing,  Google displays the pictures on Picatopica quite prominently.  I plan to post more photos.  

Amazon.com
Reviews on Amazon.com are uncompensated.  Nevertheless, my Amazon postings show up higher on Google’s list than my other writings, so Amazon reviews are a good value as a promotion.  I only posted one in January, a review of Grillet’s “Babbage and the Buskers,”  but I plan to write more reviews for Amazon.com next month.  

Goal

For January 2012 I’ve achieved my writing goal of putting 10,000 words of original content up online.  This piece pushes me over the top: 10,355 words.

Rare Photo of Unbranded Merchandise from Walmart

I bought a tube of glue to fix a model airplane I built with my daughter earlier this month.  I was astonished to see no branding on the tube or the packaging.  After all, even bananas have little brand stickers.

Tiny letters on the lower left corner of the reverse side of the package identify the manufacturer as Henkel Co. of Avon, Ohio.  Equally small lettering says Made in Canada.  

Henkel is an enormous German company.  The website of Henkel North America shows the business has thousands of U.S. employees and manufactures some leading brands.  Why this company didn't brand the hobby glue I bought is a mystery.