Terrifying art! a frustrating puzzle! and a cheese pull.
3rd March 2025
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Heads up! This newsletter is more than a year old. Links may be out of date or lead to unexpected places, or the context may have changed. Please handle with care.
Hello — and hi to the folks I met at the new season premiere screening of Jet Lag: The Game! The first episode will be out on Nebula this week, and on YouTube the week after, when I'll link it from this newsletter.
A new player this week on Lateral! wine expert Hannah Crosbie, mathematics expert Katie Steckles and train expert Geoff Marshall face questions about none of those specialist subjects: instead, they have questions about paper profits, moving markers and secondary splits.
A new player this week on Lateral! wine expert Hannah Crosbie, mathematics expert Katie Steckles and train expert Geoff Marshall face questions about none of those specialist subjects: instead, they have questions about paper profits, moving markers and secondary splits.
Over on YouTube this week, I'd recommend:
- Thank you to River for sending over Phoebe Sanders' delightful video about Phoebe's new favourite percussion instrument: a jig doll. A warning for those of us who watch videos at faster than their original speed: once the jigging starts, you'll need to slow down to 1x to appreciate it, because it's just too fast
otherwise.
- A television news piece from the 1970s, as journalist Vic Lee investigates Edward Keinholz' artwork "Still Live", that involves a comfortable chair and an apparently-loaded gun on an unknown timer. Fifty years later,
the artwork would still be provocative, but I wonder if any modern news network (or more accurately, their insurer) would let their reporter actually sit in the chair?
- Jon Bois' "Pretty Good" series continues to be a joy: this time, "that's not entirely accurate" (strong language), a story spun out from one remembered quote, a tale of petty revenge told with incredible detail-oriented animation and a box labelled "cursed lore".
Other interesting links I've found:
- I reviewed every snack in our office kitchen is a silly blog post, with a perfectly-timed section-header joke that made me laugh out loud on a crowded train.
- Bracket City is a daily puzzle game. It's a clever idea, and interesting to play — clever and interesting enough for me to link it here, because I think enough people will enjoy it! But there are a few decisions that I strongly disagree with. First, sometimes it's possible to work out future parts of the puzzle well in advance, and the game will ignore you because you haven't gone through all the
required steps. And second, it is obnoxiously American, frequently relying on US pop culture knowledge or words that have different definitions in other countries. With all that said: if you can get past those issues, there's a gem of a puzzle in there!
- Incredible article title of the week: octopuses are now punching fish in the face. Here's why.
And finally, over on TikTok: the
most disappointing cheese pull. (Alternate link.)
All the best,
— Tom
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