Late Easter

Late Easter went great. Of course, most of my family loved the race more than the puzzles; most, some have their uncle’s strange proclivities. The best was the pie eating contest. I wish I felt okay publishing pictures.

I think next year we’ll do only a team race and I’ll quit my evil ways. Afterall, to know how bad things can be between gay men and their families in this area, I feel very fortunate and should cut them some slack :-).

As for the silver egg, for those following along in rapt anticipation:

1. That’s a pound sign, of flesh. A pound of flesh.
2. That’s just between you and me.
3. Out with the old, in with the new.
4. That’s h over craft. Hovercraft.
5. A wink and a nodd, or nod.
6. Greater than the sum of its parts.
7. That’s 5 synonyms for gone, or a pentagon.
8. Easy. Capital i s t.
9. Vanishing point.
10. 200 centigrams, or two grams, which are gold. Golden Grahams.
11. It’s the negative of a dot with an e at the end, or a dote. It’s an antidote.
12. e = 2.718… so that’s sweet with two th’s. Sweet tooth.
13. The best in you.
14. Two tildes with oil. Till the soil.
15. Pb = lead, and that’s with us in the word prayer. Lead us in a prayer.

I Get My Comeuppance

Had a little outpatient surgery today. I'm fine and much more alert than I am up there, in my Versed induced haze.

I just got a slight face lift, and some silicon muscle implants in my pecks and biceps. You know, to look hot. Okay, okay, you're right. I'd never need that, but I'm fond of the gay stereotype :-).

Nah, an observer may not be able to tell by my prolific writing and occupation, but I’ve had to use voice recognition software off and on for about a decade now, for the fact that my carpel tunnel is too small. Or maybe my arm tendons are excessively manly in their diameter? Either way, once I finished my doctorate I decided to get that little annoyance fixed and put it off until after our cruise. The surgery was this morning.

Piece of cake. (he says while his hand is still chemically numb)

Apparently I still can, and the doctor specifically told me to type, to keep the fingers moving as soon as I got home , and to not baby it; so here I am.

Should be interesting, though, to see what happens when the numbness leaves and how tomorrow’s late Easter party goes.

Speaking of which, it’s almost Friday night and no solutions?! I think some of you are on Rob's side here (ahem, Craig). Anyone got a couple? Half? Which ones did you get Java? There’s still time for me to ease up on it; maybe some need hints?

Nevertheless, I may have to face the fact that I am indeed an Easter puzzle sadist.

Remember how I said I’d make the gold egg easy this year? Well I did, but… I couldn’t pass up the opportunity for a surefire joke. I’m going to play off their expectations from years past and give them this paper first:

I’ll wait a second or two, before I explain that the Morse code tells them as much, and the rest of the paper is just nonsense :-).

In actuality the first event is simply a paper airplane flight distance competition, so they’ll needed a piece of paper anyway, right? Right? I can’t help it if they assume too much by what’s on the scratch paper handed out! And what uncle worth the title doesn’t rib his nieces and nephews a bit?

*sigh*, I deserved that surgery ;-).

The boys get home soon from school. What’s going to be tough is not being able to lift them for a while. I was just thinking the other day how quickly the day is coming when they’ll be too big to want up, and now I'm out of lifting for a week.

Still, I know Alan will love my cool bandage :-).

Rob Thinks I’m a Serial Easter Sadist…

Prove him wrong; restore his opinion of his husband.

Because of the cruise and the fact most of my siblings won’t let their kids hunt eggs on a Sunday, our family Easter party had to be postponed until this coming Saturday. As I explained before, Rob and I are in charge of Easter festivities, and each year I do egg hunt puzzles for the coveted bronze, silver, and gold eggs.

Last year was admitedly tough; this year I bent to all the whining I usually get and made the gold egg more about simple games than mind games. They have various events such as a water carrying relay, pie eating contest, pushing a ping-pong ball in a race around the house using only their nose, and so on.

For the silver egg, though, I know some of my family would be let down without a puzzle of some sort (mainly those as nerdy as their uncle :-)). So I quickly repeated a catch phrase game from years past with new clues. Here it is:

Now, Rob says I’m horribly cruel to my nieces and nephews, and that “no one” can figure this out. I, in turn, wagered that if I put it on my blog, someone will at least get the clue before Friday night (which doesn’t necessarily require a solution for all the word puzzles).

I know no one here wants me to lose that bet, right? :-)

Happy Easter

To all the faithful, may you have a wonderful day of reflection on the atonement. To everybody, may you have a fun filled day with the family, and don’t eat the peeps.

We had our big family party yesterday. I awoke at 6, got ready, and hid hundreds of eggs until noon. My nieces and nephews cursed my name as they stumbled through this year’s golden egg puzzle, but they got it (after a bunch of hints :-)). It was another wonderful family get-together.

And the food… [Homer] mmmm… Mormon food.[/Homer] The potato salad, the baked beans, the breadth and depth of jello dishes... I hate to throw down such a gauntlet but my man makes better funeral potatoes than any of my sisters or in-laws. I dare say they are the best. That’s right, Relief Society members of the world. I said it. What you gonna do about it? Bring. It. On.

Anyway, Happy Easter.

For those few interested :-), I’ll paste below the final Silver egg puzzle (but I’m leaving out one part because it was too specific to my clan)

The Ag Egg

1. It would be creepy to visit a BLANK Halloween. _ _
2. The views from the Empire State Building BLANK. _ _
3. While I don't have multiple BLANK toes are on my feet. _
4. You've never Blank me wrong; I trust you. _ _
5. In bad neighborhoods there should be a BLANK block. _ _
6. I don't much like pork, but I had to try the BLANK the menu. _
7. As I got into Pierre's BLANK jour," he said. _
8. On December 7th there was a BLANK Pearl Harbor. _ _
9. If you're going for a job interview, you should first BLANK your shirt. _ _
10.
11. Look at the boats floating upon the BLANK out there?_ _
12. He proposed with one BLANK the ground. _ _
13. At Sea World we saw a very talented performer; one might call him a BLANK. _ _

The letters from the BLANKS were used to add onto and subtract from Easter words to spell out: Salt, Water, Basement, and Soft… And I had to give the following hint to help them, so don't read it if you don't need it: The full sentence in number 2 is "The views from the Empire State Building are scenic". I'm not too proud of 13; corny but it works :-).

Egg Help 2

Back to more serious topics. Easter. As I explained here, it’s a big deal for our clan and I’m still working on the puzzles.

I kind of went in a new direction for the golden egg, and am still hoping for input. Below is a quick draft of the clue. It would take time to solve it, entirely, but I’m curious as to if anyone can understand how they would start off by the clues I’ve given. So, you’re flush with candy and coins you’ve hatched from plastic eggs, and you’re hoping to find the great gold egg using the following:


I wish I could make it rhyme while still keeping all the clues but I ain't that talented. Anyway, the trouble with making puzzles is that it’s much easier to make them than solve them. So, will my nieces and nephews once again curse their uncle, or is this decipherable?

I’m still not sure what I’ll do for the bronze egg, so any suggestions… (what? no puzzle, Easter egg hunt fans out there? I could have sworn this was a gay part of me ;-))

(and if any of you MoHo’s are actually a nephew or niece of mine and you use this opportunity to cheat, I’ll know it ;-))

I Need Help

Each year, for about 10 years now, R and I have been in charge of Easter for my huge family. It’s become one of our largest family parties.

Over months, we all pack nearly 500 plastic eggs. But the best part is the gold, silver, and bronze egg. They are hidden so that no one could find them, unless they figure out my puzzles. While they have been described, in whiny tones, as “unfair” and “too hard”, the motivation is there; the gold egg means a trip with the grandparents to near anywhere.

Easter is coming fast and all I have is this year’s silver egg puzzle (and I’m not too happy with it). Any ideas?

Recently, I’ve used crossword puzzles, simple substitution cryptography, sudoku (the solution gave the combination to a lock on a cage holding an egg :-)), picture hunts, treasure map-like directions, word search, and I’m probably forgetting a bunch. Typically I use their names as part of the gold egg puzzle, and I’m not committed to it but I’d like to this year again. I can’t though think of anything new (there are 31 grandkids, and so, for example, they were the crossword solutions and then certain letters in the solved puzzle had to be unscrambled to reveal the egg location). The kids range in age from 4 to 30, and the older kids do try for the gold egg (we try to make it so the 13 or above crowd get it, but also so that all of them can do some of it), so it can made be kind of hard (I’ll endure the whining :-)).

Just for fun I’ll post an old one. See if you’re smarter than my nieces and nephews :-). They couldn’t finish this one without hints. Posted below is part of the silver egg puzzle from two years ago. It’s the old catchphrase game; each one represents a common word or phrase. The twenty-fifth is missing, as it had my name in it (and they didn’t get it) :-).

The letters of the phrases helped lead to the egg but I’ll leave that out.

(Looking at it again, I’m not proud of one of them, too vague, but oh well…)


Anyway, if you have any new ideas, they’d be appreciated. If you have a good one I’ll put it together the night before Easter if needs be and so feel free to comment them in long after I post above this (well, make that the Saturday before Easter; most our family wouldn’t come if it were on Sunday :-)).