Tuesday, 22 April 2025
Life, the universe, pies, hot-pink bunnies, world domination, and everything
This is where we’ll keep track of all MuseBlog Chess Ratings, with separate “ladders” for standard chess and the two chess variants played on the blog. We’ll update the list at the end of each game. (Please remind us if we don’t.)
Last updated: 25 June 2010
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*(And assorted others.)
Nonhuman creatures we love, live with, fancy, and/or favor.
Continued from the 2007 edition.
Summer* officially and astronomically began this morning (Monday, June 21) at 7:28, blog time.
*Or winter, for MBers in the southern hemisphere.
WARNING! Will definitely contain spoilers!
To spare MBers reading the “Recent Comments” columns, please paste the following message in at the beginning of your posts:
SPOILER MUSE SPOILER MUSE SPOILER MUSE SPOILER MUSE SPOILER.
Let us know when your issue arrives.
NO SPOILERS, please. There’s another thread for discussing the issue.
What would we do if you sang out of tune? Sing along and help you out, of course!
To cut down on clutter, unfinished chess games in which neither player has made a move for more than a month will be considered inactive and taken offline. (We can restore them on request, though in most cases that seems unlikely.)
We’re here again, as you can see. Ice-cream sundaes for everybody at the Hare & Hedgepig!
The theme for this problem set is pins: situations in which a piece cannot move, because it screens a player’s king from check. (Under the rules of chess, you’re never allowed to make a move that puts your own king in check.)
In this simplified position, for example, Black’s rook, bishop, and pawn are all pinned:
So White can play either
In each case, Black can’t recapture, because the pieces needed to do the job are pinned. So near, and yet so far! (Do you see why, after White plays queen takes pawn, neither Black’s rook nor bishop can capture the queen?)
Now, on to the real problems. Each is a “forced mate in two”: White moves, then Black moves, then White checkmates no matter what Black tries to do:
It’s today (Friday, June 11), as declared by bookgirl_me. Um, bookgirl, what are we supposed to do, exactly?
A place to note things you think other MBers ought to own, use, or experience.
Continues the original Musers Recommend thread launched in 2007.
Okay, as promised, long World Science Festival post, with pictures!
The whole area around NYU was a street fair, with booths set up for different organizations. The NASA area was CRAZY. I met up with my friend Erin, and we did moon jigsaw puzzles, looked at a Mars panorama through 3-D glasses, laid down and had a rover climb over us, and signed a shuttle tire!
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The Muse contents subpage under “What’s Here” has been updated through March 2010, but the issues keep coming. Anyone who can add contents for the April or May/June issues will have our gratitude. Thanks! (See? There’s some gratitude already.)
The National Spelling Bee is this week in Washington, D.C. No MBers are in it this year as far as we know, but we still like it enough to give it its own thread.
This month’s Random thread travels to the ancient land of Kemet, kingdom of the Pharaohs, a country you more likely know as Egypt. Perhaps someone would care to try ens hand at translating the story at the top of the papyrus?
[*The title appears in the cartouche (the oblong enclosure in the picture).] Read more »
If you’re new on the blog, please stop by this thread and say pie — er, hi.
Known MBer birthdays and “K Days” this month:*
06-09 Beetles’s birthday (1999 – purple)
06-12 TreeCafe’s birthday (1997 – green and brown)
06-13 muselover’s birthday (1997 – green)
06-14 Grant O. turns 7,000 days old
06-19 Raynpho’s birthday (1994)
06-19 Elwing (formerly Sam)’s birthday (1994)
06-26 cellogirl26’s birthday (1996)
06-29 Selenium the Quafflebird’s birthday (1996)
06-29 bluefire27’s birthday (1997)
You turn 5,000 days old this month if you were born between September 23 and October 22, 1996.
You turn 6,000 days old this month if you were born between December 28, 1993, and January 26, 1994.
You turn 7,000 days old this month if you were born between April 3 and May 2, 1991.
*Note: Listed MBers who have been inactive for several months won’t appear on next year’s birthday calendar unless they show up again.
MuseBlog ratings at the start of the game: Tesseract, 50; bookgirl_me, 260.
Ratings after game: Tess, 40; book girl, 270.
SudoRandom’s description:
MB Games thread, where people could play games they thought up that are playable on the blog.
This Role-Playing Writing may have sputtered out, or it may be about to have new life breathed into it — we’ll soon know which.
Continued from Part One.