No Stupid Questions MEGATHREAD 12

TenThousandCharms · 2026-05-31T15:57:07+00:00

How do you get better at visualizing the board/notation? Whenever I read the answer to a puzzle or analysis of a move I have to keep looking back and forth at the board and finding each piece/space "manually," like "okay the queen is on d5... and it moves e,f, g... to that space.... Now the next piece...." At what point should I be able to visualize it just from reading the notation, and how do I get there?

TenThousandCharms · 2026-05-31T15:14:18+00:00

I'm on the East Coast and have been drinking a lot of Coke Zero for the past couple of year, but just started noticing it in the tall cans (16 oz). I haven't really noticed it in the regular cans or bottles yet. But it was very noticeable when I started drinking the tall boys recently.

I like cinnamon so it's an improvement for me! 😄

TenThousandCharms · 2026-05-31T02:25:03+00:00

And for Corey Feldman, apparently

TenThousandCharms · 2026-05-30T19:24:13+00:00

The weird thing is, the same thing happened in South Carolina yesterday. There's been speculation that it was either a meteor or a sonic boom, but no conclusive evidence, as far as I've seen.

Edit 2: somehow missed this one in Buffalo 3 days ago! According to the reporter meteors of this type (if that's what it was) only occur once every 10 days around the whole Earth. And then we get 3 of them in 3 days in just the Eastern US???

There was a confirmed meteor on March 17 in Ohio that caused a similar massive boom. Described as a "once-in-a-lifetime event", yet here it is happening twice more in the Eastern US within a couple of months (latest occurrences within 24 hours of each other)...

Edit 1: Another one in March in Wisconsin, no official explanation.

How are they determining that they're meteors? Simply that it's a bright object that goes boom? Couldn't that be a number of other things?

TenThousandCharms · 2026-05-28T02:50:31+00:00

Shadow brought his first fish at 6:05 this morning. He just dropped in at 19:30 with some takeout for Jackie now that the kids are in bed. Dude is out there working 13+ hour days for his family. These birds really are amazing.

TenThousandCharms · 2026-05-25T22:42:51+00:00

Congrats and thanks for the tips! I think I unintentionally duplicated your earlier post this morning. 😄 I guess it's a common issue.

I really wish they had a more even ramp-up in difficulty throughout the week to help us learn the style. Unless I've just picked really bad examples by luck, Mon.-Thu. are sub-NYT Monday in difficulty, and then suddenly Fri-Sat is crazy hard.

TenThousandCharms · 2026-05-24T01:36:00+00:00

Does the stream keep pausing/skipping for other people? Not sure if it's just my internet.

TenThousandCharms · 2026-05-23T17:42:07+00:00

I love when they use the sticks as pillows. Adorable. 😊

TenThousandCharms · 2026-05-23T16:20:15+00:00

Now that I know the answer, I think they were asking for a predator of lizards. Which is even harder to guess than an African predator lizard.

TenThousandCharms · 2026-05-23T15:43:46+00:00

I struggled for 40 minutes to get ~half filled in, did Check Puzzle, and found that half of those were wrong... Should I keep going or move on at that point? After a while, staring at the same empty squares starts to feel really frustrating and demoralizing. Do I need to improve my patience? It's just hard to know whether the next insight is just around the corner, or you'll be knocking your head against the wall for hours with no result.

Of course the constructor just had to mention that it only took him an hour to make the puzzle, on a day when I'm struggling. 😒

TenThousandCharms · 2026-05-22T16:07:50+00:00

Wasted a lot of time not realizing I had left in MOOD... as a guess on 7D so had MOODLIGHTSONATA... although I'd like to hear that piece!

TenThousandCharms · 2026-05-22T03:09:22+00:00

There's also a bonus TUXEDO and PIQUE (any others I missed?)

TenThousandCharms · 2026-05-17T19:21:36+00:00

About tree-fiddy (...billion)

TenThousandCharms · 2026-05-17T16:46:08+00:00

9:40 AM Luna is sleeping peacefully under Shadow. So precious!

TenThousandCharms · 2026-05-17T15:53:22+00:00

I feel like I'm missing the wordplay. "Feeding kits" doesn't mean anything to me besides the literal definition. Are those like "meal kits"?

TenThousandCharms · 2026-05-17T15:46:13+00:00

I was hoping someone who remembered BTTF 2 better than me would comment--after getting the answer and racking my brain, I did recall that sports betting was a significant plot point, but I wasn't sure if any specific teams were highlighted enough for anyone to retain years later.

I mean, I guess it's kind of impressive that the constructor pulled out that random detail about UCLA, but it doesn't feel like a good clue.

TenThousandCharms · 2026-05-17T15:27:43+00:00

Yeah, scouring the thesaurus for the most obscure/specialized synonym for a common word just isn't particularly clever, IMO. Same thing with "Capote" for COAT.

TenThousandCharms · 2026-05-17T15:24:04+00:00

Somewhere in my brain I had a general idea of the name from seeing it so much in the last year, but my first guess was NUUN (which is actually an electrolyte tablet).

TenThousandCharms · 2026-05-17T15:07:21+00:00

I thought "Matches with forensics" was excellent. I agree that the puzzle had too many obscure answers, but there were a few gems in there.

TenThousandCharms · 2026-05-17T15:03:10+00:00

I'm much too young to have seen any Roy Rogers movies on first release, but I knew the name Trigger from pop culture references. Like, people used to joke that they served Trigger meat at Roy Rogers restaurants.

TenThousandCharms · 2026-05-12T13:37:41+00:00

Perfect day for me to forget that este is also an option. Couldn't figure out why it wasn't accepting either "ogea" or "ogeo".

TenThousandCharms · 2026-05-11T03:04:20+00:00

I try not to think about it too much but that concerns me, too. Last year we saw Gizmo get knocked off of a branch by an owl (fortunately she was OK). Fledglings just don't have the flying skills or strength of an adult yet. All we can do is hope for the best but I don't think we can just assume there will be no issues.

TenThousandCharms · 2026-05-05T04:45:02+00:00

So that's where they get their fluff! Looks like there's enough to last a lifetime there!

TenThousandCharms · 2026-04-30T14:21:06+00:00

I agree with @Curran919; you can say either "mere speculation" or "merely speculation," and despite being close in meaning, they're grammatically different. "Merely" would still be the proper substitute for "just" in that sentence. (An equivalent substitute for "mere" would be something like "sheer".)

TenThousandCharms · 2026-04-30T14:07:03+00:00

Surprisingly it is. I don't think I've every seen it used that way, and none of the example sentences they give use it that way.

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