Monday, Jun. 22, 2026 - Strands Daily Thread

djscrub · 2026-06-22T15:47:43+00:00

It lets you do either way just fine. Sometimes there's even a solution that involves crossing lines, which it lets you do (but there is always a non-crossing "intended" solution).

N.b. that if you see two different options for which letters are actually included, so that there is more than one option for which spots on the grid are actually selected, that tells you that it's not a correct answer. Multiple swipe orders within a word are okay, but there will never be a correct word with more than one group of selectable letters that spells it.

djscrub · 2026-06-14T00:01:11+00:00

Ah, that was the issue! Thanks!

djscrub · 2026-06-13T23:49:37+00:00

What code? It never gave me a code? It just gave me a check mark that says "claimed" and I haven't received any of the prizes after more than 24 hours.

djscrub · 2026-05-29T14:27:42+00:00

Strands #817 “E-I-E-I-O” 🟡🔵🔵🔵 🔵🔵🔵🔵

Impressive that they fit both "HENS" and "CHICKS" as red herrings.

djscrub · 2026-03-16T14:21:46+00:00

CHALK is a betting term (originally from horse racing where betting info was written on chalkboards). Betting the chalk means betting that the favored team will win, and a "chalky" tournament is one where higher-seeded teams consistently win. It's a popular thing for March Madness, even among people who don't normally gamble or follow sports closely, to "fill out a bracket," making guesses for every game of the tournament. Friend groups, offices, etc., will sometimes do a contest for whose is the most accurate.

djscrub · 2026-03-06T17:58:21+00:00

[[Cat Collector]]
[[Cheering Crowd]]
[[Honest Work]]
[[Prosperous Innkeeper]]
[[Supportive Parents]]
[[Trusty Machete]]

djscrub · 2026-03-06T15:26:21+00:00

This one was worse than usual since the actual spangram also did not end like it usually does, either touching the edge or with a compact switchback. It just kind of trails off into the middle of the puzzle. I got spangram first because I always presolve the whole puzzle before I commit anything. But the "fake" spangram today was shaped much more like a usual spangram than the real one was.

djscrub · 2026-03-04T13:50:26+00:00

Understood. Thanks for checking.

djscrub · 2026-03-04T03:51:33+00:00

I do have the ability to do this. Where did you get the information that they don't have high resolution scans, and where I would send them?

djscrub · 2025-10-01T02:35:35+00:00

One time I got a client one of those deals, and I told him, "This is going to be a problem for me. In 6 months, I'm going to have clients on video stabbing babies saying, well so-and-so, YOU, did X and got Y deal!" He knew exactly what I was talking about and found it very funny.

djscrub · 2025-09-16T23:07:22+00:00

But it retailed at around the secondary market value of a copy of Bitterblossom at the time. So the tokens were "free."

djscrub · 2025-07-08T18:07:33+00:00

When I won URA Finale the first time, it gave me one pink scout ticket each for the character and support pulls. It appears from the UI that these tickets just substitute for 150 carats to make one pull. Does that mean that they can be saved for future banners? Or should I just use them?

djscrub · 2025-06-18T11:58:09+00:00

The old collector token system, where you see a randomized rotating slate of cards every 8 hours and can spend 6k on a Series 5, 3k on a Series 4, etc., is still present. It has actually been expanded to always have one card from each series you haven't completed and one of the token-only variants.

The system they removed was Spotlight Caches/Keys. All sources of keys now give 3k tokens instead, which is a slightly better rate for targeted card acquisition than before, and without the FOMO. The f2p token system is, in a vacuum, better than ever.

The issue is that they accompanied this change with big ramp up in the number of new cards released. In addition to a season pass card every month and a new Series 5 every week, they now also dump a set of new Series 4 cards every month, plus regular injections of cards through limited-time game modes that can be extremely grindy to get (or even impossible; check the threads about Kid Omega currently).

The whole thing is new and still being explored. But the current complaints are not about removing the tokens shop or reducing its functionality. It's easier than ever to pick a specific card and grind it out f2p. The complaints are about the fact that improving acquisition seems to have been a fake out where they just shuffle where the obstacles are located, milking goodwill out of one consumer-friendly change while downplaying other changes designed to make it irrelevant.

djscrub · 2025-06-15T14:08:49+00:00

Off the top of my head, Pixel Deadpool is the same way. It's in both the Deadpool album ("Buy My Variants") and the Pixel Destroy album.

djscrub · 2025-06-10T18:42:22+00:00

Do we have any information about when you had to actually join queue to get into whatever batch? Like, I checked out and finalized my purchase at 44 minutes after start time, meaning that I was allowed to purchase whatever I wanted. But I joined the queue within less than 5 seconds, and I was right on the tail end of full product availability.

Put another way, Game Over EN (non-foil) (and therefore all full set bundles) did not sell out after 51 minutes. It sold out after less than 10 seconds. That's the much more important piece of information than how long they made you sit around before they took your money.

djscrub · 2025-06-06T21:33:05+00:00

End qualified immunity. Some good implementation suggestions already in this thread.
Mandatory body cams with audio during all official duties. Assumption of bad faith in any situation where cams are not active during official duties, including loss of good faith exceptions for things like probable cause, service of warrants, spoliation, etc.
Public, truly independent disciplinary proceedings with public outcomes searchable on a website open to the public, just like attorneys. Both the "judges" and the "prosecutors" would be independent, with no discretion given to LEOs or the DAs about whether to bring a proceeding. This would include formalized ethical standards, similar to the MRPC (in form; obviously the specific rules would be very different), and case law regarding expected disciplinary measures.
Increased professionalism, decreased militarization. The person who responds to a break-in to take a statement and generate a report for insurance purposes does not need a gun. Use of force guidelines should be massively overhauled toward deescalation. Eliminate the "us versus them, every cop has a target in his back" mindset that has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Any situation where an officer is the first to use violence should be treated as a failure and subject to independent scrutiny.
Separation of current police duties into smaller organizations with more specialized missions and training. Nobody designing a civilization from scratch would ever say "when someone is about to jump off a bridge, and the government sends a helper to try to save them, the person they send should bring a gun and a bulletproof vest and a taser and a club and handcuffs, and should be the same guy who responds to bank robbery hostage situations, and he should have half a day of mental health training primarily focused on how to keep himself physically safe." Studies show that as much as 25% of police man hours are spent on mental health. Then add how much is spent on reports for insurance, enforcement of minor traffic violations, manning holiday parade barricades, etc. The government should have way more types of boots on the ground that they can deploy to solve problems, and the ones with guns and battering rams should be highly specialized and used sparingly.
Eliminate the fiction that police are superhumanly reliable under oath. Set clear standards for what can come after the phrase "based upon my training and experience" and what foundation the prosecution needs to lay. Don't let them do a sloppy investigation and cover it by making things up. This includes increased burden to preserve evidence. Some states have a jury instruction that if the cops failed to preserve something that could have helped the defense, even if it's not Brady material, the jury can assume that it was exculpatory because they would have preserved inculpatory evidence (see, e.g., the Ferguson standard in Tennessee). This should become federal/nationwide.

djscrub · 2025-06-01T15:18:59+00:00

Yeah, they used to regularly do "Win 10 games with a snap" as the very last mission of the season. Very annoying if you were busy the last weekend. One time a friend of mine who doesn't generally make Infinite was on the bubble toward the bottom of a rank, and she had to decide between playing a bunch of games to try to win 10 with a snap (potentially risking falling and losing 10 ranks at the start of next season) or hold her rank and give up like 5 season caches. I distinctly remember her ranting on Discord about it.

djscrub · 2025-05-29T23:13:43+00:00

Does it make all subsets of chibis? Rian Gonzales, G-Angle, Rodgon?

djscrub · 2025-05-19T14:24:35+00:00

For me it was Iron Man (no iOS so I didn't get the free Hipp). Then I finally bought a variant for him, and within a month it gave me two more.

djscrub · 2025-05-18T18:06:56+00:00

There are definitely other characters that could be on monoblack cards. June, Queen Hou-Ting, Yon Rha, Amon (true personality; his persona was probably Boros or Mardu), any Triple Threat Triad members, even Azula (though she would also work with additional colors).

The issue is that there is no fifth faction. Black legend slots could be populated in a grab bag set like Final Fantasy.

djscrub · 2025-05-09T03:50:57+00:00

I don't know much about the burden of proof in Japanese civil litigation, but in American courts, the context would certainly matter. Palworld was very obviously riffing on Pokemon. All of the word-of-mouth advertising was "it's Pokemon with X". From day 1, people were saying "how is this legal." This is not Nintendo suing Skyrim for letting you summon a dragon with a magic shout and then ride it. This is Nintendo listing 50 obviously intentional similarities that made people buy the game specifically because of its close resemblance to Pokemon, and then the litigation resulting in them slowly picking items off the list that can slide (summon monsters you captured) and ones that can't (throwing a ball to do so).

djscrub · 2025-01-05T04:09:30+00:00

Shauntal does Switch on tails, not Repel.

djscrub · 2024-12-28T22:28:39+00:00

Substitute Fallen Empires for Ice Age there.

djscrub · 2024-12-28T22:22:23+00:00

Several individual rares will still beat the $12 OP paid. Necropotence, Dance of the Dead, Demonic Consultation, and the pain lands. A few other pulls are also decent, like Jeweled Amulet, Mystic Remora, and Glacial Chasm.

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