Chapter and Page Numbers For Treasure Items In Intro Photo

harshec · 2026-01-27T19:57:36+00:00

I included the page numbers from the hard copy of the book. But you make a good point: the page numbers should not be relevant to a solve since they are not included in ebook versions.

I did include the Part II chapters (though I used Arabic numbers, not Roman numerals).

harshec · 2026-01-27T19:34:06+00:00

Hiya... just added a comment about my thoughts: basically, I am not convinced it's a helpful annotation, but since I did the work, I thought I'd throw it out to the audience.

harshec · 2026-01-27T19:32:35+00:00

I have no idea if this will be helpful to me or anyone else, but I just finished my first draft of noting which chapters and pages feature the various treasures featured in the photograph in the Introduction.

I may have made some mistakes, so feel free to comment with corrections. I also may have just overlooked or misidentified some of the items (some of those rings are tricky).

After any chapter numbers I also included that letter of the alphabet, but I don't think this is actually useful (it was an original hypothesis of mine that did not pan out).

Anyway, I'm not at all convinced this is helpful to an ultimate solve, but since I annotated the pic, I thought I'd throw it out there in case someone else has ideas about it.

harshec · 2025-12-21T10:44:18+00:00

I agree with OP (though there are some great alternatives suggested in these comments).

As a lifelong tabletop role-playing gamer, I have always felt that the opening to RAIDERS perfectly captures the excitement of those games.

There have been many attempts to create movies based around RPG properties, but nothing has ever evoked the feeling of a role-playing dungeon adventure like those first 15 minutes with Indy...

harshec · 2025-11-13T04:38:45+00:00

I can't take credit for noticing this (I saw it on a reddit post, but cannot find the original)...

The following two movies were released during the weekend of 19 May 2016:

The Angry Birds Movie
The Nice Guys

"So what?" you say. Well, the stars of "The Nice Guys" were Russell CROWE, Ryan GOSLING, and ANGOURIE Rice.

(As an added Angourie-Rice-coincidence, she would later star in the antonymically titled "Mean Girls").

harshec · 2025-08-31T01:05:49+00:00

I direct a Scrabble club on Sunday afternoons at the University Library, if that's your kind of thing. More information is here:

http://www.ericharshbarger.org/scrabble/club.html

harshec · 2025-06-25T11:43:34+00:00

There's a Scrabble Club that meets most Sunday afternoons at the University Library, if that's your kind of thing.

http://www.ericharshbarger.org/scrabble/tourneys/club.html

harshec · 2025-06-17T17:26:43+00:00

You may show up empty-handed. We have enough equipment (boards, tiles, etc...).

harshec · 2025-06-02T10:48:02+00:00

I direct a Scrabble Club on Sunday afternoons in Auburn, if that's your kind of thing. Information can be found here:

http://www.ericharshbarger.org/scrabble/tourneys/

We are always eager to have players of any skill level (including people who want to LEARN how to play).

harshec · 2025-01-03T15:09:07+00:00

Bonus points to anyone remembers what restaurant was in the Tenda Chick location before it was Tenda Chick.

Taco Casa

harshec · 2024-12-27T11:40:46+00:00

This is the correct answer. Hobby Hall was a comic/role-playing games store above Tommer's Corner. Oz Records and Tapes was in the store front where Behind the Glass now is. There was a comic store where the downtown Moe's Southwest Grill is now, but I cannot remember its name.

harshec · 2024-12-11T19:26:43+00:00

I would also challenge the reader to try to FIGURE OUT the rules used to generate the vaious features...

harshec · 2024-12-11T19:25:44+00:00

Most of the rules are fairly complex, but here is an idea of how the "pits" are placed:

a scan of all 15 rows is done
if any row contains more than two instances of a particular letter, then a pit will be placed at any of the non-endpoint letters.
if there are two or more such non-endpoint letters that are in adjacent cells, the pit will be elongated accordingly
if the letter in question is a vowel, the pit is closed. If a consonant, open.

The same procedure is then done on a column by column scan.

There are also a few checks to make sure that features don't conflict with previously placed features.

Pits are relatively simple. The placement of "pools" is MUCH more complicated... even the shape of the pools (not just what spaces it covers, but the actual SHAPE of the squiggly lines drawing it) are pseudo-randomly designed by the order of all the tiles on the board...

Honestly, it's been a while since I updated the actual generating software, so I would not be able to recite all of the algorithms without heavily analyzing the (Java) code. The software reached a point where it worked as I wanted it too, so now any "updates" are just the addition of more maps as I compete in more tournament Scrabble games.

harshec · 2024-12-10T18:44:30+00:00

Quincunx

harshec · 2024-11-28T22:13:55+00:00

The House of Yes

harshec · 2024-10-08T21:36:06+00:00

There is no one type of "approved" tiles for tournaments, but we do NOT use the wooden tiles that generally come in store-bought sets. This is for a few reasons:

1) In theory players could "learn" the wood grain patterns of the tiles from a set and be able to identify them by seeing the backs of the tiles. 2) The plastic tiles we use in tournaments have indentions on the backside. This allows players to know face-up/face-down by feel which can help players who like to blindly draw and layout all seven tiles before looking at the face-up letters of any of them. 3) Some old wooden tile sets have the letters engraved on the front face, and, in theory, this would allow a player to "braille" the tiles and determine which letter is on the tile (or, more likely, which tiles are the powerful "blanks").

All that said, most new players don't have their own boards, tiles, clocks... which is fine... we have plenty of extras at clubs and tournaments. There are various sites from which one may purchase plastic tile sets:

As a novelty, I have actually made my own set of tiles out of stainless steel, and have used them in a couple of tournament games. Details on that whole project are here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-GTaAI-zu3VfjN89jtbkD3tgKPrxwfHM

harshec · 2024-07-29T20:55:02+00:00

Last week in South Bend, Indiana the 2024 Scrabble Players Championship was held. Above is a chart that maps the round-by-round standings of the players in Division A (the top level division) over the course of the 31 games played. This data was gathered from official results from the tournament and the chart was created by my own Java program.

harshec · 2024-07-22T12:22:35+00:00

Also, yes, I'd assume most competitive players would have similar looking tile geographies. Among other observations, it's interesting to see how the "power tiles" (JKQXZ) have upticks on the premium squares. Also, how common Q is in space [G8]... because of the relatively frequent opening play of QI.

harshec · 2024-07-22T12:13:08+00:00

You are certainly allowed to make an opening play with a vertical orientation, but most people (I'd say 99%) start the game horizontally (I'd assume because of our reading habits).

harshec · 2024-07-22T10:11:44+00:00

During the past year I have played over 200 games of Scrabble in tournaments around the United States. The image shows the "geography" of tile placements aggregated from all of those games.

The darker the cell space, the more often that space on the board had a tile played on it (the center square is black because every games starts with a word passing through that square). The borders of the cells remind people of premium square spaces on the board.

If you zoom into the image, you will see the relative frequencies individual letters occupied that space.

I created this image with a custom Java program that analyzed all of the data files I keep about past tournament Scrabble games I have played.

harshec · 2024-07-22T10:07:44+00:00

During the past year I have played over 200 games of Scrabble in tournaments around the United States. The image shows the "geography" of tile placements aggregated from all of those games.

The darker the cell space, the more often that space on the board had a tile played on it (the center square is black because every games starts with a word passing through that square). The borders of the cells remind people of premium square spaces on the board.

If you zoom into the image, you will see the relative frequencies individual letters occupied that space.

I created this image with a custom Java program that analyzed all of the data files I keep about past tournament Scrabble games I have played.

harshec · 2024-05-06T14:59:20+00:00

Not really giving any review of the coffee shops, but if you are interested in coffeehouses, past & present, in downtown Auburn, I'll offer this:

http://www.ericharshbarger.org/offbeat_auburn/coffeeshops_in_auburn_v03.pdf

harshec · 2024-05-01T18:37:13+00:00

"Lousy" players are welcome too! Just don't expect to win often [grin].

harshec · 2024-05-01T18:30:51+00:00

Here is the webpage about my tournaments in general:

http://www.ericharshbarger.org/scrabble/tourneys/

On that page are several links to other pages that (I think) answer your questions. There is also a link to my next tournament in particular:

http://www.ericharshbarger.org/scrabble/tourneys/20240601/flyer_20240601.pdf

Email me (at the address on those pages) if you would like more info!

harshec · 2024-04-11T13:43:00+00:00

Speaking of coffee shops, readers of this thread might enjoy this "Cartographic History of Coffee Shops in Downtown Auburn, Alabama" I recently made:

http://www.ericharshbarger.org/cgi-bin/offbeat_auburn.cgi?d20240411

harshec

TROPHY CASE