Puzzle Description:

My first PBN - Kristen prodded me to try one.

#1: marjorie rex (Mamo) on Feb 11, 2021

good for you!

Thanks Marjorie - to clarify, it is my fancy insulated cup with spicy chai tea, not a beer stein.

Awww, well, in my eye, it's a beer stein. ;-)

Found to be solvable with moderate lookahead by valerie.

Cool! Go Don!

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hot and spicy with a sturdy bottom.....

......

...

Yes! The top seven needed edge logic! Nice job Don.

Hey Don...a big mug of spicy chai tea was my third guess, right after 1) a stein of beer and 2) rear view of some fellow's head blowing a large bubble gum bubble! ;)

This is a very good first puzzle. I can tell you already know what makes a good one because you have solved so many. That is, you already know what YOU like in one. It helps a lot. I'm glad you accepted the challenge.

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Thanks so much for the nice comments everyone. I feel very lucky with this one. I only had to add one black square to make it a unique solution at the CHECK stage, and then no changes when trying to solve it. With my math / computer degrees from many years ago (we used computer cards), I know how unlikely that was. And yes, I have my nice mug of spicy chai tea this morning too.

Donald, nice to meet someone who knows his way around computer cards. Not too many of us carried our lives around in shoeboxes. Lol I always feel like such a dinosaur. I actually used computer tape for a year before they went to cards, but I began back in 1967. In what language(s) did you program?

Great job! I'll take your word that it's your tea-tea mug (chai means tea, so it's a fun little redundancy).

There's a rich tradition in here, of turning the object next to you into a puzzle. :)

Hi JoDeen, I started at U. of Waterloo in 1968, where they used Watfor, their load&go version of Fortran, and then it became Watfiv. Then Algol, but work afterwards was in proprietary telephone switch languages, where it was usually tape.
You may appreciate that in high school, the young head of math cautioned me against going into computers, because he had read a study that Canada could only afford five computers, and by the time I graduated, they might all be programmed and there would be no jobs in computers.

Hi Kristen - thanks for your comments as well. I was just trying to be clear, since Chai generally implies spicy tea, but not always.

Really good puzzle! Thanks I really enjoyed the solve!!

Lol Donald...great story about Canada only going to have five computers! I programmed in Fortran. I loved it. You don't know how many times I wish I had stayed with it, but I only minored in Computer Science.

In my younger days, I used to use a mug shaped like this for sipping Jaegermaster (too lazy to look up correct spelling)

The wide bottom holds lots of ice

Paper tape was before my time, but I started programming on punch cards in an ancient dialect of Fortran. The admins were always shooing us away from the computer, because all of us were curious about it and wanted to learn more about it, but if too many of us stood around it then our body heat would make it overheat and crash.

Donald, I love the story about how all five computers in Canada would already be programmed by the time you graduated!

I too learned to program using punch cards. Very tedious and frustrating (hard to proof - until the run failed).
Very nice puzzle for a fist attempt.
Right now I drink hot tea all day - it is snowing and we have 5 inches with another day of snow. Fortunately it is not bitter cold. [I live in Idaho.]

Hi Donald, about #15 I am a little younger than you but made that mistake in 1976 - this is Argentina and as far as I know there were very few computers. I studied Civil Engeneering instead. Never worked as such. Soon after graduating I turned to my original love -computers- but had to learn everything I know by myself. Because I don't have a degree I can only have low-level jobs, even though I often know more than my bosses.

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Oh no.

I wondered if Don *did* create any more puzzles, so I clicked on Users and looked him up. The site says he was last logged in on August 7, 2021. Then I did a web search for his name -- and found an obituary for a Donald Clysdale who died on August 7, 2021. No idea if it was the same person, but it seems possible.

https://martynfh.com/tribute/details/12584/Donald-Clysdale/obituary.html

Rest in peace, Don. If that was you.

Seems more than coincidental. Rest in peace indeed.

Rest in Peace!

It's very moving for me to think that Don logged onto our site the day he died.

JoDeen: Adam (monkeyboy) too seems to have logged in here on the day before he died. Though, like Don, there's the question of whether the person in the obituary is the same person or if it's just a coincidence. I looked up the discussion about that. It's puzzle 4707:
https://webpbn.com/read.cgi?type=P&id=4707&what=all&start=1

Rest in peace, both of them.

Valerie, I never knew, thanks for sharing the post.

Thank you for sharing this information, Valerie. I think I remember someone speculating about whether or not Adam was "our Adam," but since he hasn't returned it seems probable. Much love to you, Valerie...you are such a good person.

Thanks -- I just did a web search and reported back what I found. There are lots of nice people here, especially you!

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