Sunday, December 7, 2025

Solving wordle in 3 guesses or less

I've recorded 1216 attempted wordles, and finished 608 (or exactly half) in 3 guesses or less. This happened a little earlier than expected**, mostly due to a 14-day run of 2's and 3's.

A table showing the number of wordles I've completed, by number of guesses required.
Wordle games by number of guesses needed

Of course, the reason why I'm starting to get many more in 2 or 3 is because there are only 713 words left from the original wordle list. So far, NYT has peppered in 30 words that weren't in the original list, but it's unclear to me how many more they can add without getting obscure or including 's' plurals.

** I thought it would be around the 4th anniversary of my first wordle, on Jan 5.

Monday, December 1, 2025

A couple of dormant webcomics return in 2025: Wonderella and JL8

One of the wonderful things about using Feedly (or your RSS feed aggregator of choice) is when content from an irregularly-updated source suddenly pops into your feed.  This year, two webcomics that I started following in the 10's reappeared.

The Non-Adventures of Wonderella returned in January after more than 5 years, and has been updated as Justin Pierce has time over the course of the year.  Rita now carries the mantle of Wonderella and provides an interesting shift in how the role is portrayed, though Dana still figures prominently (and rudely) in comic.  :-)

In April, JL8 continued a storyline begun in 2020, but not updated since June 2023.  While it's been nice to see again, as Yale Stewart writes, the future of JL8 is uncertain, so enjoy it while you can.


Saturday, November 22, 2025

Bionic Six

Secret Galaxy recently did an episode on the Bionic Six and its failure to catch hold in an era of massive cartoon-to-toy pipelines.  

I wasn't a huge fan of Bionic Six, but S02E25, "Bottom of the Ninth Planet" has a line I still remember.  Meg is in a contest with an alien sportsman where each has to take turns thinking of objects for a second alien to turn into and attack the other contestant, and if you couldn't think of a new object fast enough, you would lose (at least, it seemed like that's how the contest worked).  The aliens cheat, with the second alien giving ideas of objects to be turned into.  At one point, he suggests "turn me into a can!" but the alien sportsman turns him into a thimble instead, which does no harm to Meg.  Meg, tired and hungry, turns him into a hamburger, which knocks out the alien sportsman.  The second alien then says, "I coulda been a container, instead of a bun."

Even though it would be years later before I saw On the Waterfront, the line was iconic and known to teenage me, and it was absolutely hilarious being referenced in this context. 


(before publishing this, I did a quick search to see if I've ever mentioned Bionic Six before, and somewhat hilariously I started and abandoned a post 6 years ago about this, so thank you to Secret Galaxy for providing the impetus to complete it)


Saturday, October 25, 2025

Playlists for books: Martha Wells's The Rising World

 Turns out Martha Wells made a playlist for Witch King, and now one for the sequel Queen Demon.


She didn't link to a playlist on YouTube or Spotify, so I made a couple:
Witch King:


Queen Demon:

Friday, October 10, 2025

This Land is Your Land (If You Can Keep It)

Some of the posts from Portland feature a group of people singing "This Land is Your Land", which seems particularly appropriate with the return of the robber barons.

Today, while catching up on Feedly, this SMBC cartoon, combined with the Portland protestors, reminded me of this old JibJab video.