Alex Krogh-Grabbe

Last night I woke up around 6am from a dream, and wrote it down in my notebook. Here’s how it went:

I was in a concrete parking garage at night with a girl from my acapella group whom I haven’t seen since 2007, as well as two contradancers, both of whom I respect a lot, but neither of whom played prominently in the dream. The acapella girl’s name is Alex, but because that would be confusing, I’ll call her Pat. At the beginning of the dream, Pat was commenting on the fact that I did not, in fact, carry a switchblade-like weapon. This was apparently surprising. She then proceeded to tell me about how it’s useful to have female friends charge at a person who’s mugging you, because apparently it will scare of the mugger.

At this point the strange things started happening. We noticed to our dismay that the moon was going away. It was at once getting smaller, then going into the ground. We shouted “grab it before it disappears!” but were unable to do so before it sank into the ground, like a flower bud moving quickly in reverse. Then, Pat and I noticed something else odd over the edge of the garage, on a grassy hillock: a “flaming bunny”. That is how I described it while writing it down, but really it was more a hare than a rabbit, sitting up straight and looking to the left, calmly silhouetted by a small spurt of continuous flame. It seemed very ominous and magical.

Then the moon was back, and this time doing something even scarier. It was moving, quickly, and was distorted in the two cones of double refraction that you sometimes see when a film camera is out of focus and pointed at bright lights. It was as if the physics of the universe was getting distorted. We wondered if the world was going to end, and I remember someone saying, “maybe the membrane [of the Earth, the atmosphere] will survive, maybe it won’t”. Then we all got sucked out into space, and the question was answered. When sucked into space without protection, one hopes that death comes before pain, though that may be unlikely.

Another interesting aspect of this dream was that when it concluded, I knew when it was supposed to have happened: approximately two weeks from now, in mid-April. I hope it wasn’t literal, or even metaphorically prophetic. Luckily, dreams seldom are.

Today I played Clue for the first time after my first attempt at developing a better notation system. My take-aways from the last attempt were:

• Focus on who doesn’t have which cards
• Pay attention to the progression of guesses

The results were pretty good. The systematic nature of my notation was generally thought to be superior to the lackadaisical strategy of my friends (note: playing games lackadaisically is great; it’s just not how I roll). Here’s the basic layout of what I wrote down:

Billiard Hall Kitchen Rope (these are the cards I had)
—————————–
DR – MrsW – Candle | F->A->D
Ball – MrsP – Candle | D->L
etc.

Then, in addition to keeping these notes on a blank piece of paper, I filled in the normal grid with the initials of who didn’t have which card. Let me explain the above, though. I made an entry for each guess, listing each card guessed as well as the progression of who guessed it to who eventually showed a card. Later on, when I had more information, I went back and determined which cards could not have been the ones shown, and ultimately which cards had been shown.

Thoughts on this method:

• It was great, though the transcription was still a little slow.
• The arrows on the right-hand part are unnecessary. I should just write the initials in order.
• I should not note when a suggestion is “helped”, but rather when it goes unhelped. This cuts down on the writing.
• Most importantly, I should use the second sheet (the normal sheet) from the very beginning, because trying to transcribe that information on the primary sheet slowed me down at the beginning.
• Also, it was a little overwhelming because I was making it up as I went along. Now that I have specific ideas about how I should do it, the method should be smoother.

Ultimately, it would be nice to sort the list by guesser, so that it’s possible to see the progression of someone’s guesses. That would enable easier speculation about what cards they were shown.

Some statistics from this game:

• 4 players (including me)
• 35 suggestions
• 9 of those suggestions skipped one person before being helped
• 8 of those suggestions skipped two people
• The correct suspect was first guessed on the 10th suggestion, and quickly adopted widely. It was suggested approximately half of the time after it was first guessed.
• The correct weapon was guessed on the first suggestion, and was used sporadically throughout. It was suggested about a third of the time.
• The correct room was only suggested twice.
• I had zero suspect cards, but figured that out first
• I had three room cards, but was still less than 100% certain about that when I finally accused

Anyway, it’s a fun game. We should play sometime.

Here are three maps I made not for class, but instead for NEFFA. These are maps of where NEFFA members live. The reason Natick & Mansfield are highlighted in the third map is that the festival is now held in Mansfield, but was held for years in Natick.