XWord Muggles Forum

hoover wrote: ↑Sun Sep 19, 2021 6:19 pm Well I wandered off after posting success on Thursday, and I come back to find y'all are talking about slide rules. Here's my contribution to the collection, a Sun Hemmi No. 259, the 1954 model, although mine has an HD date code which puts it at April 1957.

RIMG0953.JPG

RIMG0954.JPG

A more than worthy addition

Had a six inch slide rule in high school but switched to the circular one.
It had a pocket for the periodic table. Used it for the state high school exams in physics and math. (Yep, I passed.)
Looked like the one in Spock’s hand in the photo posted earlier. Good enough for a Vulcan, good enough for me.

We finally go to the puzzle post dinner after a busy weekend, and were delighted to find a relatively easy swim to shore! Fortunately we had no need to swim to shore this weekend while rafting the Gauley.

We are on shore.

Our final count is 261 on the shore and 2 staying with isaac for the week.

As always whenever we are close to a record, I will do a final check in the morning to see if we broke the record after one week.

Making it to shore since noon are

heddafish
TheCatt
cremebrulee
flyingMoose
Dennis
Limerick

Also note that the link to the zoom talk on Friday with Matt Gaffney and Pete Muller is on post #375.

mikeB wrote: ↑Fri Sep 17, 2021 4:55 pm

SReh26 wrote: ↑Thu Sep 16, 2021 11:22 pm I remember a discussion in the college cafeteria about the value of a “math background” (we meant up to calc in HS!) in other majors. Those of us with a math background said no question it was valuable to whatever we were then studying. Those who didn’t made their predictable protestations to the contrary.

I studied math at Berkeley. I considered mechanical engineering -- very interesting curriculum, but the math was way too hard, so I studied math instead.

I studied electrical engineering at Rice. I chose EE because of the applied math and equations. Actual math didn't seem to have any numbers.

Finally had a minute to work on this and knocked out the grid and meta. On shore!

Just for the record (I know it's dangerous to play around with puns in this group, but I couldn't resist. ), I'm ashore.

From a few years ago...my son took his grandpa's slide rule to his first day at his engineering internship. I'm not sure how well he knew the workings of a slide rule-- thus the calculator.

ASHORE! Straightforward puzzle.

LadyBird wrote: ↑Sun Sep 19, 2021 1:24 pm Finally got around to finishing the grid (got the meta on Thursday). My puzzle OCD wouldn't allow me to leave those blanks.

Why is it called Reverse POLISH Notation? Never heard of this--but my financial planner husband had.

The description "Polish" refers to the nationality of logician Jan Łukasiewicz, who invented Polish notation in 1924.

You calculate by inputting the arguments first, then the operand:

3 4 +

DaveWa wrote: ↑Sun Sep 19, 2021 10:26 pm Just for the record (I know it's dangerous to play around with puns in this group, but I couldn't resist. ), I'm ashore.

I was expecting a Beach Blanket Bingo joke, or some such. 🏖

The answer is OBTUSE.

The title of the puzzle was AFTERMATH, so right away we know we're looking for some math-related clues (further reinforced by 72A, "Math branch with six main functions = TRIG").

Right away, I spotted one of those functions hiding in the long answer ETHICS COMMITTEE: CSC, the abbreviation for "cosecant".

Pretty quick work to find the other 5:

SIN, sine
COS, cosine
TAN, tangent
SEC, secant
COT, cotangent

Then you just take the title at face value and look for the letter after the math function, and voila, the answer emerges.

I'm feeling it - this is my week for the holy grail of meta-dom - the WSJ contest mug!

I couldn't help but think of the line in Shawshank between Andy and the warden.

JimJim wrote: ↑Mon Sep 20, 2021 7:01 am I couldn't help but think of the line in Shawshank between Andy and the warden.

Your soul may belong to the Lord?

Oh no!!! I'm not on the correct shore.
I submitted "RATIOS", as it was a six-letter math term that perfectly described clues. Trig ratios. I waited a day and tried to see a step two, but with so many solvers, I felt that "easy" answer was it.
My only glitch was that there were several times the word "ratios" was found in these postings...i figured they were slip ups.

DianeA wrote: ↑Mon Sep 20, 2021 7:09 am Oh no!!! I'm not on the correct shore.
I submitted "RATIOS", as it was a six-letter math term that perfectly described clues. Trig ratios. I waited a day and tried to see a step two, but with so many solvers, I felt that "easy" answer was it.
My only glitch was that there were several times the word "ratios" was found in these postings...i figured they were slip ups.

Yes I did the same thing. I was distracted by pain all weekend so I'll blame it on that. Going to the doc now. MOJO is gone

Thought I was ashore Friday night. Turns out that land I spotted was a fog bank called "Angles"

I am so totally surprised that the moderators allowed the picture of the calculator with sin, cos, tan keys! And then another post mentioned the orange key for inverse. That was step one to the puzzle… how did that pass someone’s eyes?