BRAINWAG: Cerebral Bliss

Wine Trivia Game

2011-09-22T16:11:00.002-04:00

I created a wine trivia game a few years ago for a wine tasting party I was attending, and have decided to post it here for anyone who wants to use it.

The game was created in Microsoft PowerPoint and was modeled off of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire...except my version was called Who Wants To Be A Sommelier.
There are about 70 researched questions which are all wine related and the graphics were pilfered straight from the original show.
It's a fun group game that you can either play just for fun or you can make into a competition.

To download a .zip file which includes the PowerPoint slides, sound files and a basic set of instructions you can click here:

Download Who Wants To Be A Sommelier

keywords: wine trivia, wine party games, wine tasting games, sommelier, wine PowerPoint, Who Wants To Be a Millionaire PowerPoint

Martinis Are Good Year Round

2011-02-09T13:40:00.009-05:00

Even though it's the dead of winter, the cold weather doesn't dampen my enthusiasm or desire for a good martini...so let's look at how to make a martini that will be even better than your local barkeeper can make.

While today it is very trendy to create all sorts of specialty drinks, serve them up in a martini glass and give them evocative names like the Chocotini, Appletini or Berrytini, these drinks are not true martinis.

So what are the key elements to making the perfect martini?
It boils down to only three basic things:
--- Quality of the ingredients
--- Temperature
--- Garnish

A classic martini has only two, or at most three, ingredients: the base liquor (either gin or vodka), dry vermouth and possibly olive brine if it’s a dirty martini. In selecting the bottle of gin or vodka, you need to remember that you will essentially be drinking it straight up, without anything to substantially alter its taste. Therefore, a premium or top shelf quality liquor is required. This doesn’t mean you need to buy the priciest brands at the store. Market price takes into account perception of quality, so only you as a consumer can determine what makes your mouth happy.
You really can’t go wrong with Skyy, Stolichnaya, Absolut or the higher priced Ketel One and Grey Goose for vodka or Beefeater, Tanqueray or the super-premium Bombay Sapphire and Mercury London Dry for gin drinkers. For the dry vermouth, there typically is not a tremendous amount of selection, but don’t purchase a cheap off-brand. Stick with Martini & Rossi or Cinzano or other comparably priced brands.

So now, we’ve got our selected tasty ingredients on hand. One of the biggest problems I find when ordering a martini in a bar is that it is served too warm. For a martini to be crisp, clean, knock-your-socks-off great, it has to be very cold.
To easily do this, start off by putting the martini glasses in a freezer, or if one isn’t available, then fill them with ice and a little water and set aside.

I always like to get a head start on chilling the ingredients by keeping the vodka/gin in the freezer (don’t worry it won’t freeze) and the vermouth in the fridge. Grab those and fill your shaker up about 1/3 to 1/2 way full of ice. Make sure you are using good clean ice because any impurities will spoil the taste of the martini. Pour 2 to 2 1/2 ounces of vodka/gin into the shaker and top off with a splash of dry vermouth. There are a lot of different ideas of how to mix in the vermouth, but I find this simple approach works quite well. If you want a dirty martini, add a splash of olive brine, too.

Now start shaking vigorously. Harder! Keep shaking non-stop for about 20 seconds or until ice is forming on the outside of the shaker. If you fingers are going numb you’re there!
Get your glass (dumping the ice and water out) and strain the martini into it. If you’ve shaken it enough there will be small pieces of shaved ice floating on the surface. That’s the indication that it’s been done properly.
Now just garnish with an olive, pearl onion or your choice of fresh citrus zest. The zest twist shouldn’t have any pith, and the aromatic oils will enhance the drink presentation, just as the toothpicked olive or onion do.

So that’s it. You’ve got a wonderful refreshing martini ready to drink – so get to it!

Cheers!

Meta-Word Link 2 is now on-line

2011-02-02T16:07:00.002-05:00

My latest word linking puzzle is now available to play.
The biggest, baddest Word Link puzzle to date is now available!

There are 25 different themes embedded in this puzzle that you must link to.
Some themes will be revealed upon entering the grid, while others you must guess.

This puzzle has an overall theme, which leads to solving the master--or meta puzzle.
There are Meta Clues concealed in the puzzle. These are in yellow. Once all of these clues are exposed a player can attempt to guess the meta-answer. Watch the right hand upper corner.

This game will challenge your mental elasticity—so again, collaboration is highly encouraged.

****NOTE****

THE GAME ONLY WORKS ON MOZILLA FIREFOX, NOT EXPLORER

http://funny-farm.appspot.com/game/m2

Merry Christmas

2009-12-24T16:49:00.003-05:00

Just in time for the holidays, here is a new word link puzzle. It works the same way as Word Link 300 and Food Link 300.
There are nine panels and all of them relate to Toys/Games except one. That one should be self-explanatory.
The added twist in this puzzle is that when an answer is revealed, if it has any uncapitalized letters then at least one of the words linking to it will begin with that letter or letters. So if the answer is CHRISTmaS then a word linked to it begins with MA. There will be answers in each panel that do not follow the theme if they are not directly linked.
This puzzle is more difficult than the last two so collaboration is encouraged!

GO HERE ==> http://funny-farm.appspot.com/game/xmas

Time for Another WORD PUZZLE

2009-10-15T21:58:00.004-04:00

All right, for anyone who found my last Word Link 300 puzzle fun...and addicting, I've got a new puzzle for you.
This puzzle works in exactly the same manner as the last one, but this time there is a common theme--- FOOD! Guess words that link before or after the one shown to create a new word.
[Unfortunately this puzzle will still not run in Internet Explorer, you need to use Mozilla Firefox.]

I've ratcheted up the difficulty a notch on this puzzle, so I believe it will be even more challenging than Word Link 300.

Well, not much more to say. So, get ready, get set, EAT!

GO TO FOOD LINKS 300 HERE

-------------------------------------------------------------

Review of The City and The City

2009-10-15T12:38:00.002-04:00

Having read China Miéville's genre-bending sophomore effort, Perdido Street Station, and his possibly even more engaging follow-up, The Scar, I was excited to see a new novel out from him.
Miéville departs from his established style in The City and The City to try his hand at creating a murder mystery set in an existentially imagined land--and the setting here is truly the burnished star of this tale.
Inspector Tyador Borlu of the Extreme Crime Squad is tasked to find the murderer of a young woman whose body is discovered in a park. As the plot unfolds we begin to understand that Borlu's homeland, Beszel, is half of an unnatural duality of cities. Both Beszel and its sister city Ul Qoma share the same physicality--they overlap one another--and by mutual agreement their citizens "unsee" each other and the other city itself. Each city has its own flavor and, relying on one of his strengths, Miéville does a wonderful job of world building here.
Without getting into more plot detail, suffice it to say that the nebulous Breach entity is the wild card in the tale and one that keeps the reader guessing throughout.
On a deeper level the novel explores social mores and even hints at the increasing self-absorption and personal isolation of the modern world.
Miéville largely succeeds in amalgamating various speculative fiction elements here and paying homage to writers like Chandler, Kafka and P.K. Dick (as he notes). The plot moves steadily, if a bit ploddingly at times, toward a climactic resolution. Although the characters are simply drawn and Miéville's choice to use as a first person narrator the wooden Inspector Borlu is uninspired, it does feel consistent with the type of story he is modeling. My one nit with the dialogue concerns the frequent truncation of lines where the reader is forced to guess the end of the sentence.
As with any novel, the ending is the most critical (and difficult) and left me with a sense of closure to the main thrust of the story and yet also a sense of unease that there were too many critical elements, particularly regarding Breach, that weren't satisfactorily explained. It left me a bit frustrated, but ultimately just made me keep thinking about the novel after I had finished it.
Although I didn't enjoy this as well as the other two novels I've read by Miéville, it was still an interesting and well executed story. Again, the well conceived setting is at the focus and I wouldn't be surprised to see him return to it in the future.

Counter-intuitive puzzles

2009-09-23T17:18:00.003-04:00

I've always found that some of my favorite puzzles are those which upon first glance seem to have obvious solutions, but upon deeper analysis end up having answers which defy "gut logic" (an oxymoron if ever there was one). A great example is the classic MontyHall question (Google it if you aren't familiar) and there are others which even when explained they just do not feel right. With that preface answer the following:

Select from the following choices for each of the following questions:

A) giraffe
B) man
C) cat
D) mouse
E) ant

1. The circumference of the earth is about 25,000 miles.
If an elevated road is built around the world that is 50 feet longer than the circumference then what is the largest object which could pass under it?

2. Now imagine a sphere with a diameter of 1/3 of a mile, which gives it a circumference of about a mile.
If an elevated road is built around this sphere that is 50 feet longer than sphere’s
circumference then what is the largest object which could pass under it?

3. Finally, if you could take a basketball and somehow build an elevated road on it that was 50 feet longer than its circumference what could fit under it?

Answers posted in a few days...

New puzzle

2009-08-26T21:56:00.000-04:00

For anyone familiar with the mega-challenging word puzzle Funny Farm, I've created a new puzzle modeled on that one.
[Thanks to Igor over at shygypsy.com... he has created a puzzle editor which allows word connectivity puzzles to be created from scratch and posted for the enjoyment of the masses.]

This puzzle is a little different in that it is strictly word-linking, there really is no theme and no meta-solution. However, I think it is still quite challenging for a little game.
There are three hundred words packed in the puzzle and each word connects to others by using that word before or after another word, i.e. dinner could link to "tv" or "jacket".

WORD-LINX PUZZLE

Welcome to Brainwag!

2009-08-20T12:43:00.000-04:00

What's it all about??

This blog won't be typical of most in that I will not be blogging about my daily activities, the current spate of political brew-hahas, wacky entertainment news or any of thing of that sort. I've mainly created this website in order to share a few of the things that I enjoy in life and to have a vehicle to link to interesting things on the web.

A few of those include:

PUZZLES and TRIVIA

SCIENCE FICTION / FANTASY and just any old good books

and of course, we'll need a little FOOD and DRINK with that!

These all make my brain happy and my goal is to make yours happy too...

If you're here hopefully a couple of those interest you!