What Software Does Cracking The Cryptic Use
Shaquita
The Cracking The Cryptic YouTube channel became an unexpected hit during lockdown last year. Mark Goodliffe and Simon Anthony have been uploading two videos a day for the past few years now, showing them methodically solving very difficult puzzles (typically sudokus and crosswords, but others sneak in as well). Now, in an almost inevitable development, the Cryptic lads are poised to become your favourite video game streamers. For the past few weeks, Anthony has been streaming his playthrough of Jonathan Blow's huge and layered puzzle game The Witness, and it is some of the most enjoyable streaming you'll ever come across.
Goodliffe and Anthony are both extremely good at puzzles. I really can't overstate this. Goodliffe is the reigning Times Crossword Champion and Times Sudoku Champion, and Anthony was on the UK team for the World Sudoku and World Puzzle Championships. They're also both just very calming, which is why their videos have become a soothing part of daily routine for a lot of people (including myself). Goodliffe in particular has a voice that would serve a BBC announcer very well.
what software does cracking the cryptic use
Download Zip ➡ https://9cestdu-gese.blogspot.com/?zfzc=2zTG3V
Once you get into the channel you start learning a lot of specific terms or the names of good puzzle setters. It's a bit like watching Bake Off and knowing when someone's made a good creme pat, despite never going near stuffing a choux bun yourself. You start giving it all, "Oooh, another puzzle set by Phistomefel, this'll be good." Hearing their intro theme, Mozart's sonata facile, makes me all relaxed and ready for some nice puzzlin' to be explained to me, like if Pavlov's dogs were really middle class. But as well as being great for helping smooth the course through lockdown, it turns out Goodliffe and Anthony's dynamic is a winning combination for streaming puzzle games. It's a lot of fun watching Anthony carefully talk his way through complex puzzles, with a gentle self-castigation of "That's nonsense!" when he makes a mistake, or cry of, "Oh you rotten thing!" when he realises how the game has tricked him.
This is extremely funny to anyone with even a passing knowledge of The Witness; almost the very first thing Anthony does in the first ever episode of the stream is to find and solve one of the more advanced puzzles in the game. And then apologise for taking so long with it. Anthony's appreciation of how the puzzles are constructed, with reference to what I might gibly refer to as wider puzzle-theory, has actually made me appreciate the game itself a lot more. I am also quietly vindicated because he dislikes the same sorts of puzzles as me, like the forest puzzles with those bloody bird calls.
Anthony says that he'd like to continue streaming games after finishing The Witness. Personally I'm hoping to see Goodliffe have a go at it too - it would certainly be something to see him try to bifurcate his way through Baba Is You - but Goodliffe has no gaming experience, unlike Anthony, whose first computer was a BBC Micro ("Chuckie Egg anybody?" he asks). Anthony also has strong opinons about StarCraft II. "The tl:dr version is: delete Protoss; nerf Queens and Lurkers; and buff Terran mech," he says.
Currently, Goodliffe is on hand to read the chat and moderate, where he is a tough but fair master, especially when he sees things he considers to be spoilers. He's also able to throw in some extremely-dad-joke puns when Anthony is scribbling on graph paper, or else rib Anthony for his sub-standard performance in the way that only real good friends can.
It isn't surprising if you watch the channel, and arguably at this point it shouldn't be surprising to Anthony any more either. The Cryptic lads have also got several games out, merch, and a successful Kickstarter under their belts. But their continued faint bemusement that people are interested in the channel is part of the charm. I almost regret bringing it to more people's attention, in case you all turn up to the streams without knowing proper CC etiquette and ruin everything. It's weird even referring to them as Goodliffe and Anthony, because they are Mark and Simon. They're like my nice puzzle mates. You might consider making them yours as well. If nothing else you'll probably understand The Witness a bit better afterwards.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Unlike regular crosswords, which typically ask the solver to find a synonym for a word or phrase, cryptic crosswords use clues that are deliberately misleading. Solvers have to ignore this reading and look instead for a grammatical set of coded instructions to lead them to the correct answer. The problem lies in recognising and cracking the code, and the task of the crossword setter, like that of a magician, is to conceal the mechanism so subtly that the way to the answer is hard to find.
Cryptic crosswords are different from other activities previously studied to explore what it takes to become an expert. For example, unlike chess, sport or music, there are very few monetary rewards or prizes on offer, and nothing by way of global prestige. For this reason, we believed that daily solving regimes would be relatively short and relaxed, with none of the deliberate, arduous and unenjoyable training burdens that research has suggested are needed for high expertise.
The results of the survey were very revealing. Cryptic crossword solvers seem to be academic high-flyers. Over 80% of the 805 respondents, regardless of whether they were experts or hobbyists, had a university degree (but typically went to university at a time when only 10% of the population did so), and 12% had PhDs. They seemed also to have a drive to think, an itchy brain they need to scratch whether in their hobbies or in their challenging careers.
Our survey strongly suggests that having a leaning towards maths, science and code-cracking and a strong desire to engage your brain even in your leisure time are key qualities among cryptic crossword solvers. What we are not claiming is that you need to have gone to university to do cryptics. In fact, most of our participants had already started to solve in their mid-teens. But our research does suggest that there is a minimum threshold of flexible problem-solving ability for tackling cryptic crosswords, which is being reflected indirectly in the very high levels of university participation.
As with all skills, learning to solve cryptic crosswords requires engagement over a number of years to acquire a good knowledge of the rules and the common clue types. But both the experts and the hobbyists in our survey had been solving for over three decades on average, yet had achieved quite different levels of solving performance. This really does suggest that aptitudes, as well as practice, are important in this area.
Puzzles have evolved. The average person might believe that they are only enjoyed by retired individuals with large books of crosswords or sudoku and a pencil in hand, but this is not the case. Speaking to Simon Anthony from the hit puzzles YouTube channel Cracking the Cryptic, it quickly becomes clear that puzzles are attracting an increasingly young audience.
What led Simon to create video content about puzzles, however, was a combination of his love of the hobby and his dislike of his former job. I used to be an investment banker, for some sin I must have committed in a former life. It's a fairly open secret, I loathed my job. I was constantly trying to come up with ideas for doing something else. One year, I was skiing with some friends, and I had what I thought was a sensible idea. I thought loads of people want to know how to solve cryptic crosswords, and I thought maybe I could start a YouTube channel where I would just solve the cryptic crossword and talk through how to do it.
However not all content is an instant hit on video platforms. Every content creator has to go through a process of experimentation with their videos and target audiences. Mark and Simon started with their cryptic crossword content and slowly built up to 1,000 subscribers over the course of months. Eventually they weaved in Sudoku content and that opened a whole new audience to them.
Eventually, we started to do variants on Sudoku. I think that was the breakthrough. People like Sudoku, people love Sudoku - but the fact that there are different types of Sudoku surprises people." It was clear that there was an enormous appetite for different variations of puzzles.
Even with the modern technology and games of all shapes and sizes fitting onto our phones, puzzles have persisted as a timeless activity. The wider concept of gaming has moved on to evolve with stories and action sequences and hours and hours of quests. Even with all that excitement, there is something so entertaining about the simplicity of puzzles that Wordle became the most popular talking point of the entire gaming industry when it was at the peak of its popularity. But what keeps word games and puzzles activities so fresh after hundreds of years?
I think it's the depth of the subject," Simon Anthony says. "With Sudoku, or cryptic crosswords, there's a certain delight that comes with certain types of answers and there is also the feeling of discovery.
Okay so I presented this idea to our facebook group and actually got a decent bit of pushback on it so I wanted to see what the Shard thought of it.
Also, this thread will likely get pretty Cosmere spoiler-y so if you haven't read much other than Stormlight, you may get spoiled so tread at your own pace (Ironic as I haven't read Mistborn Era 2 yet)
So, Wit totally bonded that Cryptic that Elhokar left, right? Okay, so now that we cleared that up: we know Hoid has the ability to just happen to be in the right place at the right time, but I had the inkling suspicion that Hoid was very interested in the abilities of Lightweavers (considering he already has a Yolish form of the magic) and that he might have been helping sort of "groom" proto-Lightweavers for a while now on Roshar so that he could get his hands on the magic system (something he has been doing throughout the Cosmere).
So hear me out, Hoid was aware of Shallan's speaking of the Immortal Words/First Ideal when he confronted her during her flashback sequence and even used emotional Allomancy on her during the confrontation. He also served as King's Wit for Elhokar, whom was also a proto-Lightweaver. While Hoid has had a hand in the lives of the other MC Radiants, it seems as though he was more focused on the ones that were on the brink of becoming Lightweavers. I'm thinking that Hoid might have been grooming these Lightweavers so that when one of them eventually got killed (like a super young girl and a son of an assassinated king), he would pick up the spren. The Order is perfect for Hoid, he even says that he has many truths that he can tell the Cryptic. He has made it very clear when he spoke to Dalinar in WoR (I think) that he will watch Roshar burn if that's what it takes to get what he wants. He may not necessarily want that to happen because seems pretty apparent from his letters in each books' Part Two epigraphs that he wants to stop Odium and is begging for help from outside forces. But I also could see Hoid lurking for a Lightweaver to get killed and to try and salvage the spren considering that obtaining Surgebinding is a MUCH more complex task than eating a bead or obtaining someone's Breath.
I could very well be wrong with this theory but I think it is neat regardless, but what do all of you think?