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The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.

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8:20am on Saturday, 19th September, 2026:

Puzzles

Comment

Here are three variations of a puzzle I came up with while bored on a Stratford to Colchester train journey last week.

They all have the same principle: a five by five crossword grid contains six five-letter words, but no clues are given as to as to what the words might be other than their vowels.

Version one. The vowels of the words are put in their correct places. You have to guess the words from this.

Version two. As version one, but you're also told what consonants are present. You're not told how many times each one appears.

Version three. As version two, but you are told how many times each consonant appears.

Which of these do you prefer, or are they all rubbish?

8:03am on Friday, 18th September, 2026:

Three

Anecdote

So this week I went to London three times for the BIGGI conference. I took the train from Colchester to Stratford and the underground from Stratford to Mile End.

On all three journeys on the train to Stratford, I had to stand.
On all three journeys on the train back to Colchester, I got a seat.
On all three journeys on the underground from Stratford to Mile End, I chose to stand but was offered a seat.
On all three journeys on the underground from Mile End to Stratford, I had to stand.

How old must I look that on three separate occasions I was OFFERED A SEAT on the underground?! Augh!

Not only AM I old, I LOOK old, with it.

Naturally, I politely refused the offer of a seat, because I'm perfectly capable of standing.

I have to say, though, those morning commuters on the trains into London are merciless.

7:17am on Thursday, 17th September, 2026:

BIGGI Again

Anecdote

Yesterday I arrived suitably early for the BIGGI conference, having been delayed by "trespassers on the line" on Tuesday. I was delayed this time, too (by "overrunning engineering works"), but at least on this occasion I could claim compensation as I had a ticket for a specific train rather than an open ticket. They really don't want you to do this, though: I was required to upload a scan of my ticket's barcode, which given that my ticket was a digital one on my phone was something of a palavar. As any games-player will recognise, however, this only ensured I would not give up. I expect pence, if not pounds, to appear in my Paypal account sometime in the next twelve weeks.

The conference itself was excellent, as usual. There was a staggeringly good keynote by Constance Steinkuehler and Kurt Squire, which will entail my having to extend some of what I've written in Volume III of the Second Edition of Designing Virtual Worlds. I hadn't seen them in person for maybe two decades, so monopolised their time in conversation for a good 20 minutes before their presentation. For this, I feel no guilt whatsoever.

Apart from attending the other talks (none of which had enough time for all the questions people — myself included — wanted to ask), I spoke with a lot of old friends; these included former students. All of them have done amazingly well, although this is probably despite my influence rather than because of it. It's weird seeing them ten years older than they were when we first met: some haven't perceptively aged at all, others have done so gracefully, but others look twenty years older; I guess the portrait in their attic looks just like they did in their early twenties.

No, I'm not naming names, because they could punch me to the ground and kick me unconscious. Also, I myself look thirty years older than I did ten years ago.

I had lots of interesting conversations on topics to do with games, AI, babies, novel-writing, industry, academia, politics and retirement. I probably had more, too, but didn't take notes.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow, when hopefully I'll get to talk to the people I wanted to talk to but couldn't because either I or they were engaged in conversation with someone else when I spotted them.

This is the last IGGI conference, but if there's a reunion in ten years' time then I'll make every effort to attend (although if I'm dead by then, that may not amount to much).

6:26am on Wednesday, 16th September, 2026:

IGGI Graduates

Weird

I learned two things from the BIGGI conference yesterday.

1) Although artists kick up a huge fuss about AI being trained on their work, programmers don't give a toss and fully embrace it.

2) There's a rule that all male IGGI graduates must have beards.

9:44am on Tuesday, 15th September, 2026:

BIGGI

Anecdote

For many years, I've been involved with a doctoral training centre called IGGI ("Intelligent Games, Games Intelligence"), which has produced some 67 individuals with a PhD related to games and AI (and 16 more who've either withdrawn or are still writing up).

Every year in September, there's an IGGI conference. However, the 10-year funding programme has now run out, so this one will be the last. All the IGGI alumni have been invited to attend, and it seems that most will indeed be showing up. The conference has been renamed as BIGGI for the occasion, because it's bigger than its predecessors.

I'm on the Industrial Advisory Board so would be going anyway, but I'm keen to catch up with all the students I taught (it had training modules) so will be heading to Queen Mary University London today, tomorrow and Thursday. I'm looking forward to it, even if it does mess with the usual schedule for grandson-minding.

I shan't be staying for the social events, though, on the grounds that I'm anti-social.

Pro tip: when any event has been arranged that involves singing, that's the time to leave.

8:36am on Monday, 14th September, 2026:

Rose

Weird

We were given a small, decorative rose as a gift when relatives visited earlier this year. After the flowers died, my wife planted it in our rockery.

Since then, we've had heatwave after heatwave, and most of the plants in the garden have suffered terribly (we have some kind of brown, fibrous matting instead of lawn). The rose, however, flourished.

That's taller than me now. Gawd knows how it's thrived, it must have roots that tap into an underground stream or something.

I believe my wife has put it on her list of "plants to give a haircut".

7:52am on Sunday, 13th September, 2026:

Services

Weird

Looking through the Hornsea Gazette while I'm up north, I came across a two-page advertisement for these services:

My home town has certainly become more middle class since I emigrated to Colchester in the 1980s.

3:12pm on Saturday, 12th September, 2026:

Bettison's Tower

Anecdote

There's a folly in my home town called Bettison's Tower (or Bettison's Folly).

It's only open on one day a year. This year, it's today.

As I happen to be in my home town this weekend, visiting my stepmother, this morning we paid it a visit.

You can climb up it using ladders inside. It's an easy climb, holding onto ropes, but a tricky descent as you have to get back onto the ladders before you can come down.

It was worth it, though, becuase the views are great!

The tower was reputedly built in order that the servants of the owner could see when he was coming back from Hull, so they could have his meal ready when he arrived. Unfortunately, there's a tree in the way now, so I couldn't check out whether Hull Road is actually visible from the top.

All the years I spent growing up in Hornsea, and I had to wait until I was 66 to go up Bettison's Folly. I'm super glad I did, though!

7:42am on Friday, 11th September, 2026:

Croak

Anecdote

Now my online puzzle, Plaitword, is urging me to kill people.

Who needs manipulative AI when random numbers can perform just as well?

9:32am on Thursday, 10th September, 2026:

Wheelie Bins

Anecdote

Wheelie bins have finally been rolled out (boom boom!) to our part of the village. No longer do we have to put our waste in black (regular waste) or clear (recycleable waste) bags, which can be torn open by foxes for fun. Now, we get to put it in wheelie bins, which can be pushed over by teenagers for fun.

I quite like wheelie bins. They hold a lot more than the sacks — which we had to pay for with our own money — ever did, and they can take more awkward shapes. Large pieces of cardboard will fit.

We already had a wheelie bin for garden waste— which we had to pay for with our own money — but we didn't have to pay for the new, bag-replacement bins. Other parts of the country have had wheelie bins for years, but Colchester's residents put up a stiff resistance to them on assorted grounds that were all flimsy covers for "they're not what we're used to". Anyone who has a genuine problem with wheelie bins (say, being too infirm to use them) can receive special treatment and stick with using bin bags.

Some parts of the country have a wide variety of wheelie bins, with different colours for different uses. Glass in one coloured bin, paper in another, plastics in a third, food waste in a fourth, unrecyclable stuff in a fifth, garden waste in a sixth, and probably more, too. Colchester has small crates for glass, and kerbside caddies for food (with a fox-proof, if not teenager-proof, lid on them). The garden waste bins we had to pay for with our own money are brown. The new bins are both black, but one has a green lid.

The green-lidded one is for "dry recyclables", which is the council's way of saying you shouldn't put stuff you just washed or should have just washed in them. They're for paper, cardboard, plastics and metals. The black-lidded one is for everything not covered by some other bin or crate. We put them out on alternate weeks, because that saves on collections (i.e. refuse collectors). The recyclables bin probably holds more like a month's worth of recyclables at the rate we produce them, so I'm not complaining. Sometimes, in the old, clear-bag days, I would skip a fortnight for plastics because the bag had so little in it that it would have blown away in the wind.

As both the new bins are both black, just with different-coloured lids, this means that people who don't keep track of which week is for household waste and which is for recyclables can't just look outside to see rubbish everyone else has put out: they'll have to get closer to check the lid colour.

Our first pick-up was this week and went well. We obeyed the instructions to put household waste in bags before dumping the bags in the wheelie bin "to keep it clean inside", but not using bags for reyclables "so the bin holds more". These edicts are almost certainly to do with how the bins' contents are processed, rather than the convenience of citizens.

Here's a photo of the van that was actually delivering the bins. I'm a roving reporter!

No dismembered body parts were put in any of the bins this time round, but give it time.

8:42am on Wednesday, 9th September, 2026:

What We Did Before

Anecdote

I was invited to give two podcasts recently. I mentioned one of them on Sunday, and the other (which was actually recorded first) is now available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCBE6WUb8X8. The "Apple/Spotify version" is at https://pod.fo/e/5e1b80; the quotes are because I don't use either of those services so don't know what the "/" implies.

This one is more about the history of MUD, being on a channel called What We Did Before. It's much more tightly-edited than the previous one, so my rambling asides are heavily cut and the lengthy qualifications I made to some remarks are omitted; as a result, I seem somewhat more strident than usual. I'm not sure the ordering of the questions is the same, or indeed the wording of them, but it's been done in good faith and gets across the points well, given the 35-minute format. Unlike President Trump's reaction to the BBC's editing of one of his speeches, I shan't be suing for $10,000,000,000.

I haven't watched all the video, because not only do I not watch anyone else's podcasts that are longer than two or three minutes, I don't watch the ones I feature in for longer than that, either.

9:18am on Tuesday, 8th September, 2026:

Ye Foraye

Weird

As the Bayeuax Tapestry is now safely back on home shores, here's the first panel of a cartoon in Punch from 1848:

I don't know what the context is; if you were around in 1848, it'll probably be obvious to you.

I thought I'd blog it, because it's my steadfast belief that all maps of barely-known parts of France should be marked "Here are poodles".

8:25am on Monday, 7th September, 2026:

Lo

Anecdote

The reading on our electronic bathroom scales started to state the weight then flash "Lo". After a while, the delay betweeen its giving the weight and flashing "Lo" grew shorter and shorter.

Assuming the "Lo" wasn't of the "and behold" variety, I replaced the batteries. It stopped saying "Lo", but I immediately gained 2kg,

So, next time I need to lose weight in a hurry, I know what to do: put old batteries in the bathroom scales.

8:39am on Sunday, 6th September, 2026:

TPIF Podcast

Anecdote

A couple of weeks ago, I was interviewed for a podcast. It was supposed to be an hour long, but eventually it lasted two hours. You can see it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xw27N08xtQg if you're interested. You're sure to find something in there with which to disagree!

Most podcasts ask me roughly the same questions, but they don't let me ramble for two hours.

8:12am on Saturday, 5th September, 2026:

Not Trained

Weird

The Essex County Standard isn't the only local newspaper capable of mangling tragic headlines.

This is yesterday's front-page headline from its sister paper, the daily Colchester Gazette.

I had to work to parse that as intended.

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Copyright © 2026 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).