Another day gone by, and falling out of the Pentamind is starting to look like a really good move. I've spent this morning in a little upstairs room grappling with the first test paper in the Intelligence competition. Now, what I call "intelligence" seemed to have very little to do with it, it was largely to do with knowledge of word definitions. To my mind, having come across a word or not in the course of your lifetime is 95% luck, and very little intelligence is needed.

To make matters worse, one particular question required knowledge of a chess term - since it was likely that some contestants would be high-level chess players and others wouldn't know a pawn from a prawn, it seemed somewhat unfair.
Translation: I don't know a pawn from a prawn¹.

It was another late start, too. Traffic problems, apparently. Still, enough of my whinging. I don't even know where I'm placed yet, for all I know I might be lying first.

Yesterday evening I took advantage of a spare hour to try out one of the new games being exhibited at MSO, and it was rather a good one. It's called Borderline, and resembles a cross between chess and draughts whilst simultaneously being absolutely nothing like either. It's the kind of game where you can move from a clear advantage to an immediate loss in one stupid move. I know, because I did.

It was rather startling to be locked into combat for an hour on one game whilst watching a neighbouring board complete two games in ten minutes flat, and shows that it's a very promising game.

I also had my evening fix of Scrabble - but there's only so much that can be said about Scrabble without getting tedious, and I have a feeling I passed that point a couple of days ago. Who wants to know about my dull 200-point win over Terry Kirk? Absolutely no-one, so I'll let it pass unmentioned.

¹ Just for the record Nick, here is the difference explained - GR

Prawn

Pawn