Archive for 2024

Football Winner Guesser Results – 2023

It is time once again to update Some Blog Site readers on the results of my Some Fun Site project to create a more accurate football prediction method.
The 2023 NFL season is over, and here are the most accurate methods for predicting regular-season game results (wins-losses):

  • MPWHFA: 61%
  • ITPLS: 60%
  • MPWLS: 59%
  • MPW: 59%

If you think you have a formula that can predict the winner of an NFL game better than 61% of the time, let me know and I’ll add it to the list.
(For the ideas behind the methods, please visit the Some Fun Site page.)

You are wearied with your many counsels; Let now the astrologers, Those who prophesy by the stars, Those who predict by the new moons, Stand up and save you from what will come upon you.

Isaiah 47:13

All-Haiku Bowl Results, 2023

Okay, okay, it is 2024 at this point, but the results are headlines as 2023 because they match with the 2023 predictions made in 2023 for the 2023 season. Also, the results are not all-haiku, just the predictions were. A more accurate title would be “Results for the All-Haiku Predictions made in 2023”.

Before the bowl games commenced for this past college football season, I made some predictions. Here, for your reading enjoyment, is the tally of those predictions. Note that the results are not in haiku form, in contrast to the predictions.

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New Word Operation

I happened to be reading the back of the cereal box during a recent breakfast, and it had some activities to try.

image of the back of a Cheerios box with activities

So I tried them, and I was particularly disappointed with the word challenge. Here is the challenge. You try it and see what you think.

image of the crunch time word challenge on the back of the cereal box

Here are the base words: spoon, cloth, milk, light, break, wash, berry, table, straw, star, blue, cloth, man, fast.

And they want to know how many words you can crunch together to make a new word.

My answer: 14, but that uses each base word only once. My new word is lightmilkclothbreakwashberrytablestrawstarbluefastclothman. It sounds like a superhero of some sort. And it reminds me of some German words.

They did give a hint that some words may be used more than once. I think they didn’t notice they put cloth in there twice. And if I can repeat words, then the answer to how many words I can crunch together to make a new word is “infinite”.

But I think that’s not what they meant. They’re looking for compound words, with just two halves. So the question should have been “How many new compound words can you make by crunching together these words?”

In that case, my answer is 149. That’s with 13 total words (I removed the duplicate “cloth” because it wouldn’t make any unique combinations), so each word can make 12 compound words when combined with the 12 other words. Do that 13 times, and you get 156 total words.

Then I added one more because I can make “clothcloth” as a new compound word. So up to 157.

Then I have to remove existing words, because the question was how many new words I can make. So there were 8 existing words like strawberry and breakfast, that brings the 157 down to 149.

Let’s see what the cereal box says the answer is.

image of the crunch the numbers challenge on the back of the cereal box

Nope, they say the answer is 8. That makes no sense. They said they wanted new words, and the answer is only old words.

Well I like my new words, such as washtable and fastlight and clothberry.

Anxiety in a person’s heart weighs it down, But a good word makes it glad.

Proverbs 12:25