My Italian Grandmother Boiled, Peeled, and Mashed All Those Potatoes... for This?

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Okay, fine. I’ll stop making this sort of joke. (Only because I can’t think of another variation.)

Friend of the site, ML, has passed along a helpful nugget for anyone interested in playing around with anagrams.

Open a google spreadsheet. Put the alphabet along the top row, and the words you want the anagram for along the left column, then, in all the other spaces, put this formula:

=IF(REGEXMATCH($A2, B$1), "X", "")

There will be an X in the box if the word contains that letter and it will be blank if it doesn’t. Then you can take it from there. In a previous post I described the process I use when I want to create transgressive (as opposed to progressive) anagrams.

Reader mail:

I know that you don’t particularly like ReaList [Andy’s note: ReaList is an app by Greg Rostami that let’s you force something into a position from a list on a website] as there is friction in the selection process but it can be performed over the phone. I am fascinated by your routines and I was just wondering how would you perform ReaList over the phone? —CE

You know, I’m stuck on this one. I still haven’t bought the app, but my friend has, and I’ve talked with him a little trying to crack something really cool to do with it, but I haven’t had much luck. My primary problem with ReaList, as I mentioned in this post, is that it’s a better way to do the worst things that people are doing with Digital Force Bag. “Name a number, and I’ll predict the thing that lies at that number.” Is not something that I find inherently that interesting. It’s not a bad trick, it’s just a bland trick.

And it’s sort of an illogical trick. Pick a number. We’ll map that number to some other object (in a way in which you have no say). Then I’ll show that I predicted that other object. Huh? Why didn’t I just cut to the chase and write down the number on my prediction in the first place? That would have saved us time and been the exact same trick.

“You said 14? Okay… now scroll through the list. What’s at number 14. Goodfellas? If you had said 13 it would have been something else. If you had said 15 it would have been something else as well. Scroll all the way through, there is no other Goodfellas on the list. Now open my prediction… It says Goodfellas!”

Why didn’t it just say “Fourteen”? I mean, ultimately, that’s what the trick is. It’s not a trick about movies, it’s a trick about a number (that was then translated to a movie). If it was a trick about movies, I would have said, “Think of one of these movies.” (This is why I like the Xeno app. That trick is about whatever the list is about.)

That’s why with DFB, none of the routines I’ve written about are that direct in the way things are predicted. “You said that number, and that number means this thing, and I predicted this thing.” That just doesn’t appeal to me.

As far as doing the effect remotely, it’s nice to have that option, but if I’m going to do something over video chat or something like that, I want to do something that feels very analog. You already have the distance of the webcam between you and your spectator. I think—ideally—that should feel like the only technology in the equation. I want there to be something tangible in all of this. I don’t want to be on video-chat, have you look at something on a website, and then text you my prediction. That’s just my personal preference.

I’m not trying to shit on this app. I have a feeling it does what it does well. I just haven’t thought of a use for it yet that I really like and would warrant me purchasing it.

And, frankly, since video chat allows you to do a prediction of anything very cleanly using this method, anything less than that seems like a step backwards.

By the way, DM wrote in to suggest using an Ostin clip for the webcam predictions (search around, there are a bunch of different variations available). I don’t believe I’ve ever used one, but that certainly seems like it would work. Hang it from the ceiling by a ribbon so it’s in the shot the whole time and you’re good to go.

The free ebook for the people who entered the Better with Weber contest should be coming later this week. I’ll make a post here when it’s ready.