As if the world needs another Wordle fan

I blame the Fluffster offspring. Knowing I can’t resist word games, he sent me the message above about Wordle, the daily puzzle that involves guessing a five-letter word — without any clues — in six tries or fewer. Since it sounded like fun, I started playing.

Two months have passed, and I’m hooked, along with millions of others. Some days I don’t get much done, but I always finish the Wordle. Fortunately, it doesn’t take long.

The Toronto Star recently reported that Canada beats the US at Wordle, and Torontonians are slightly ahead of Vancouverites (see below and article). As a West Coast resident, I must object. Toronto can’t be permitted to beat us at this game.

That said, I’m also suspicious of these results. The article relies on Twitter data, not official Wordle scores. How do we know these Twitter posts are reliable? Perhaps the writer of WordTips cherry-picked a time period that favoured Toronto to arrive at this ranking. I await more persuasive evidence before conceding defeat.

On days when I feel I need more practice, I tackle one of the one of the variations on Wordle.

Hello Wordl lets you choose longer words (5 to 11 letters), plus unlimited rounds. This site will be my fallback when the New York Times puts the currently free Wordle behind a paywall. Not because of the longer words and unlimited rounds, though; the satisfaction I get from playing is because I can complete it quickly and then look forward to the next day’s challenge. Oh, and because it’s free.

I do Quordle when I need a bigger challenge. Guessing four different words at the same time, using the same five letters in 9 tries or fewer, is hard. I’m slowly improving. I’ll keep trying. Just not every day.

Canuckle requires words unique to Canada. Some, like kayak or maple, make sense. Others are a stretch, like cabin or tower (the latter refers to the CN Tower — not so obvious outside Toronto). Apparently landmarks are legitimate solutions. This one’s for occasional use only.

Wordle lets you post your results (how many tries you needed) on social media without giving away the solution (see below). Inevitably, some folks mess up and reveal the answer instead. Ms. Fluffster usually does the Wordle first thing in the morning, and shares her results on Twitter with minimal comments. Then she blocks the spoilsports.

As I discovered when we tried to play the game together, the Fluffster offspring doesn’t try to guess the answer; he first plugs in words with as many different letters as possible to narrow down his options. Sure, this strategy increases his odds of success in the end, but sharply reduces the chance of guessing correctly in three tries or fewer.

We decided that we weren’t compatible co-Wordlers because I’m a gambler. I start out semi-methodically with a standard word or two, then make wild guesses. Consequently, I fail more often than he does. That’s ok. It’s not just about the win streaks. Today, I got it in two!

Crossword by Adrien Coquet from NounProject.com

Construction ate my neighbourhood

Above, a photo of the bend in my street, dug up and refilled for the umpteenth time to install new pipes. Due to numerous new developments underway, this occurs regularly. Almost every time I drive around that bend, I see workers peering down into a new hole in the street, moving pipes about, or guiding/driving front-end loaders to transport large piles of gravel.

My neighbourhood used to be quiet. The complex of six high-rise buildings I live in was surrounded by evergreens and mostly single-family homes. The residents of our apartments were the only significant traffic generator. Sometimes cars would back up onto the bridge (the only way to drive out of our complex), but those lineups were quiet. Outside of rush-hour traffic noise, the roar of the nearby river was the loudest sound I used to hear.

The street was entirely residential, with just a small corner grocery store that sold milk, bananas, and canned beans (the essentials, especially the bananas) within easy walking distance.

In 2017, several new construction projects were announced. The first would be a townhouse/apartment complex with a community recreation centre, a library, a small grocery store, and more. Those sounded like Good Things. Mr. Fluffster and I dreamed of having a decent coffee shop close by to spare ourselves that half-hour trek to the nearest cafe that meets our exacting latte standards.

Construction of that first development, now nearly complete (below), provided interesting viewing on daily walks. No sign of the promised grocery store, however.

Meanwhile, the corner grocery expanded its deli counter, started making sandwiches for the scores of construction workers, and added a couple of tables out front. No more canned beans.

In under a year, a row of townhouses replaced a half-dozen single-family homes torn down over one summer. The first crash-bang of house demolition jolted me awake at 7 am, but I soon got used to it. On Saturdays, however, I’d lie in bed cursing the early wake-up call.

I took this photo in 2018 of a home slated for demolition, with some local raccoons checking out progress. Curiously, it’s still standing vacant today, minus fence and raccoons. Its only apparent purpose — a temporary surface for “No Parking” and “Site Superintendent Parking Only” signs.

Still later, the corner store removed more shelves, added indoor seating and an ice cream counter, and expanded its menu. Goodbye 4-litre jugs of milk and bananas (my favourite food).

In 2018, we learned that our parking garage membrane was well past its best-by date, which explained why water seeped down walls and dripped onto our cars whenever it rained. Also why hunks of concrete periodically dropped off rusted-out rebar in the ceiling. The water-proofing membrane in the garage roof needed replacing ASAP, which would require removing the gardens, tall evergreens, and fountains installed on top of the garage, replacing the membrane, and restoring the gardens. Bye-bye 50-year-old aging fountains and even older trees. I’ll miss the trees.

Financing issues, red tape, and that pesky pandemic delayed this four-year project until late in 2021. By then we were so used to construction noise we barely noticed when our garage repairs started.

Now, we’re completely surrounded by construction. Not so bad really. Additional heavy equipment and a few more construction workers and traffic flaggers who are now like neighbours. The only (temporary) drawbacks: no shortcut to the strata office or garden to sit in. But we still have the river (below).

In March 2020, my work moved home, and construction noise briefly intruded. I adjusted. Closed the windows, muted my mic, and apologized for background sounds during videocalls and Zoom meetings. In time, either the noise — or my hearing — faded.

In its largest renovation yet, the corner store added umbrellas and decorative panels around their outdoor seating and dropped produce and canned/packaged foods altogether to become a café popular with the construction workers. I’ll have to try their lattes one day — if I can forgive them for ditching bananas.

I may have to; that nearby coffee shop is still a far-off dream.

Crows deserve more respect

While out for a walk recently, I took this photo of a murder of crows flying off together from the treetops. I’ve often watched crows do this without giving it much thought, but on that day it sparked my curiosity. Why do they gather? Where are they going? Professor Google provides an answer to the second question: Still Creek, Burnaby, to roost for the night.

Hitchcock’s The Birds was the first horror movie I ever watched. In one scene, a large flock of crows attacks a group of children as they leave school. As a 13-year-old, I found this terrifying. I re-watched the movie recently, and found that scene preposterous and laughably fake.

As some sources suggest, that movie may be one reason why crows have a dubious reputation. Yes, they do indeed attack people, though not in such large numbers as in the movie. And they usually have good reasons for doing so.

They’re actually quite fascinating, and not only because they’re brave enough to attack us larger creatures. For example, crows:

• mate for life and are highly social
• eat just about anything, including garbage or roadkill, which might seem disgusting but certainly demonstrates a remarkable ability to adapt to urban settings
• remember/recognize human faces and can somehow convey that information to other crows; if you harm one, they spread the word, and a crow who isn’t even the injured party might retaliate
• will recruit other crows to help attack anyone who threatens their young/nests
• can use tools, like one innovator who jammed the tip of a piece of wire into a crevice, then walked in a circle to bend the wire into a hook that it used “to extract a treat from the bottom of a tube” (In the company of crows, Canadian Geographic)

Canuck the Crow, a local human-raised Northwestern crow who disappeared in 2019, was once voted Vancouver’s unofficial ambassador (beating out Ryan Reynolds and Seth Rogen). His most notorious exploit? Flying off with a knife from a crime scene. Perhaps it would have incriminated him in the offence.

Crows often protest loudly in and around the stand of evergreens outside our apartment building (video below).

This group might have been harassing owls, who are known to attack and kill lone crows, given the chance.

Their most frequent target around here are bald eagles, a threat to the crows’ young. Crows will repeatedly dive bomb a lone eagle to chase it off (as in the video below).

A crow once pooped on me in a playground. Sitting with a friend on a bench under a tree, I felt something wet splatter onto my head. The bench faced the waterplay where our children were playing, so fortunately I could rinse most of the goop out of my hair.

I don’t blame that crow. Maybe our chatter woke it from a mid-day siesta after a grueling morning spent hunting for McDonald’s fries or collecting shiny gifts for crow friends like Gabi (The girl who gets gifts from birds). That well-aimed poop was effective: we immediately shut up and cleared the bench!

Next time you spot a crow, stop and watch for a while (not from directly below it, though).

Crow by Travis, Flock V-Formation by Kelsey Chisamore, and Crow by Zoran Djordjijevic from Noun Project

Please, just tell me how much

This notice recently appeared in our laundry room. The words “pricing update” caught my eye. Darn, laundry’s going up, I thought. Better check this out.

Unfortunately, the text that follows the title is mainly promotional drivel. The cost will increase in “the next few weeks.” If our resident manager hadn’t kindly hand-written a posting date at the top of the notice, anyone back home after being away wouldn’t know when it went up. Short on useful information, the posting also shows a washing machine like the ones we had 10 years ago.

The new price? A “small increase to the overall cost of a wash and a dry.” Ok then, Coinamatic, is that your idea of “small” or mine? And will an increase apply to both washers and dryers?

When we still had coin-operated machines that accepted only quarters and loonies, price hikes had to be at least 25 cents for both washers and dryers, adding 50 cents to the “overall cost.” Now that we conveniently use cards instead of coins, might the increase be smaller? Ten cents “overall” sounds nice. I could handle a nickel more per wash/dry.

I doubt they’re planning such a small increase. But I digress from my main point: the notice’s shortcomings, as described above. Coinamatic, you can do better.

As I took the photo above, I imagined a conversation about it at the Coinamatic office in BC. Their head office is in Mississauga, Ontario, so the Richmond branch is probably small, with at most three staff. Mahmoud, the service technician, is out on repair calls most days.

Milton (branch manager): “Hey, Amira! Draft me a notice about a price increase for the Utopia Estates laundry room, ok?”

Amira (front desk admin, sales rep, dispatcher, overworked, frazzled): “Utopia, sure. How much and when do you need it?”

Milton: “Need it yesterday. Head office emailed me in December, and the increase kicks in next week.”

Amira: “They emailed you in December, and you’re telling me now!? Don’t you remember I’ve got to finish the annual report and weekly service reports for head office today?”

Milton: “Yeah, yeah, I forgot all about it. I get too many bloody emails. Just put in the usual stuff about the value of our services, and that the cost’s only going up a bit, blah, blah. Oh, and stick in a snapshot of a pretty woman happily doing laundry.”

Amira (after muttering under her breath for a minute): “Why don’t I just dig out the one you did in 2012? It has all that stuff in it already.”

Milton: “Good idea! Then you’ll have time to figure out why YouTube keeps crashing on my laptop before quittin’ time.”

Too bad Milton never gave any thought to what residents of Utopia Estates might like to know. And Amira, I’m rooting for you.

Why I abandoned teaching

Glendon Hall Manor, Glendon College, York University, where my post-secondary education began

When I started university, some people asked, “What will you do with your degree? Teach?” They couldn’t conceive of any other reason to major in English. Nobody believed me when I said I just wanted to read books. I had no goal in mind.

I got my degree, and worked in offices for a while (and got fired, but that’s another story). Then I decided to go to graduate school. By the time I started my PhD, I was considering the possibility of teaching.

My first teaching job was a fluke. I’d sent applications to several Toronto community colleges, without much hope. Temp office work loomed when I got a call from the administrator of a college apprenticeship program. Could I substitute teach communications for six weeks? Yes, of course, I said. Could I start tomorrow? Umm, ah, yes, sure, I stuttered.

I was naïve. I thought my persuasive cover letter had worked (it sure wasn’t my experience-free résumé). Truth? As a colleague later revealed, I was the only one to answer the phone at 9 pm on a Sunday night.

The next day, I met the instructor I was replacing. He was taking the second half of the semester off. Course content was identical for all his classes: how unions work in Ontario, and writing memos and résumés.

I would teach three classes of apprentices: plumbers, glaziers, and bricklayers. All men. The outgoing instructor briefly introduced me to his classes: “Hey, guys, you’re getting a girl now! Behave yourselves.” Never saw him again after that.

At my first class with the plumbers, I asked what they wanted to learn. They begged me to ditch unions and résumés. As third-year apprentices, with future jobs already secured, they knew more about unions than I did, and they didn’t need résumés. They wanted to learn how to write reports and invoices. I spent the next two days cramming reports and invoices, and learned a lot about teaching from those plumbers. Most importantly, how to listen to my students.

I asked the bricklayers the same question. They didn’t have an answer. Like the plumbers, they were apprentices, not job seekers. This communications course was a program requirement. Agreeable but unmotivated, they struggled to write. So I taught them basic sentence structures.

The apprentice glaziers, also with future jobs lined up, were suspicious. Why was I asking them what to teach? I gave up on getting their input and started with report writing. I brought some samples to class, then asked them to write their own work-related reports. As we were reading these out loud and discussing improvements, one glazier, looking more and more enraged as the class went on, sprang out of his seat and roared, “What is this s**t? F**king Shakespeare?” Most of the class leapt out of their seats and started shouting as well.

Uh-oh, I thought. The end of my teaching career. Will they get violent? Where’s the nearest exit?

To my surprise, however, they were all shouting at the angry glazier. “Shut up, you a**hole! Show some respect! Stop swearing at the lady!” I’d obviously graduated from “the girl” I’d been introduced as, and it was ok to swear, just not at me.

This vocal defence of me by the majority set the tone for the rest of the course. They were respectful and, if not always enthusiastic, at least compliant. Even the angry glazier made progress.

University students I taught in subsequent years were less respectful. First-year engineers loudly objected to their grades and demanded rule books and shortcuts to improve them. While motivated, they were frustrated by the inconsistencies of the English language.

One tried to cheat, turning in an obviously plagiarized essay. I agonized for a week over what to say to him. Needlessly. Just asking him to stay after class proved enough. He confessed and apologized before I even opened my mouth. He got an F on the essay, and never did it again.

I was lucky. Mr. Fluffster has encountered far more cheating. He’s written about that in Dear Cheater, Tell Me Why?

The last English course I taught was mandatory for all first-year students. Unsurprisingly, they had a wide range of writing abilities. Some didn’t know enough English to pass. A few were repeating the course for the second or third time; frustrating for them and me. Most were unmotivated students who did just enough to scrape by, and vociferously disputed every mark below an A. I had no time or energy left to enjoy teaching the few who did well.

When I marked student essays, my fingers itched to fix the grammatical mistakes myself. Teaching helped me recognize that my calling was editing, not teaching others how to write.

At my PhD thesis defence, I listened while the academic panel argued about the shortcomings of my dissertation. I don’t remember any positive comments but was awarded the degree, so maybe I’ve just forgotten. 

As their voices rose and fell, I thought: I don’t like these people. And I don’t want to keep teaching.

That was when I decided to become an editor.