Cheating in Chess

Chess.com has closed roughly 165,300 accounts for cheating.

Cheating in chess is a deliberate violation of the rules of chess or other behavior that is intended to give an unfair advantage to a player or team. Digital chess engines, data clouds, personal server space, and high-tech miniature wireless devices have been handy tools to hoodwink judges and arbitrators.

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Bubble Wrap

The final Monday in January is known as Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day.

In 1957, Alfred Fielding and Marc Chavannes created three-dimensional wallpaper from sealed air pockets between shower curtains. They thought people would love the groovy design, but Bubble Wrap’s destiny was function over form. A great packaging material was born.

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Coloring Books

Stay within the lines

A coloring book is a type of book containing line art to which people are intended to add color using crayons, colored pencils, marker pens, paint, or other artistic media. Traditional coloring books and coloring pages are printed on paper or cards.

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Wooly Willey

Using a wand with a small magnetic tip at the end, a user could move the magnetite whisker material around Wooly Willy, giving him anything from bangs to beards to bowties.

Wooly Willy is a toy in which metal filings are moved about with a magnetic wand to add features to a cartoon face. In Smethport, Pennsylvania, in McKean County, near the New York border, there is a small auto parts store, tucked away on Fulton Street one-half block off Main. This used to be a toy factory, and it was the birthplace of Smethport’s most beloved citizen—an international icon whose fiftieth birthday Smethport celebrated in 2005: Wooly Willy.

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Anagrams

Doyle’s Space – Space Yodels

An anagram is a word or phrase formed by rearranging the letters of a different word or phrase, typically using all the original letters exactly once. The original word or phrase is known as the subject of the anagram. Any word or phrase that exactly reproduces the letters in another order is an anagram.

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Chess Pawns

“Chess is a war over the board. The object is to crush the opponent’s mind.” – Bobby Fischer

Historically, the pawn represents soldiers or infantry, or more particularly, armed peasants or pikemen (individuals carrying very long spears). In chess, they are the most numerous and weakest pieces on the board.

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The Top Christmas Toys of the Sixties

Which toys would you have asked Santa for?

I was born in 1958 which made me 2 to 11 years old in the sixties, the perfect age for these Christmas toys. Many homes in America had a Sears catalog with pages that had been dog-eared in hopes of receiving a toy from that very page. Barbie was 1 year old in 1960 and all the girls wanted one. The Ken doll was released by Mattel in 1961.

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Lego

Only the best is good enough

The name ‘LEGO’ is an abbreviation of the two Danish words “leg godt”, meaning “play well”. The LEGO Group was founded in 1932 by Ole Kirk Christiansen. The company has passed from father to son and is now owned by Kjeld Kirk Christiansen, a grandchild of the founder.

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Cooties

Careful on the playground

A child is said to “catch” cooties through close contact with an “infected” person or from an opposite-sex child of a similar age. Of all the germs kids are exposed to on the playground, there’s one they freak out about more than any other: cooties.

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POP! Vinyl

The figures have large squarish heads, disproportionately small bodies, and large, circular black eyes.

The Funko company began in 1998 when toy collector Mike Becker embraced his passion and founded a small company producing a nostalgia-themed bobblehead line called Wacky Wobblers. The company’s first manufactured bobblehead was of the well-known restaurant advertising icon, the Big Boy mascot.

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