Gay Patriot has an excellent state-by-state round up of electoral fraud, and many of the stories involve ACORN. This post is being regularly updated, and a great way to keep up with all the news as it comes in.

As I mentioned in yesterday's entry on ACORN, part of the controversy of ACORN revolves around their close ties to Barack Obama. That inspired the following puzzle:



Click here to see the rules for this puzzle.

The object of this puzzle is to replace each letter with a number so that the equation is true.

The rules are as follows:
• Each letter represents only one digit, 0-9, throughout the problem.
• Different letters represent different digits, and no two letters represent the same digit.
• Any letter that represents the leftmost digit in a number never represents 0.
• When solved, the equation must be true.
• There is only one possible solution.

To start solving the problem, click on any box, and change that box's letter to a number, and then hit the tab key. If that letter appears more than once, the other instances of that same letter will also be changed to that same number. You won't be alerted if you enter the same digit for two different letters, so be careful!

The Hint button will tell you one digit, and which letter represents that digit. The Restore button will set each text box back to its original letter. The Check button will let you know whether your solution is correct.

Let everyone know how you did in the comments!

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There's been plenty of controversy surrounding ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), especially in the past month. Most, but not all, of the attention has focused on the irregularities of their 2008 election voter registration efforts, which have taken place over 18 states.

Many are concerned about possible voter fraud by ACORN, especially considering the large numbers of fraudulent voter forms they've provided (including Mickey Mouse in one case, and one person registering more than 70 times in another). There are also questions over their use of felons (some of whom were jailed for identity theft), and connection to Barack Obama himself.

Just last night, the 6th Circuit Court ruled that Ohio, due to ACORN ballots, must verify voter registrations (overturning a previous decision that said they didn't). As I write this, it's just coming out that more than 200,000 unmatched Ohio voter registrations were concealed from local election boards.

The stories about ACORN really started coming out when ACORN's Las Vegas offices were raided by Nevada state authorities. Because there are so many irregularities coming from so many states and center around so many voter registrations by ACORN, the talk of FBI investigations and possible charges under RICO is growing stronger every day. (Update: This is no longer just talk. The FBI has officially confirmed it is investigating ACORN.)

While we watch the full story develop, you should know that there are 18 states where ACORN has focused their voter registration efforts in 2007 and 2008 (according to ACORN's own site), many of which you've probably heard about on the news. How many of them can you name in 7 minutes?

(I've already mention two of them, so consider those freebies.)

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Every year at this time, Global Finance, an American magazine, release their list of the safest banks in the world. The list takes into consideration long-term credit ratings from Moody's, Standard & Poor's, and Fitch, as well as total assets of each bank.

At this writing, they haven't released the full 2008 list, but they have released the top 10. With the financial crisis going as it is today, especially with all the bank failures, this list arrives just in time, and will probably generate more interest than it has in previous years.

Can you name the Global Finance's 2008 10 safest banks in the world in 10 minutes?

I'll even start you off with a few hints:
• There's only one US bank on the list
• Places like WaMu (Washington Mutual), AIG, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Lehman Brothers aren't on the list.

Let everyone know how you did in the comments!

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It's been a somewhat slow weekend for real news (of course, now that I've said that, a major news story will break shortly), so I thought I'd post an interesting challenge (somewhat related to current events), suggested by a friend of mine who is a lawyer.

How many U.S. presidential and vice-presidential candidates since (and including) 1980, who were officially nominated by either the Democratic or Republican parties, can you name that have worked as lawyers/attorneys? You only have 8 minutes, which is 1 minute for each election since 1980.

The quiz will accept first and last names together, as well as last names only as entries (I can't do first names only, as there are too many with the same first names). Some of the names aren't easy to spell, so I've tried to set up the quiz to be as forgiving of spelling as I could. I've also created the quiz to allow common variations of first names.

Let everyone know how you did in the comments!

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The big news in technology today, of course, is the announcment and release of the new iPod Touch, released by Apple and announced by the formerly late Steve Jobs.

No, that wasn't Apple's only announcement. After all, there's also the new “nano-chromatic” iPod nanos, and the announcement of the new iTunes 8 download being made available. The poor iPod classic getting upgraded to 120GB almost gets lost in the, er, shuffle (which also got upgraded today).

However, out of all the new releases, we can make an educated guess that, out of all of today's announcements, it's the iPod Touch that is most likely to shake things up.

Speaking of shuffling and shaking things up, that's just what we're going to do with today's puzzle. Your challenge today is to see how many English words you can make from the letters in IPOD TOUCH in 10 minutes. There are 130 words, not including the words “pod” and “touch”, that can be made from this phrase. How many can you name?

Click here to see the rules for this puzzle.

The object of this puzzle is to name as many words as possible from the given phrase above.
• The clock will start counting down as soon as the first letter is typed in the answer box.
• Each letter may only be used as often as it appears in the given phrase.
• The only words included in the answers are those found in the Official Scrabble® Players Dictionary, as used in the USA, Canada, and Israel. Words from the Official Scrabble® Words International that do not appear in the Official Scrabble® Players Dictionary are not included.
• Other words may be excluded, as described in the article above.

Let everyone know how you did in the comments!

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We've heard plenty about hurricanes in this past week. The hurricane names you hear on TV aren't just made up by the media.

They're determined by the National Hurricane Center. Hurricane names are given alphabetically in order of appearance, with names beginning from A through W (except for Q and U). The lists of names are actually repeated every 6 years, and when one is really devastating, that hurricane name is retired. For example, Hurricane Katrinas was on the list in 1993 and 1999, but the 2005 one was so devastating that the name Katrina was retired.

While the news may have helped you with some of the 2008 hurricane names, how many of the 21 official hurricane names of 2008 do you know? You have 8 minutes to get as many as you can.



Let everyone know how you did in the comments!

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Now that the 2008 Beijing Olympics have come to a close, many people are focused on the final medal count. How many of the top 10 medal-winning countries can you name in 5 minutes?

This rank is by combined number of gold, silver, and bronze olympic medals won in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and the number will be shown as you enter the countries. Any countries you miss will be shown at the end of the quiz, along with their respective combined medal total.



Let everyone know how you did in the comments!

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This site is powered by numerous technologies and programs that make the puzzles possible. In this post, I'd like to give credit where credit is deserved by linking to the people, sites, and technologies responsible for making this site's content possible.

• Applet Depot: Eric Harshbarger's site features many Java applets that he has generously allowed to be used on any website. You can see his programs at use in my word search and FlipSwitch puzzle posts.


• FancyBox: This is the program that powers the Lightbox-like windows you see on this site.


• Java: Sun Microsystems' programming language is so versatile, it can be used online and offline.


• Javascript: The most commonly used scripting language on the web! Despite the name, it's vastly different from Java (above).


• Jigzone: This site not only lets you play jigsaw puzzles, but create and embed your own original puzzles, as well!


• jqPuzzle: A powerful jQuery plug-in that powers the slider puzzles you see on this site.


• jQuery: A popular Javascript library that vastly simplifies how Javascript, HTML, and CSS work together.


• Mazesmith: This is the powerful, yet simple, Javascript program that makes the custom-shaped mazes on this site possible.


• Timed Quiz Generator: An online program that lets you quickly and easily generate the HTML/Javascript/CSS code for your own custom How Many Xs Can You Name In Y Minutes?-style quiz.

As I continue to make use of new programs to develop puzzles on this site, this post will be updated with new information.

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