Entries this day: class-with-gg dream puzzles-from-mayumi

class with gg

20:29 Thursday 07 January 2016 JST

Extracted from emails to Mayumi:

Thank you for sending the lesson notes!  I'm glad you like yesterday's
lesson style.  I hope to give all of you more speaking time!  If you
think of any activities which might be fun, feel free to let me know.
:-)

I will be thinking of ways to make the lessons more interesting.
one idea I have is to break up in pairs..  I think we should mix
up the pairs each time so we have different partners each time.

Mayumi noticed the lesson yesterday was slightly different than ones I taught last year. I made fewer corrections and encouraged more practice speaking. Only trick is that the students are at different levels, so I need to take that into consideration.

dream

08:29 Thursday 07 January 2016 JST

In my men's group, we were asked to organize some images based on how important they were to us, and it was supposed to give some insights on our character. When it was my turn to do it, only a few of the cards have images. I kept looking at them and trying to figure out what was wrong. The people asked me and I said "this is a dream so the cards have changed" but I didn't wake up or otherwise become lucid.

puzzles from mayumi

20:29 Thursday 07 January 2016 JST

Extracted from emails to Mayumi:

At this point, I've only solved one puzzle.  I tried briefly to solve
one of the others, but was unable to do so after a few minutes.

But, more importantly, yes you guys certainly made great progress on
the one I finished for you!  It's a variant of one of my grandad's old
puzzles.  In a way, it's mathematically a variant of the round black
puzzle I showed you (with pegs that move in and out).


Regarding the puzzle, actually that one is the most difficult!  I was
able to solve the long chain puzzle in about 3 minutes, and I solved
the butterfly-looking puzzle in about 6 minutes.  The last one I still
haven't fully solved!  (I'm trying to get the puzzle back to its
starting position, but can only get about 1/8th of the way there.
(1/8 is my estimate, but if I understand the puzzle correctly, I'm
certainly not more than 1/4 of the way there, and I could be as far as
1/16th!  I believe you guys had it between 3/4ths to 7/8ths solved!)

The puzzles were apparently from a 100 yen shop. They're still neat and different than puzzles I've seen before.

The easiest one is similar to a linked horseshoes puzzle.

The second easiest features some rings wrapped / trappe on a curvy wire frame.

I still haven't solved the last one. I'm 99% sure it requires recursion.