All of the kids in this book use problem-solving skills—but they use a variety of different types of intelligence to solve those problems.

The point is not what influenced the outfit on the show, but how the outfit on the show influenced fashion. For example, at my junior prom in 1987, I wore a tux based on the style and color scheme—it was called “The Miami Vice Collection.” Also, watch flashback episodes of “Friends;” they mock the same trend. Fred’s…

The ground seemed stable when our ship touched down:
“No atmosphere, just craters, rocks and dust.”
We suited up and took a look around;
Hayes took some geo-samples of the crust...
You know how an ant-lion builds a pit
With sloping sides to capture any prey?
He waits down at the bottom part of it
For any ants that stumble…

By contrast, Steve Kerr has such an open-to-other-ideas framework that the big line-up change with Iguodala didn’t come from him but from several rungs down the coaching ladder. While Kerr’s not a genius—he’s a rookie coach too, after all—he is smart enough to know what he doesn’t know. Blatt’s not a horrible coach,…

For me, it had to be Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It helped me connect with lifelong friends, it taught me to question a lot of the things I’d always assumed about the world around me, and it gave me a richer, deeper appreciation of the written word, especially satire. As a bonus, it helped me…

Yeah, that was my point: Andrew listed the 2015 honorees, but included Miyazaki, who is listed with other 2014 honorees—but there’s nothing on the website about the 2015 inductees.

Hm. According to the website, Miyazaki was a 2014 inductee. But it doesn’t even list the others. Is there a link to the actual announcement?

Definitely unintentional, but cool to know. I just went with straight iambic pentameter, following the same weird rhyme scheme Shelley uses.

Ozymandias, 2018

I met a soldier from a foreign land
Who said, “Four-hundred tons of twisted steel
Crashed in the desert. Near it, on the sand,
Half-burned, a shattered drone-droid lies, whose seal
And serial numbers we ran through our scans
Showed that the group we’d sought had struck again.
We thought we’d put an end to…

It’s located near Salem, MA, naturally. It would be the Corey Academy, after Giles Corey (go back and read “The Crucible” if you’re rusty on the Salem trials). And because it’s an American school, it absolutely sucks at Quidditch, but it has a variant of the game that’s played professionally only here and in…

I’m thinking 7. The number on the bottom could be the cumulative strokes of a pen to write the top row. The 1 takes two strokes (2), the 3 takes two strokes (total of four), and the 5 takes three strokes (total of seven).

And Empire Strikes Back was better than Star Wars. But we still call the whole thing Star Wars.

Thanks. You are too kind.

The troll had made a stunning move.
The dragon weighed his choices.
He called on ancient ancestors
And listened to their voices.
He waved a claw; the bones arose
And clattered into position.
“Hm,” said the troll, and rubbed his chin,
“’Twas not a good decision.”
He raised his staff, the skeleton
Moved to a spot and stood.
The…

I realized that if the outer pen shared sides, as I originally suggested, I would have five pens in total, so now it just surrounds the inner three.

Three pens, in a diagonal, with the top sharing a corner with the middle, the middle sharing a corner with the bottom. Place seven pigs in each pen. Then, build one large pen that encompasses the three smaller pens, sharing a portion of its sides with the pens on top and bottom. That pen contains 21 pigs.

I think the journal conceit allowed you to throw in enough to suggest the backstory without giving it away. My only concern would be that it would be hard to go much further with it, dramatically, and keep the same tone—that is, it’s hard to imagine a second “essay” dealing with the next part of the story. Maybe you…

Thanks. It was fun.

Well done. Great set up, and the vocab is really consistent, making it feel more “real.”