mike's web log

I like doing crossword puzzles — they’re a challenge, I learn all sorts of things, and they're saving my brain.[1] I occasionally think that it would be fun to try my hand at writing a crossword puzzle.

The last couple of years I've also been taking classes in Old English, the language of the Anglo-Saxons. At some point these two interests came together and I thought well, how about a crossword puzzle in Old English?

I've done three of these now. It's been … a learning experience. (If you want to try your hand at them, they're on my Old English page.)

The first lesson, naturally, is that writing a crossword puzzle is not a trivial exercise. And I've had to think about and/or learn a bunch of other stuff as well:

• No grid layout for me!
• Self-imposed guidelines
• Student vocabulary
• Grid size
• Number of crosses
• Word length
• Long versus short vowels
• Writing clues
• Grammar
• Publishing the puzzles
• Finally …
• Suggestions?

No grid layout for me!

I learned pretty quickly that I probably was not going to be able to create — at least, not at first — the traditional grid-style puzzle:

When I began, I decided I should do a puzzle in which all the words pertained to a specific theme, such as words for animals or words for war-gear. This was easier for me and, I thought, would help solvers. However, it meant that I was working with a very limited vocabulary (wordhord) in Old English for a given puzzle.

I believe that to create a grid-style puzzle, you have to be able to draw on a comparatively large body of words. Also, that if you do a traditional themed puzzle, there is a thematic element to the puzzle, but not every word has to be related to the theme.

But to help out solvers (who are students), I wanted all the words to be thematically relevant, hence the aforementioned limited vocabulary.

Crossword grids also have their own set of rules about things like "rotational symmetry" (see the Wikipedia entry on crosswords), and that all was going to be too complicated for what I could do initially.

Anyway, because I didn't think I could do a grid, I created what I think of as a Highlights-style crossword — the words cross, but they aren't constrained to any particular shape. I don't know if Highlights — a magazine for young children — actually does this style of crossword, but I associate my non-grid crosswords with children's magazines. My first puzzle looks like this:

Self-imposed guidelines

Because I wasn't creating traditional grids, I ended up imposing some rules of sorts on myself as I proceeded in my journey (mīn sīþ) to crossword construction.

Student vocabulary

For the puzzles I've created so far, I've wanted to limit the wordhord to terms that students would have encountered. I reckoned that meant vocabulary and various allusions from readings for first-year students — these days, that includes the book Osweald Bera and Ælfric's Colloquy. I felt comfortable including so-called "poetic" vocabulary, as long as the words are from very well-known poems like "The Battle of Maldon" that are typically assigned to post-beginning students.[2]

Limiting myself to student vocabulary is a big reason it feels like I can't create a grid puzzle — there might be enough words overall in the OE corpus from which to create a grid (where the words can include all inflected forms), but I strongly suspect this would involve comparatively rare/obscure words.

"Grid" size

A typical crossword grid is 15 x 15 squares. I wasn't working with a grid, hence didn't have that constraint, but I decided that I should limit the horizontal sprawl of the puzzle. I currently limit myself to about 20 across. Because I don't have a square layout, down can be shorter than across.

Number of crosses

The point of crosswords is that people can guess words based on letters in words that cross. Thus the constructor has to provide enough crosses to give solvers adequate clues.

This has been the most vexing part. OTOH, I have it slightly easier because I can pick where I want the crosses to be — in a grid, most words need crosses for all their letters. In my Highlights-style puzzles, it's ok to have a lot of asymmetric blank space:

The number-of-crosses limitation is where I'm learning the most and where I'm evolving my thinking. I've decided latterly that words longer than four words must have at least two crosses. I recognize that this is paltry compared to grid puzzles, and having only two crosses definitely makes some of the words hard to guess.[3] I'm happy when I can do three or more crosses for a long word, but those can be hard to find and fit in.

Constructor note of sorts: after I've assembled my wordhord and started laying out the puzzle, I end up doing a lot of regular expression searches in my wordhord along the lines of "find a word where the second letter is Æ" or whatever. Sometimes this forces me to back up and change the layout because there just ain't words that will cross in the available space.

Word length

This is related to the previous. Crosswords are typically anchored by a number of longer words from which you can hang other words.

But to help solvers guess longer words, you need a lot of crosses, which I am lacking. I'm including longer words (see the image below), and I've tried to increase the number of crosses on longer words to provide more clues, as noted earlier.

A long word (bordweall "shield wall") that has three crosses. Shorter words have two crosses; three-letter words generally have (alas) only one.

But until I create a puzzle using a proper grid, this lack of crosses is always going to be a problem. In the meantime, I'm attempting to address this via the clues, as I explain later.

Long versus short vowels

Old English made a distinction between long and short vowels — gōd is "good" but god is "god"; gēoc is "help, safety" but geoc is "yoke". I decided to just ignore such distinctions, at least for now.[4]

Writing clues

A lot of the fun in crossword puzzles (especially the NYT puzzles later in the week) is the cleverness of the clues, which often feature lexical misdirection. I'm in a different situation — I need to make my clues as clear as possible. Having clever clues in Old English would be hard for me and for the solvers.

As an aside, writing clues was a really fun part of the whole exercise.

Here are some example clues. (Slightly confusingly, O=ofer "across"; A=adūn "down")

Puzzle #1, "Say who I am"

2O: They call me Unready (= ÆÞELRED)
17O: William conquered me in 1066. (= HARALD)
8A: I left my arm in the hall. (= GRENDEL)
12A: I'm a spirit that lives in heaven. (= ENGEL, "angel")

Puzzle #2, "Kinds of animals"

3O: They say that I am man's best friend. (= HUND, "hound/dog")
25O: I swim in the sea or in a river. (= FISC, "fish")
2A: We pull a plow through the field. (= OXAN, "oxen")
22A: In a certain story I ate the grandmother (= WULF, "wolf")

Puzzle #3, "War-gear"

For the third puzzle, I was working with a lot of words that meant the same thing — for example, I included several different words for "spear" or "sword". I ended up doing cross-references to indicate these synonyms. For example:

2A: A weapon that you throw or thrust with. Possibly its name indicates which people/country it came from. (= FRANCA, a type of spear said to come from the Franks).
9A: Another word for 2A. We still use this in new English. (= SPERE, "spear")
12A: The foremost part on 2A or 4A or 5A (= ORD, "point")

The clues have to abide by the sacred rule that you cannot mention the word that you're cluing. In the third puzzle with its many synonyms, the extensive cross-references helped me avoid ever using words like "sword" or "spear" in the clues — while, admittedly, making it harder to read and more dependent on getting the first word right.

Grammar

Because this is all in the service of learning Old English, I had to make sure the grammar was correct in my clues. I happen to know from a recent session with other students that this has not always been the case, whoops.

Something I have not done very much is to lean on inflected forms of words — plurals or oblique cases for nouns, conjugated forms for verbs. Doing so would give me more flexibility with length (I think?). I don't know if it would introduce other problems, though. And of course the clues would have to be carefully written to solicit the correct noun case or verb conjugation.

Publishing the puzzles

There are tools that can create a crossword for you, but I wasn't sure if I could use those with OE words. So I've been laying out the puzzles as tables in Google Docs. Very primitive.

I've had to do a lot of fooling around with table settings, as well as messing with superscript numbers in the cells and so forth. It works, sort of, but it's not ideal.

More importantly is how to make this available to others. Google Docs has a feature where you can give people a link, and when they click it, it makes a copy of the Google Doc.

This is good — I don't want people filling in my copy of the puzzle. However, it only works for people who have their own Google accounts, and not everyone does.

As a backup, I've created PDF versions of the puzzles. These aren't interactive, but people can print out a puzzle and fill it in.

This whole question of the mechanics of creating and publishing a puzzle wants more investigation.

Finally …

What's a good word for "crossword puzzle" in Old English? Obviously, it's not an attested word. But that should not daunt us!

Old English, like German, is a language that welcomes compounds. What I ended up with was Wordgespan rædels, which breaks down like this:

• word: "word" or "words"
• gespan: "place where beams of cross intersect" (Sweet's dictionary) or "a joining" (Wiktionary)
• rædels: "riddle". I liked this because there's a rich tradition of so-called riddle poems in OE.

I could also have used wordgespan plega ("word-cross play") or wordgespan gamen ("word-cross game") or wordgespan lac ("word-cross sport"). But I'm not unhappy with rædels.

Suggestions?

It's early days yet for my attempts at (1) writing crosswords and (2) doing it in Old English. If you have experience in either or both of these areas, I'd love to hear about it!

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[1] My wife, who is a healthcare provider and has worked in neurology, disputes this :) [^]

[2] The "Maldon" poem is a fun way to learn about the many words available to Anglo-Saxon poets for referring to swords and spears and shields and general mayhem. [^]

[3] We've done a couple of these puzzles in our OE conversation sessions, and there are definitely times when it takes several people working together to home in on a word. [^]

[4] I feel a little bit supported in this decision because in the New York Times crosswords they ignore the distinction between ñ and n (e.g. año and ano, to the amusement of Spanish speakers). [^]

I love donuts[1] and always have. I grew up on places like Winchell's Donut House, and then later Dunkin' Donuts when that company expanded west. In our day, there were raised glazed and cake donuts and apple fritters, and the variations were primarily in what they dipped these basic pastries in. Since then, donuts have changed.

One change was the introduction of "exotic" flavors would have been unknown to the Winchell's of my youth. Voodoo Doughnut popularized (I believe?) the Bacon-Maple Bar and has offerings like a glazed ring topped with Cap'n Crunch. Legendary Doughnuts outside Seattle has donuts that re-create the flavors of candy bars, like Twix and Snickers.

People have also rethought the dough from which donuts are made. Voodoo has a Churro Cheesecake donut. Many places now offer cronuts/doughsants, which are donuts made with croissant dough, a brilliant culinary innovation.

You can also go artisanal, let's call it. General Porpoise in Seattle offers high-end Lemon Tiramisu and Chocolate Marshmallow donuts. 9th and Hennepin Donuts in (West) Seattle offers flavors like Blue Corn Masa Cake Donut with Chili-Honey Glaze, and Filled Brioche with Duck Egg Chevre Pudding and Chocolate Glaze. You order for pickup at a specific time, and they make the donuts for your timeslot and serve them hot from the fryer ("as they should be").

For donut fans, it's a bonanza. Even so, when I go to a donut place, I find myself going back to the familiar donuts of my youth. I like the exotics, but I've particularly come to appreciate the pleasures of a basic donut, well made.

A cake donut that's fresh — that still has a slight crunch to the crust — is an entirely different experience than one that was made 12 hours ago (let alone a bag of Little Debbie donuts from the grocery store). Krispy Kreme made a business out of selling fresh-made glazed donuts at industrial scale, and I can see why it's been successful.

It's pretty rare to find an emporium where you can get a pastry that makes you think that you've gotten the perfect donut. There are some shops, including well-patronized ones, where I've learned that I'll never get that experience. :(

But there are some standouts. In San Francisco, I had that experience at Johnny Donut on Fillmore. And I did love Bob's Donuts in SF enough to go back a couple of times. Randy's in Inglewood (LA). Darren's Donuts in Mount Vernon, WA. Stan's Donuts in Chicago makes an amazing cronut.

Here in Seattle, my current favorite basics-done-right shop is Aurora Donuts & Ice Cream, a no-frills, takeout-only, we-prefer-cash place that's on a sketchy stretch of Highway 99. To me, their Buttermilk Old-Fashioned is the epitome of a cake donut.

(I'll note as a separate criterion that because of my youthful experiences, I have it in my head that donut shops should be open 24 hours. Winchell's is, and I believe a lot of Dunkin' Donuts shops are. Bob's in San Francisco is. When I was in Cupertino, CA once I simply had to visit Donut Wheel late at night. I acknowledge that being open 24 hours is not economically practical for all donut shops.)

I've considered making donuts at home, but all that frying seems messy. Besides, the donut ecosystem seems to be thriving, so I'll probably never run out of places to try no matter where I travel. And while it's by no means a healthy epicurean quest, at least it's a pretty affordable one. :)

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[1] Donut, doughnut, whatever. I like the shortened spelling. [^]

In an earlier post, I talked about how many products have a user interface (UI) that's jammed with features that most people don't need or use. Your stove, your digital camera, Microsoft Word :) — there's just so much stuff to wade through to achieve a few basic functions.[1]

A nice UI

Why is this, and how should product UIs be designed?

The why part has many branches. Let's start with feature creep, aka feature-itis. If your product is in a competitive market, and your competitors offer an attractive feature, it's very hard to resist the drive to add that feature to your product also.

Let's say that you make a photo-editing app. Your competitors come out with a "magic eraser" that lets people seamlessly remove objects in the photo, and they tout this feature endlessly in their advertisements. Are you going to be able to say that no, most of your users don't really need that, and it costs a lot to develop, and it junks up your UI?[2] Not likely. Soon enough, your engineers have managed to cram a magic eraser into the ever-lengthening menu options in your product.

UIs can also be bad because they're designed by the wrong people. Jeff Atwood once memorably made this observation about professional programmers: "Perhaps the greatest sin of all is that we consider ourselves typical users", to which he added, "if you are letting me design your software, your project is in trouble".

In the world of image editing, the open-source tool GIMP has a reputation for having a terrible UI. Even people who are familiar with PhotoShop have trouble using it, let alone people who aren't experienced and just want to tweak a photo.

GIMP UI

The thing is, GIMP is an extremely powerful tool. It can do almost anything; moreover, you can customize the UI extensively. But you must already have domain expertise before you can use GIMP effectively, and it's hard to get over that initial and very steep learning curve. GIMP thus illustrates a common UI fault: GIMP was designed by image-editing experts for image-editing experts.

There are also practical reasons for a more-complicated UI, such as cost. Oven manufacturers add controls for timed oven functions, for convection, for probe-based temperature controls, for Sabbath mode, and for other features that are used by a relatively small number of users. But all of those controls are (usually) right there in front of every user, because it's not cost-effective to create separate lines of appliances only for people who want those features.[3]

Ok. How can a UI be designed better? To start, let me note that I am not a UI/UX designer. However, I am a user and I pay some attention to UI.

One approach is to keep the feature set simple. Look at the following photo. On the left, a single-function watch that has one control (the crown) with one setting (pulled out) that lets you set the time. On the right, chronograph (watch + stopwatch) that has a crown with multiple positions (halfway pulled out for date, fully pulled out for time) and two additional knobs, each with multiple modes, for managing the chronograph.

If you just want a watch that tells the time, and mostly unlike your stove or digital camera, you can choose a watch that has the feature set you're interested in and that has (or doesn't have) corresponding UI complexity.[4]

In fact, this is what Google Docs has done. They don't try to achieve feature parity with Microsoft Word; they provide what in their estimate is the 20% that the 80% need.

If a product does include advanced features, it might be possible to design the UI with progressive disclosure: the product "defers advanced or rarely used features to a secondary screen, making applications easier to learn and less error-prone" (NN/Group). Or to quote Alan Kay, "Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible."

One example of this is a set of controls that show up only when the user asks for them. For example, in Google Docs and Word, there's a set of table-editing tools that don't appear until the user explicitly clicks the option to expose them:

An interesting example of this is Google Search. Even after 20+ years of product development, the interface remains dead simple — a single text box:[5]

(I'm lying, but only a little bit — there are a few menu items, and the search box has icons for doing image search or voice search.)

In fact, Google Search supports advanced features like wildcards, string-literal searches, Boolean operators, site-specific searching, a bunch more — just the sorts of things that an expert search-user might want. But the availability of these options is invisible, hence not an impediment, to the person who just wants a simple search.

More fundamentally, the way to design a UI that helps users is to talk to your users. One of the things users will talk to you about is not what features they want, but what they want to accomplish.

A common trait of some of these bad UIs is that the designer's goal was to expose features.[6] But most users don't want to look at your inventory of features. They're just trying to get something done: a task. I want to write a report for my work. I want to crop this image. I want to roast these vegetables. I want to take a photo of my cat.

Designing UI around what users want to do, and making it simple to do these things, is not easy. This is expressed by a cite often attributed to Steve Jobs, who was responsible for some of the best UI in tech: "Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works."

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[1] I'll note again that I am a power user of Word, and that I actually use a lot of Word features, so I appreciate them. But I get that for most people for most tasks, it can be overwhelming. [^]

[2] Magic eraser used here for illustrative purposes only. Maybe it's not a magic eraser but a sky filter or a "panoramic view" or a "cinematic photo" or an "enhance" feature. [^]

[3] Sort of ironically (?), a feature that many ovens have that people probably shouldn't use is the self-cleaning feature. [^]

[4] Two notes here. One, the mechanics (in a mechanical watch) of how the crown works to adjust time and how the buttons control the stopwatch are very clever! And they're probably intuitive to long-time watch and chronograph users. Two, there's a whole world of people who like "complications" (as they're called) in their watches, and having those and the corresponding controls is actually desirable, fair. But the point is that you don't have to have those features in your watch. [^]

[5] Note that I'm talking about the page for initiating a search. There's another, separate discussion about how they've enshittified their results pages. [^]

[6] Microsoft Office products underwent a big design change in 2007 with the introduction of the ribbon, a UI element that a lot of people dislike. As I understand it, Microsoft realized that most users didn't even know about the existence of a bunch of features, so they wanted to "surface" those (as we used to say). I personally think the ribbon is way better than the old menu system, but I use Word a lot, blah-blah. [^]

This is not about word processing software, but bear with me, because that's relevant.

When I started working at Google, I was obliged to switch from Microsoft Word to Google Docs. Google Docs is a perfectly capable word processor, but Word has many more features that can let a power user do amazing things.

The interface for Microsoft Word

For the first few weeks I whined about this thing or that thing that I missed from my days of working with Word. (Full disclosure: I am a power user of Word.) A colleague who'd been at Google for a while and reconciled himself to the differences made an observation that gave me perspective. Google Docs, he said, has "the 20% that the 80% need".

The interface for Google Docs

This was a statement about audience and their needs. It's true: for most people, the many powerful features of Word are overkill. People need to create docs, format them, and edit them. For these needs, Google Docs is great. Importantly, it's also comparatively uncluttered — there are fewer choices and less visual noise. Most people are not routinely producing large volumes of text or wielding professional editing tools, tasks for which Word's advanced features are very useful. Thus for 80% of users, the limited set of features (20% of Word's) in Google Docs are fine.[1]

This "20% that the 80% need" ratio applies to many technologies. And we notice it because so many products violate (so to speak) this philosophy. If you've ever struggled to figure out how to use something that feels like it should be simple — a microwave, your digital thermostat, a smart watch, the radio in your car — it's because the designers ignored the 20/80 ratio.

I recently got a so-called point-and-shoot digital camera. It bristles with widgets: dials, buttons, knobs, a touch screen. It has autofocus, zoom, macro, shutter priority, aperture priority, Bluetooth, timers, in-camera editing, something called "Creative Video Mode", and many additional features.

And I am not kidding: I had to watch a YouTube video to learn how to literally just point and shoot.[2] Do I need all these features? Or do I just need Google Docs and not Microsoft Word?

As another example, here's the control panel for our oven:

The control panel for the oven(s) in our range

These are examples, arguably, of something like Microsoft Word — rich in features, with a cluttered and potentially confusing interface. If you're an advanced user, you can take advantage of these features and are probably willing to wade through the interface to figure them out.

But most people — the 80% — just want to accomplish common tasks. ("I just want to point and shoot a photo!") The extra features, and the in-your-face controls for them, make simple tasks hard.[3]

A few years ago, when I was shopping for a toaster oven, I'd learned to pay particular attention to the controls. It turned out that the budget models had the controls I was most interested in: simple knobs for simple functionality. Sold.

The controls for our toaster oven

A question, of course, is why things are designed the way they are. We can talk about that another time.

__________

[1] These numbers (20, 80) are of course made up and designed for pithiness, but are inspired by the Pareto principle. [^]

[2] The manual is ludicrously bad, but I have some sympathy for the documentarians that created it — a truism in technical writing is that if something is hard to document, it's probably poorly designed. Also, good documentation requires a lot of time and money, which companies often don't want to invest. [^]

[3] Another downside is that digital control panels are often single points of failure for the device. Your oven doesn't turn on? Replace the entire logic board. [^]

English verbs can occasionally involve some "Wait a sec …" moments. For instance, here's an example where even a native speaker might hesitate a moment. How would you fill in the blanks?

Today he ______ (cleave) the tree with an ax.
Yesterday he ______ (cleave) the tree with an ax.
The tree was ________ (cleave) with an ax.

The verb cleave is old; we inherited it from Old English, where it was the verb cleofan. And this is where our issues of today started. In OE, it was an irregular ("strong") verb — to mark the past tense, it changed vowels and its participle ended in -n (like fly > flew > flown). Let's look at the OE versions of the sentences from earlier:

Todæg he cliefþ æxe þone beam.
Giestrandæge he cleaf æxe þone beam.
Se beam wierþ æxe geclofen.

But as happened with some other verbs that started as irregular/strong (help, laugh), cleave developed a regular ("weak") form, where the past tense ended in -ed/it. Unlike a verb like help, though, cleave hung on to remnants of its irregular/strong past.

The result is that now we have quite a choice of past tense forms! He cleaved/cleft/clove the tree, the tree was cleaved, it was cleft, it was cloven.

I was thinking about this because I ran across an instance of cloven recently in an unexpected (to me) place:

(source)

I think that while all of the past tense forms are technically correct, there might be affinities there. For example, we say a cloven hoof or cleft hoof, but apparently we don't say *cleaved hoof.

I think what struck me about the sentence in the article was that I would not have said that a mountain chain was cloven. I probably (?) would have said cleft or maybe even cleaved. To be sure, I'd have to sneak up on myself to learn what I'd really say in the moment.

Continuing a series of blog posts about our recent trip to Panama.

1. Part 1: Panama City
2. Part 2: The Cruise Begins
3. Part 3: Through the Canal
4. Part 4: Into the Pacific
5. Part 5: Darién (this entry)

Our last two days were spent in Darién, the part of Panama that borders Colombia. This is real jungle, an area renowned for its inhospitality.[1] Fun fact that I only recently learned: the Darién Gap is not a gap that takes you through the area (a mountain pass, say); instead, the Darien area constitutes a gap in the Pan-American Highway between Central and South America. You can walk across this gap (extremely not recommended) or, more likely, go around Darién on a boat. Let us know how that goes.

However, people do live there, and our first stop was at Playa Muerto, which is a village of the Eberá people. This visit presented some additional touristical quandaries for me — were we respectfully learning about an indigenous culture, or were we gawping at something exotic? I was initially reluctant to just point my camera at our hosts and snap photos.

I discussed this with a thoughtful fellow passenger who noted that the villagers are not culturally isolated and have made their own choice about welcoming visitors. (There's an AirBnB in the village, I eventually learned.)

An Eberá girl and a puppy in Playa Muerto

I will note that our Panamanian guides seemed to have long acquaintance and excellent relationships with the Eberá people, and in fact, with everyone in all the places we visited.

For example, on one of the Zodiacs, the group encountered some fishermen who'd been out on the water for many days. The guide, who knew just about everyone, talked to them about their catch. They offered to sell some fish in exchange for sodas. We didn't buy the fish, but a case of sodas was dispatched from the Quest to the fishermen's boat.

A local fisherman offering some of his catch

In the village, many folks in the group got henna-like "tattoos" that were painted with ink made from a local plant that's said to help repel insects. I have mild regret that I didn't get one of these.

One of our guides getting an Eberá tattoo

This village is where the question of religion came up again. One of the guides noted that unlike most Panamanians, the locals who were religious were mostly Seventh-Day Adventists. My thought, dunno if this is right, is that someone sure had done some successful missionary work.

Then it was time for a walk in which we learned something about local flora and fauna.

One of the guides taking a photo through the telescope, with village kids looking on

What they're seeing: a bat

Our walk was my first opportunity to see leafcutter ants, which I was pretty excited about. (Really)

Leafcutter ants at work. They don't eat the leaves; they grow fungus on the plant material and then eat that fungus. They then tidily dump the used leaf material outside their nest.

On our walk, each of us was taken by the hand by a kid from the village. My escort was an 8-year-old named Monica; Sarah's escort was a girl named Kati. I never really got whether the kids were told to help us out or they just like hanging out with the visitors. For sure it's a touch-y culture, hence perhaps the hand-holding. The kids speak Spanish, so it was possible to have halting conversation with them.

Walking through the village with an Eberá escort

At one point our guide stopped to show us coffee plants. The kids gathered handfuls of coffee berries and popped them into their mouths. Someone told me that they spit out the red husk and suck on the inner soft part, then spit out the hard seed.

Coffee berries ("cherries")

The kids were barefoot the entire time, including over some rocky sections. I asked my escort whether it didn't hurt their feet to walk on the rocks? No, she said, probably wondering about these tenderfoot tourists.

River crossing during our hike. The barefoot kids were completely unbothered walking on rocks.

Our last day was a stop at Punta Patiño, a nature reserve. Long ago someone had cleared this land and set up a cattle ranch, but failed to pay taxes, oops. About 40 years ago the land was ceded for back taxes and allowed to return to its natural state. Because it was once developed land, it has a park-like quality. Our naturalists once again exhibited their remarkable abilities to spot plants and animals of interest, including this time my beloved ants. :)

Punta Patiño reserve

Fun fact from one of our naturalists: trees in Panama don't develop tree rings in the same way that trees do in colder climates, since they don't go through the same seasonal growth spurt.

Tree at the reserve. We forgot to ask what the odd growths were.

Overlooking the reserve from the old cattle ranch HQ

And that was it. Overnight the ship returned to Panama City, we disembarked and were bussed to the airport. (Another feat of organization.) We'd gotten up at 6:30AM (3:30AM Seattle time) for an 8:00 disembarkation. At home we finally lay down at 1:30AM, so a 22-hour day for us.

Back in the USA, connecting at Houston. The journey between Seattle and Panama was looooong, but everything went smoothly.

Before we got off the boat, we'd asked the staff about whether they were getting a break or whatever. Nope. We were off the boat before 9:00AM, and they were welcoming the next group of tourists at 4:00PM that day. I can see that it would be an interesting and sometimes fun job to work on one of these ships, but it definitely is work. :)

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[1] Also the area of most concern for my travel doc. Canal zone? Meh, nothing to worry about there, modulo the dogs and cats thing. Darién? Ok, let's talk. [^]

Continuing a series of blog posts about our recent trip to Panama.

1. Part 1: Panama City
2. Part 2: The Cruise Begins
3. Part 3: Through the Canal
4. Part 4: Into the Pacific (this entry)
5. Part 5: Darién

Our next day we were in the Pearl Islands, where we did some Zodiac-based birdwatching. I think this is typical of any of these cruises: there were a lot of birders on the trip. I'm not really a birder, but this was interesting to me in a meta kind of way. For example, birders can spot birds (or anything, really) that I sometimes had trouble seeing even when they were pointed out.

Our guide pointing out seabirds of interest

Also, some of the birders have some serious camera equipment. (Another quotable quote from the NatGeo photographer: "If you want to make any photo better, put a bird in it.") Also, the guides know an incredible amount about birds. This last I observed over and over as we proceeded.

Serious photographers

In the afternoon there was snorkeling and/or kayaking on Pachequilla Island, one of the Pearl Islands. I much admired the organization and patience that went into herding a bunch of old(er) folks onto Zodiacs, off Zodiacs, into snorkel gear, and then back into and out of the Zodiacs. They really do have the system down. This included a status board that we diligently marked whenever we got off or on the ship.[1]

Status board to indicate whether you were on board or off. Woe betide the passenger who fails to indicate their status.

Loading tourists onto the Zodiacs

As part of our beach outing they'd set up a bunch of folding chairs and a portable bar. Us, we really didn't have to do much of anything.

They looked after our comfort at every moment

We quickly learned the terms dry landing and wet landing for how we would get out of a boat and back in, which in turn dictated our footwear choices. Between the dry/wet landings and the pointed requirement for "closed-toe shoes" for some of the outings, holy cow, I've never had to think so much about shoes on vacation before. :)

Footwear in the Zodiac. Going places by Zodiac meant a "wet landing".

Something I hadn't seen before: they brought along pool noodles for extra flotation. Worked great!

Extra flotation for snorkelers

The next day was similar — Zodiac tour and birdwatching, snorkeling, kayaking, chilling on the beach, this time on Bayoneta and Chapera islands. In the evening we got a preso on shorebirds, which the naturalist (an American woman) had titled "Boobies and their Buddies". Funny title, but I learned a bunch.

Denizen on the beach of Bartolomé Island

Beach time

Next up: Darién

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[1] There was one incident where we got a call in our room confirming that we were on board. I don't know exactly what happened, but I imagine that someone might not have followed the status board protocol. [^]

Continuing a series of blog posts about our recent trip to Panama.

1. Part 1: Panama City
2. Part 2: The Cruise Begins
3. Part 3: Through the Canal (this entry)
4. Part 4: Into the Pacific
5. Part 5: Darién

We took this particular cruise because I was interested in the Panama Canal. As you'll hear repeatedly in anything that discusses the canal, it was and still is one of the great engineering feats ever.

For centuries people dreamed about a way to cut through the skinny parts of Central America to avoid the long route around the bottom of South America. After the triumph of the Suez Canal in 1869, the same French engineer undertook the Panama Canal. However, the French made the error (clear only in retrospect) of envisioning a sea-level canal, as they'd built in Suez. That wasn't possible.

The Americans took an interest for Monroe-Doctrinal reasons, sort of, fostered Panamanian independence from Colombia (ahem) in 1903, then got the necessary concessions. The successful formula turned out to be to dam the wild Changres river to create a huge inland lake — Gatún Lake — above sea level. The designers then created locks on both ends of the lake. All of this took 11 years — the canal opened in August 1914, the month that WWI started. Fun geographic fact: once the canal opened, the Changres River technically became the only river that drains into both the Pacific and the Atlantic.

Gatún Lake, created as part of the canal construction

There's an excellent American Experience program on PBS that recounts the history. Or you could delve into The Path Between the Seas, David McCullough's not-short but very readable book.

Traversing the Canal

You don't just sail up to the canal and go through; it works like an airport, where the canal authorities tell you when you can go. As with harbors, they put a pilot on your ship. The ship's crew was therefore somewhat hand-wavy about when exactly we'd enter the canal, and they explained that commercial shipping gets priority, so we'd probably traverse at night.

The mechanics are similar to any canal-and-lock system, I suppose, except the sheer scale of the thing. You enter the lock, the gates close, the water in the lock fills or drains (you rise or descend), the opposite gates open, you emerge.[1]

Entering one of the locks

To get into and out of the locks, you're tied up to some cool little locomotives that pull you though.

One of the four electric locomotives that we were tied to that pulled us through the locks

Going through one set of locks, then Gatún Lake, then the other set of locks takes about 8 hours. We didn't do that. Instead, we went through the Caribbean-side locks and then pulled up near Barro Colorado Island (island now, formerly just a tall hill) in the lake, where there's a wildlife preserve and a Smithsonian research lab.

Tower on Barro Colorado Island that lets you climb above the jungle canopy

Our goal was to spot wildlife — success, we saw many birds and a coati and a sloth. There were many birders among us, but everyone loves mammals.

Coati rooting around. One of our guides said that they're like raccoons (aka trash pandas), they'll steal lunch right off your table.

That evening we continued our traversal of the canal by heading toward the Pacific side of the locks.

Approaching the Centennial Bridge going toward the Pacific side of the locks

We entered the second set of locks after sundown and followed a cargo ship down and out of the canal. The whole process took a while, so most of us had gone to bed by the time we emerged into the Pacific.

Inspired by the photographer's lecture on phone cameras, I tried to do a little timelapse of one segment of the journey. It's a little shaky, but it was fun to try.

Next up: Into the Pacific

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[1] Someone asked, but no, we didn't go through the newer part of the canal that can accommodate Panamax ships — we went through the original part that was opened in 1914. [^]

Continuing a series of blog posts about our recent trip to Panama.

1. Part 1: Panama City
2. Part 2: The Cruise Begins (this entry)
3. Part 3: Through the Canal
4. Part 4: Into the Pacific
5. Part 5: Darién

On the appointed day, cruise passengers assembled, and we were then bussed across the isthmus from Panama City (Pacific) to Colón (Caribbean). I guess I envisioned the canal as traversing east from the Caribbean to west at the Pacific. Nope: the canal goes more or less north–south.[1] It's about an hour's drive across the isthmus — 50 miles or so.

Map of Panama Canal

We embarked, and all 80 or so passengers were mustered to the lounge to get the first presentation (abandon-ship drill) and an overview of life aboard the ship, Lindblad-style. As anyone who's cruised probably knows, the crew and staff are numerous, and there's a ton of work, mostly invisible to us, to make a trip like this seem friction-free. And indeed, so it proved to be. I should note that our cabin was quite comfortable, no complaints here.[2] The food was good, vegetarian-friendly, inspired by local cuisine.

View out our window-slash-porthole. (It did not open, in case you were wondering.)

View from the sundeck

During our orientation, the purser mentioned some sustainability aspects of our cruise, such as minimizing their use of plastic. I'm down with National Geographic's mission to help preserve wildlife, but there was a certain irony, imo, in talking green to a bunch of well-heeled eco-tourists who'd racked up many thousands of air miles to enjoy this experience. Hmm.

The good ship National Geographic Quest

I don't intend to give an hour-by-hour account of our travels, but the basic daily schedule for the cruise was this:

• 6:30: Stretch-don't-call-it-yoga (per the woman who led the activity, heh)
• 7:00: Breakfast
• 8:00: Outing. The various activities included naturalist-led hikes, a bus tour, and some snorkeling or kayaking. Activities were available for all levels of fitness and interest. Or heck, you could stay on the boat and chill.
• 1:00: Lunch
• 2:00: Second outing, usually
• 6:00: Cocktails+apps, then a preso about nature or history. Most of the guides/naturalists are Panamanian and have deep knowledge of the country's flora and fauna, history, geography, culture, everything.
• 7:00: Dinner
• 8:30: Maybe another presentation.

Relaxing on board. Pirates are a big factor in Panama's history, hence Sir Francis Red Ale.

All the meals are in the dining room, where you sit with other passengers and socialize. The average passenger was (predictably) well into retirement. The social aspects of the trip had worried me, but we met some cool people and had lovely conversations. Number 1 topic: Have you been on one of these cruises before? Number 2: Where are you from?[3]

A number of people had been in tech, so there were some opportunities to kinda-sorta talk shop. For example, one of the guys shared a joke that my tech-docs peeps will like: "No matter how much you push the envelope, it’ll still be stationery."

I get why the schedule was this way — sunrise and sunset are around 6:30 on both ends — but it's earlier than I would normally plan my day. The bar opened pretty early and afaik was open all day, and some folks took advantage.

The first preso was an excellent lecture + practice session from the on-board National Geographic photographer about ways to use your cell-phone camera. He emphasized that we should not discount what you can do with a phone and illustrated this point with a bunch of amazing photos he'd taken with his iPhone. And general advice: "Storage is cheap. Deleting is free. Get the shot."[4]

Our first stop was in Portobelo, one of the ports on the Atlantic side from which South American gold and silver was loaded onto ships bound for Spain. (The cargo was sailed from Peru to the Pacific side of Panama, then hauled across the isthmus on mules, gah.) There's lots of history that involves forts and pirates and the British navy, all explained by one of our guides.

Ruins of the fort at Portobelo

Portobelo is well-known to Panamanians as the town that has the Cristo Negro ("Black Christ"). This is a wooden statue that inspires a huge pilgrimage by penitents and miracle-seekers every October from all over Panama. About 80% of Panamanians are Catholic, which isn't a surprise, although the question of religion unexpectedly came up later.

Our Portobelo stop was capped with a performance by locals of songs and dances harkening back to the Afro-Caribbean roots of the Cimarrones, a community of escaped and freed slaves.

I mention this partly because I wasn't entirely comfortable with the performance; it felt, well, performative, in the way that going to a tourist-oriented luau in Hawaii does. As in, are we watching an authentic cultural expression, or is this a show that's been divorced from its original meaning and is performed primarily for the entertainment of others? This is an aspect of guided tourism that one can't escape, and it's difficult for the tourist to resolve. It wasn't the last time this question came up. Anyway, people danced along and took selfies with the elaborately costumed dancers.

Costumed dancer in Portobelo

Next up: Through the Canal

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[1] An(other) example of Mental Map Oversimplification (MMO), as described by Frank Jacobs. I doubt that I'm the only one who pictured it this way. [^]

[2] Well, one minor complaint: the A/C in the common areas was too blast-y, especially for us old folk. :) [^]

[3] A surprising (to me) number of people on the cruise answered this question by talking about two homes that they move between with the seasons. I guess if you go on a luxury cruise, you're going to meet rich people. [^]

[4] As I've been going through the photos from this trip, I think about many shots that I could have taken and didn't, sad. [^]

For our mid-winter break this year, we went on a Panama cruise. It was a kind of experiment. I've been leery of cruises in general, but the idea of going through the Panama Canal was very interesting to me. Some of our friends had enjoyed and recommended high-end, small-ship cruises. We also know some folks who've been naturalists for National Geographic; they've very knowledgeable and generous with their knowledge. So we signed up for a National Geographic/Lindblad tour.

I've written this up in a sequence of blog posts:

1. Part 1: Panama City (this entry)
2. Part 2: The Cruise Begins
3. Part 3: Through the Canal
4. Part 4: Into the Pacific
5. Part 5: Darién

This was our trip, apologies for my subprofessional drawing skills:

Our Panama cruise

Legend/summary:

1. Panama City (3 days). Bus trip (red) to Colón and embarkation.
2. Portobelo, then canal part 1.
3. Barro Colorado Island in Gatún Lake, then part 2 of the canal.
4-5. Pearl Islands.
6. Playa Muerto in the Darién province.
7. Punta Patiño in Darién, then back to Panama City.

As a prelude to this trip, we visited the travel doctor. They have all these questions: where exactly are you going? Have you had boosters for frightening diseases A, B, and C? The yellow fever inoculation can have side effects, do you want to get that jab nonetheless? I walked out with shots for typhoid and hep B, and a prescription for malaria pills and anti-runs medicine. There was an amusing moment when the doc and I talked about avoiding domestic animals and the risk of rabies. "I like cats", I told her. "Like them here", she said.

Some of the frens I met in Panama City. Per the travel doc's orders, there was no scritching.

Lindblad sent out pre-trip information with suggestions for sunscreen and insect repellent, plus long pants and shoes. (Unlike some cruises, no formal togs on this trip, all casual.) It all seemed sort of abstract when we were packing, but their recommendations eventually made sense. The long pants were an anti-insect measure, and specifically for the jungle part of the trip. Fun ("fun") fact: the scarier diseases are mosquito-borne, and that mostly means nighttime. By the time it got dark, though, we were safely back on the ship.

We got to Panama City a few days before the cruise began so we could look around. Our hotel was in Casco Viejo, the "old town" part of the city, very walkable to interesting sights. (Driving through it, on the other hand, … wow.) On our drive from the airport, our affable driver talked about the buildup of Panama City over the last few decades. You won't be surprised to hear that this involved gentrification, high-rises, and increased costs for the inhabitants.

View from our hotel window in Casco Viejo, Panama City

Panama City

I've been to Mexico a number of times, so it was interesting to me to experience something that was both familiar (Spanish-speaking culture, similar artifacts of colonialism) but also different (different climate, different ethnic mix, different cuisine[1]).

Basilica de Santa Maria & Plaza de la Independencia, Panama City

Panama exists as an independent nation because of political shenanigans much encouraged by the US. But it was only in 1999 that Panama got full sovereignty over the Canal Zone, a 10-mile-wide strip that split the country. Fun fact: there's a word Zonian that's used for Americans born in the Canal Zone — a prominent Zonian was John McCain.

Naturally, there's still American influence; an interesting one is the currency. Panama issues the balboa, equivalent to one US dollar, but American money is also in free circulation. You might pay for something in US dollars and get change in a combination of Panamanian balboas, US dollar coins, and smaller coins issued by both countries. At least currency exchange wasn't a problem. :)

Plaza Herrera, Panama City

While in Panama City, we sampled the local cuisine, which as you'd expect is heavy on seafood, plantains, and rice. We didn't really have time to go deep, but I did like what we had.

Lunch at the Mercado de Mariscos, Panama City

A notable stop for us was the Panama Canal Museum, which exhibits the history of the isthmus, its inhabitants, and the canal. This includes details about the, mmm, stressful period between 1967 and 1999 when Panama made an ultimately successful bid to regain its territory and to run the canal. More about the canal anon.

Plaza de la Independencia, Panama City, with the Panama Canal Museum behind

Side note: I looked at Panama hats (actually from Ecuador). I went to a place near the hotel and got a detailed explanation about differences in style and quality (and prices, hoo-boy) from a shopkeeper. But I'd decided that they weren't my style, so I was all, like, uh … thanks, bye. Bet he wasn’t too happy.

Next up: The Cruise Begins

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[1] A simplistic take, I realize — the cuisine of Mexico is vast and varied. In coastal Mexico and the Yucatan it's probably similar to Panamanian cuisine, but I don't have much experience with that. [^]