The next several entries will talk about my trip to Grenada, but first there are some other things to talk about. One,
I just got a new Raymond Smullyan book, in fact the most recent one he wrote, published at the beginning of this year. It's called "Who Knows:
A Study of Religious Consciousness." It talks about lots of the usual philosophical problems in this area, what might God be like, does the
doctrine of Hell make sense, and such, but after a few pages I can tell it's going to be great. Rather than get really intellectual and
analytic about things, Smullyan is more imaginative. I think he does have some new ideas to bring to the table, but he doesn't focus on that
like some academic paper. I wonder sometimes how many other people know about him. My stepbrother, a philosophy professor, introduced me to
him, and Douglas Hofstadter clearly admires him, and that seems to be about it. I just about never see his books in stores. I know he has a
following though, otherwise his books wouldn't sell on eBay for occasionally exorbitant prices. I'm getting sidetracked though.

Though I've been busy, lately I've had a lot more time to do philosophical thinking. If there's any field I make a
real contribution to, well music or computer science would be nice, but philosophy would be really cool. Like Smullyan I don't want to get
bogged down in academics and obscure theories--what I'd like to do is imagine worlds and write dialogues, as thought experiments. So look for
my first attempts here.

Finally, I was thinking about puzzles. A while ago I wrote about Smullyan's book the Chess Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes,
and how, difficult as the puzzles were to solve, they must have been much more difficult to construct. Today I thought about that again, and
about how there are some puzzles that are easier to make than to solve, for example, word searches, and some that are harder to make, such as
crosswords. I guess most good puzzles tend to fall into the latter category, but it is interesting that the two exist, and that often the
construction of puzzles becomes a real art in itself. The retrograde analysis chess problems in Smullyan's book were a great example of this,
they were really things of beauty. In each one, at first glance the position looks normal or only slightly unusual, and the problem, ranging
from "who moved last and what was the last move?" to "have any pieces been promoted in this game?" seems absolutely insurmountable. It could
be anything! But gradually you realize that it couldn't be anything, but only one thing, and that every piece on the board is part of the
delicate balance that narrows down the possibilities.