I missed yesterday’s episode.

There was no good reason.

I just got caught up in both work and I guess there was a good reason.

I got caught up in work and in other creative pursuits and distractions yesterday, which is one of the things I’m going to talk about today.

So let’s do it.

Your Daily Lex It kind of blows my mind how many connections puzzles I’ve made.

And when you do something that’s literally daily, like seven days a week, daily, not even just like this podcast, which is almost five days a week daily.

But I’ve made 180.

Well, I’ve published 180 connections puzzles.

I’ve made even more.

I’ve probably made another 50 on top of that so far and I’m enjoying them.

And, you know, it’s funny because I have sort of ruined and sort of improved my social media channels because I get people texting me their scores, Facebook messaging me their score, their scores, Instagram messaging me their scores.

And of course, writing to me on Macedon threads and blue sky with their scores on connections or collections each day.

And that’s fun.

I like seeing it.

It’s hilarious because like that’s all my notifications are all the time, but it’s okay.

I enjoy it.

I enjoy seeing people play and I like seeing, you know, sometimes I know which ones are going to be hard, which ones are going to be easy.

And sometimes I’m surprised by how hard or easy they are.

And it’s fun to get that feedback.

But I kept thinking I want to do another word game.

And I started thinking about some concepts and I thought about a game I had liked eons ago.

And so yesterday I built and then in yesterday evening launched a new word game called lexicogs.

Boy, I went through a lot of battles internally and with some friends over what the name should be.

My pal Tony suggested alphabets or alphabytes, but I really thought those sounded like cereals.

I started with word chunks, which everybody agreed was horrible except for me, but I’m willing to acknowledge being wrong when I’m wrong.

And everybody said reminded them of vomit.

Uh, then I kind of liked, uh, Lex blocks Lex because that’s my name blocks because it’s involves, I’m going to say about the game today, but Lex blocks sounds like X-Box.

But anyway, the idea of the game is I’ve got seven crossword style clues.

I don’t know that I have to adhere strictly to crossword rules, but crossword style clues.

And then you’ve got a whole, and those clues are cluing seven unique words.

And you’ve got a hodgepodge of letters, uh, in clumps in chunks in, um, uh, cogs, let’s say that you’ve got to put together to make the answers.

It makes more sense when you look at it.

Uh, the hardest part was I didn’t want any of the word chunks that I break up all those words into to be fewer than two letters or greater than three letters.

So thinking about that algorithm got a little tricky because I was like, all right, if I have a word that’s four letters, I can split it up in two and two.

If it’s five, it’s two and three.

Uh, you see where this is going.

But then I was like, well, if it’s a 10 letter word, I don’t necessarily want to do it in five chunks of two.

I don’t.

But if I do it in threes and twos, I can’t always have it be like, you know, three, three, two, two.

Sometimes it has to be three, two, three, two, or two, three, two, three, or two, three, three, two, et cetera.

So really thinking about the ways to make sure that those chunk of vacations of the words were happening with some randomness was a fun challenge.

But anyway, I posted the game yesterday, uh, and lots of people are playing.

It’s fun.

I still haven’t quite figured out the best way to make the game shareable.

You know, you think about how great Wordle is in a variety of ways.

Part of it is the ability to share your scores.

Uh, I think connections and collections have that benefit too.

Right now, the only thing I could come up with was sharing your time, uh, sharing the order in which we got words just isn’t that interesting.

Um, so I’m still thinking about the best ways to show that, but, uh, check it out, go to Lex Friedman.com slash, uh, Lexicogs.

Lexicogs is spelled exactly the way you’d expect.

Lex I C O G S.

Uh, yeah.

Also last night, got to go see Ani get inducted into the, uh, national honor society.

So that was fun.

And, uh, you know, it seems very impressive.

I don’t know.

I’m impressed.

I’m impressed by Ani.

I’m impressed by all my kids.

Uh, and you know what?

I’m also impressed by me because I’ve got this new album out and, uh, we missed yesterday, but we got to keep on, uh, chugging through all the different tracks on the album.

The next one of which is Google maps.

Yesterday you heard in store, which I wrote in college, Google maps.

I wrote in my house, uh, here in New Jersey.

I really considered calling this song lost without you.

So that it seemed like it was going to be some kind of love song, but I didn’t.

It is a love song.

It’s just a love song dedicated to GPS.

Here it is.

Don’t forget to look for my album, a sentiment that’s almost true wherever you look for albums and stuff.

I don’t know what the record store tower records, the wall.

Anyway, happy Thursday.

Play my game.

I’d be lost without you.

I never find my way through.

So glad you found me too.

I love you.

Google maps.

I love you.

Google maps.

I have no sense of direction.

I have so many misconnections, twists and turns made life a mess.

That’s why I need GPS.

I’d be lost without you.

I never find my way through.

So glad you found me too.

I love you.

Google maps.

I love you.

Google maps.

I love to know when I’ll arrive.

I love not knowing where I’ll drive ease on my aggravation and get them to my destination.

I’d be lost without you.

I never find my way through.

So glad you found me too.

I love you.

Google maps.

I love you.

Google maps.

You always know my ETA.

You know about every traffic delay.

You always put me in my place.

You even remember my parking space.

I’d be lost without you.

I never find my way through.

So glad you found me too.

I love you.

Google maps.

I love you.

Google maps.

When you’re driving on a mission, please trust I will always listen.

You never match.

You never shout.

So of course I trust you with.

I’d be lost without you.

I never find my way through.

So glad you found me too.

I love you.

Google maps.

I love you.

Google maps.

I would lost without you.

I never find my way through.

So glad you found me too.

I love you.

Google maps.

I love you.

Google maps.

Lex.