Yesterday’s photo puzzle went all day without being publicly solved, so here are a few hints for Google-aided solving.

First, consider this recent puzzle from skullturfq (if that is your real name!) over on the message boards.

Secondly, check out the jack o’lantern I carved last night! Yes, I’m sure I’m about the millionth person to have this idea.

My blog post a couple weeks ago about mis-emphasizing two-word phrases generated much follow-up discussion on the message boards. I thought of you all when we were in New York! We were looking at some Edward Hopper paintings at the Whitney, when cartoonist Art Spiegelman suddenly popped up on the museum audio-guide, talking about some comics resonances in Hopper’s famous painting Early Sunday Morning. Art started to ramble a bit, saying that the fire hydrant and barber pole in the painting had always reminded him of R2-D2 and C-3PO. Yes, that’s weird enough. But–here’s the kicker–he pronounced it “see-three-pee-oh,” which was awesome! It was like he’d done extensive academic reading on C-3PO, but never had occasion to pronounce it in conversation, and was just breaking it out for the first time.

Other moments of weird emphasis from vacation: the server who told us about an appetizer special: a “chicken salad.” Not a chicken salad, a chicken salad. I assume he wanted to differentiate his delicious chicken-breast-on-mixed-greens concoction from a mayonnaise-based sandwich filling, but I don’t know how successful his strategy was.

Also, the GPS system in our rental car was having emphasis issues (or, as I like to call them, emphasissues). I’d never noticed before that, in English, we tend to emphasize the last word in street addresses, but the first word in “Street” addresses. Fifth Avenue, but Canal Street. Penny Lane, but Main Street. I’d never noticed, that is, until our in-car navigation system started mangling them right and left. (Ha, right and left! Did you see what I did there?)

Of course, the car also kept calling FDR Drive “F D R Doctor,” which amused us to no end. Even though the economy is collapsing, it looks like there might still be exciting opportunities in natural-language A.I. research for GPS systems.