I’ve been enjoying NBC’s coverage tonight of the Opening Ceremonies of the XXX Olympiad in London—excellently emceed by Meredith Vieira and Matt Lauer. Honestly, without Meredith’s and Matt’s explanations, I wouldn’t have understood the subtext of many parts of show producer Danny Boyle’s amazing production giving us a visual and musical history of London and the Isles. And since I’ve had the honor of hosting small events in my former career in TV news, I know how hard it is to say something intelligent and short—I love hosts who know when
not to talk! Vieira and Lauer are masters of the craft.
And Boyle—wow! His huge, confident vision of spectacle was evident from the first moment. It was a welcome surprise to see a tribute to Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee, the father of the World Wide Web, capped by his appearance! About 1990, Berners-Lee took a fairly well-known idea in computer science, hypertext, and connected it to TCP and the domain name system. So simple an idea! So profound a result: the Web as you know it today. WWW!
(I studied computer science for years, achieving an advanced degree and even teaching for a short while at USC and working at its affiliated research institute, ISI, where TCP was born—while I was there, although I had nothing to do with that project.)
Sir Timothy used his computer in the middle of the Olympic Stadium tonight to tweet a message to the world about his founding contribution to the ‘Net (and, if you wish, the meaning of the Olympic Games). As he typed, the words spelled out on the LEDs under the seats of the stadium, demonstrating just how far we’ve come. His message is repeated in this extra Qudoku puzzle, in honor of the Olympics, Danny Boyle’s artistic vision and Tim Berners-Lee’s genius.
VERIFY
6x6 Word Sudoku Puzzle
Each row, column, 2x3 rectangle and set of circled cells contains the letters in the word exactly once
HONEST
6x6 Word Sudoku Puzzle
Each row, column, 2x3 rectangle and set of circled cells contains the letters in the word exactly once
Copy circled letters to the corresponding numbered cells in the quote grid to spell out Tim Berners-Lee’s tweet at the XXX Olympiad Opening Ceremonies
Solution first thing in the morning.
Thanks,
--Dave