Drawing a Blank

I like to pick out a DVD series or a fun video game to keep myself entertained whenever I feel like I'm going to be sick from a cold or flu. I felt one nasty cold coming on last week, so it became a toss-up between Alias: Season 4 and Professor Layton and the Curious Village for the Nintendo DS. The video game won out for the sheer fact that I hate getting up to switch DVDs. Professor Layton and the Curious Village is a brain teaser type game, featuring animation similar to that of The Triplets of Belleville and over 135 puzzles to solve. It looked like a cute little distraction.

After the first few puzzles, this little gem popped up and caused the biggest brain fart since the time I was naming off the Von Trapp children in my evening prayer and forgot Kurt:

Puzzle No. 033 : Light Which One?

You have only one match left. You want to light the room with an oil lamp (LAMP), start a fire to warm the room (FIREPLACE), and heat your bathwater (TUB). In order to complete all of the above actions, which of these should you light first?

I'll list the answer at the end of this entry. It was a real noodle scratcher for me and I was suddenly wishing that I'd paid more attention in school. The puzzles get progressively harder, so you can imagine how encouraging it was for me to know that it would only get worse from that point.

After fucking lots of circuit boys during my brief stint as a top years ago, I always thought that something that looks cute and juvenile is always easy to conquer. But after playing going 33 rounds with Professor Layton, I'm starting to rethink my strategy.

It might interest you to know that it is not beyond the realm of possibility to find similarities between certain video games and circuit boys. Not only do they both seem child-like and conquerable, but you can also find E on both of them. Naturally, I'm referring to E as ecstasy on the always-tweaked-out circuit boy and E as the ESRB "everyone" rating on the video game box.

The answer to the puzzle? It's the match, of course.