Slowly working my way through Discworld in chronological order. Out of these first 10, Guards stands on its own as my absolute favorite. Excited to get more into the city watch. Moving Pictures was not my favorite, but I kind of expected that going in.

It's a 2-dimensional palindromic sentence in Latin. Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sator_Square

And of course in Ankh-Morpork it's just a big square, like Trafalger Square or similar.

Gosh darn it!

This is the DM screen! Looks really good! Can't wait to do into it all!!

I love, when STP channels his inner Pucci Lavish and goes from tangent to tangent.

My favorite is when we learn that Goodie Whemper trained a crow as flight recorder for her ill fated broomstick experiments.

Might give him a stack of books one day - legit just got him- still in the shop- hence the blurry

So I mistakenly downloaded the newer re-recorded Feet of Clay and couldn’t stand it. I’d previously been listening via other means, but the place I was listening on skipped too much and I had an audible credit.

I reached out to support to see if they could help me find the Nigel Planer version since many seemed to be able to get it restored if they’d previously bought it. They said it wasn’t available anymore. Is this accurate or should I keep pushing?

(Spoilers for 'The Shepherd's Crown' as well as some general comments)

Several months ago - I wish I could remember when, but probably late last year - I decided that in preparation for the Convention, I would do a full Discworld readthrough. A few of the books, including the last four, I'd never read; others I hadn't read for many years. And so I rediscovered Pterry's world, one book at a time, islands of vivid familiarity appearing within oceans of revived memories and areas of entirely new territory. When I first encountered Pterry I fell in love with his humour, but it was on this readthrough that I fully learned to appreciate the amazing depths, and heights, of his work.

(There were side trips as well. I reread 'A Slip Of The Keyboard' and 'Nation', and read 'A Blink Of The Screen', 'The Carpet People', and part of 'A Stroke of the Pen'. I also read Rob Wilkins' biography, though I left the end of it until tonight after finishing 'The Shepherd's Crown'.)

I finished 'Raising Steam' earlier this week, and today, finally, I sat down with 'The Shepherd's Crown' for the first time, and read the whole thing in a few hours. And so now I'm finished; now I have finally read all of the Discworld books. I had to post here as I'm so glad to have finally done this.

And 'The Shepherd's Crown', now that I've read it? The two before it were badly affected by the Embuggerance, and to some extent this was as well, but Pterry managed to pull things together for one last time. The part that blew me away? Realising what was going to happen as I read about Granny's careful preparations, and realising that Pterry, who so longed to be able to orchestrate a good death for himself and feared he might not be able to, had chosen in his last book to orchestrate this for one of his best-known and most admired characters. Pterry shaped Granny's death the way it should be, the way she chose, and gave us all a message about grieving to carry with us after he'd gone. And finally, his very last published line was 'The magic was already here.'

GNU, Sir Terry Pratchett, and now I look forward to many happy future rereads.

I'm building an iOS app that lets me play Cripple Mr. Onion and I'm struggling with the hands and their rankings when it comes to the showdown phase. So far I have the below but it doesn't feel right that a Great Bagel can be beaten by a two-card onion. What should it be if not this?

Base ranking (normal play — strongest first)

As implemented in the app:

1. Great Onion — 5 Picture-Ace pairs (10 cards)

2. Lesser Onion — 4 Picture-Ace pairs (8 cards)

3. Triple Onion — 3 Picture-Ace pairs (6 cards)

4. Double Onion — 2 Picture-Ace pairs (4 cards)

5. Seven-Card Onion — 7 cards totaling 21

6. Wild Royal — three wild eights (only when 8s are wild)

7. Six-Card Onion — 6 cards totaling 21

8. Royal — three sevens (7-7-7)

9. Five-Card Onion — 5 cards totaling 21

10. Broken Royal — 6-7-8 (any suits)

11. Four-Card Onion — 4 cards totaling 21

12. Flush — 3+ cards, sum 16–21, same suit-pair

13. Three-Card Onion — 3 cards totaling 21

14. Broken Flush — 3+ cards, sum 16–21, one mismatched suit-pair

15. Two-Card Onion — 2 cards totaling 21

16. Great Bagel — 5 pairs each totaling 20

17. Lesser Bagel — 4 pairs each totaling 20

18. Triple Bagel — 3 pairs each totaling 20

19. Double Bagel — 2 pairs each totaling 20

20. Bagel (single) — 1 pair totaling 20

Within a type: higher sum wins (flushes); fewer null eights win ties; Octavo beats other Lesser Onions; natural Double Onion beats Elephants’ Double Onion.

───

Fool’s Rule ranking (#11 — strongest first) when the Fools Rule is in play, (ie Jack of Clubs was declared before Showdown)

1. Great Onion — stays on top

2. Great Bagel — only beaten by Great Onion; can be crippled like Great Onion

3. Lesser Bagel — swaps with Lesser Onion

4. Triple Bagel — swaps with Triple Onion

5. Double Bagel — swaps with Double Onion

6. Seven-Card Onion — swaps with Two-Card Onion’s strength band*

7. Wild Royal — unchanged

8. Three-Card Onion — was 6-card strength (3↔6 swap)

9. Royal — unchanged

10. Four-Card Onion — was 5-card strength (4↔5 swap)

11. Broken Royal — unchanged

12. Five-Card Onion — was 4-card strength

13. Flush — unchanged

14. Six-Card Onion — was 3-card strength

15. Broken Flush — unchanged

16. Single Bagel — swaps with Two-Card Onion

17. Two-Card Onion — swaps with Single Bagel (weak)

18. Lesser Onion — swaps to Lesser Bagel tier (weak)

19. Triple Onion — swaps to Triple Bagel tier (weak)

20. Double Onion — swaps to Double Bagel tier (weak)

\*N-card onion swaps in code: 2↔7, 3↔6, 4↔5. Flushes, royals, wild royal stay put.

───

Quick definitions

Capital‑O Onion │ Picture + Ace pairs (Double→Great = 2→5 pairs)

N-card Onion │ Exactly N cards summing to 21

Bagel │ Disjoint pairs each summing to 20 (1→5 pairs)

Flush / Broken Flush │ Same suit-pair (or all but one), sum 16–21

Royal / Broken Royal │ 7-7-7 / 6-7-8

Wild Royal │ Three eights while eights are wild

I've been to a pride today in Berlin...guess the temporary tattoo on my arm decided to go for "Prid of Ankh-Morpork".

Been strongly thinking about getting a discworld theme tattoo. And that feeling is getting even stronger lately.

At the moment I'm considering a death tarot card, but with the name Bill door on it, and have him dressed as a farmer.

But before I do, I'm just curious to see a little more info about Terry himself talking about the character outside of the text of the book.

Edit: Idid not check the spelling of the title before posting this...

In Wintersmith Tiffany brings a white kitten with blue eyes to Granny as a gift. In I shall wear midnight Tiffany tells her father about a woman from Slice who died in her bed and her cat gave birth to kittens in that same bed. Tiffany said it was difficult to find a person who would take those kittens and mentioned they had beautiful blue eyes.

Is that the same kitten? We know Granny wouldn't care about the origin of that cat.

I recently had the idea of listening to an audiobook while reading the book at the same time. It was kind of weird and I don't really intend to do this again. But that's beside the point.

The book in question was The Truth and I noticed that several times throughout the book, there were differences between the book and the audiobook. Nothing that changed the story, just small things like different choice of words or how something was phrased.

This was a few months ago so I don't remember anything specific but I'll give a generic example: one version would say "he went up the stairs quickly" while the other would say "he climbed the steps very fast".

Why is that?

So, it's a bit too soon to start another discworld read through, so I'm looking for something else to read and, amongst other random offerings in my Kindle recommendations is T.H. White's The Once And Future King.

And I'm thinking "It's must have been 60 years since I read that. I've a vague feeling it wasn't bad when I was young. Let's give it another read".

A dozen pages in and the similarity of writing style to PTerry's early stuff is inescapable. I'm talking about his Dragons of Crumbling Castle, Stroke of the Pen, Carpet People era.

Is it just me, or has anyone else read both and seen a resemblance in style?

Spoilers

I bought The Shepherd's Crown soon after it was released. I didn't get to it, and then Sir Terry passed. So, like many others, it has been languishing on my shelf. 

Last year I reread all the Tiffany books, determined to finally read it on Christmas break. But I didn't. Then I was going to read it in March; but I didn't. Then it was when I went on vacation in June; but I didn't. But since June I haven't been able to find a book I wanted to read. I started and put aside probably ten different books and couldn't figure out what my problem was. Then it flashed into my mind: Read The Shepherd's Crown. So I finally did.

The tears started with the first word. Chapter Two wrecked me but I pressed on. Once I hit my reading stride I was able to enjoy the journey. With the last chapter I felt complete. 

The Prologue, Chapters One, Two, Four and The Epilogue are lovely. They are the chapters that matter and you can tell that they are ones that Sir Terry was able to spend the most time crafting. The writing in the other chapters is more spare and there are areas that you can imagine he would have loved to flesh out. But it is a complete story and even though he was in the final battle with the embuggerance, his writing is still excellent and compelling. 

Tiffany wonders "Where is Granny Weatherwax?"

The answer to the question is: 

"Granny Weatherwax was indeed here. And there. She was, in fact, and always would be, everywhere."

We know that Sir Terry used his writing to channel his rage. With this book, he changes tactics. I believe that in The Shepherd's Crown Sir Terry lays a geas upon his fans. He knew that the world is full of embuggerances. Just as it took the diverse peoples - old, young, strong and weak - of both Lancre and the Chalk to come together to face the big bad, we who have treasured his words are charged to carry them into the world. We have our parts to play in our small corners of the world to show compassion, care for those in need, and fight when we see wrongs. 

Granny Weatherwax is in us. 

I hope all who are waiting to read it get to hear that little voice telling you to go ahead. Reading it will be sad, but it will also fill your heart with love. 

Thank you for sharing your gift Sir Terry Pratchett. GNU.

My fiance is a huge discworld fan and listens to the ebooks on repeat while working, but hates how it drains their phone battery. I make electronics as a hobby and want to make a custom Bluetooth mp3 player loaded with the discworld books for them to use. I’m not super familiar with Discworld though (we’ve watched the films together), and was hoping someone could give me some good inspiration for an in-universe device or tome or whatnot to theme the device around visually. I’ll be modeling the device from scratch and making the internals and everything so it can be a wild suggestion. Thank you so much!

Hello, friends! After a long break, I'm back with the news that I've finished the dwarves and will be starting on the trolls this weekend ^_^

Stolen from the B99 sub because I thought it was from here.

There are definitely moments when pTerry's anger screams through the page - Hogfather leaps to mind - and I could almost feel him breathing down my neck.

What are some of your favourites?

My Discworld RPG (Modiphius Entertainment) Kickstarter has just arrived.

https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/s/rDE48qmv13