Hey Diddle Diddle, The Cats and Weffriddle

I've been following with amusement the affect of certain of my posts on my stats.  As I'd hoped, my involvement with Thursday Thirteen gave a regular boost to my visits and page views every week since I began last October, and I wasn't too surprised to discover that the ones in which I discussed my two cats, Gremlin and Merlin, were the most popular of those since other mentions of 'cats' or 'pet' in a post or post title would bring in more than the usual visitors.  But I was flabbergasted at the response to my post, Nurlo!, the week before Christmas. It has more than tripled my weekly visitors because somehow that post has catapulted me to near the top of a Google Search page for that query.  Sometimes the query is just the one word, sometimes it is for a definition for the word and sometimes it is for the Nurlo T-Shirt proffered by the creator of Weffriddles.  I thought I might as well write a post that would direct those visitors to the best answer to their questions while simultaneously updating my progress with Weffriddles.  Not to mention giving another shot in the arm to my stat!  Hey, whatever works.

So.  Updating my progress on Weffriddles:   I solved the one I was agonizing over shortly after posting my wail.  It was while writing that post that I got the idea that led to the solution.  I'm not telling.  I don't do spoilers.  I kept meaning to update that post or post again to announce that but never got around to it.  I am now on level 39.  But I haven't played for over a week.  Although I am itching to return to the game, I am currently denying myself the pleasure because I spent over ten hours on it each of the three times I played and I don't want to succumb to that temptation again until after the local library locks it's doors at the end of March.

Looking for the definition of Nurlo?  The best one is found in The Urban Dictionary:

A vocalization of frustration, an interjection of one who is failing to understand, the groan of realization when one realizes he or she had been making something that is fairly easy way too hard.

I am still unclear as to whether this word was in use before the creation of Weffriddles or was coined by the riddle master or the players.  Can anyone enlighten me?

As for the T-Shirts:  The best place to find them is on the Weffriddle forum where the players and Weff Jebster himself hang out and discuss the levels of the game and of their frustrations.  Hints and nudges are available here too.  But don't try to find or deposit a spoiler.  Not cool.  Leaving a spoiler can get you banned from the forum.

I am so into the whole concept of Weffriddles that I am already thinking of starting a similar web site.  One in which the clues and answers are on themes that reflect my special interests.  I'm thinking that not only would that be fun but it would exercise my budding HTML skills while also taking advantage of the obvious interest in riddle solving evinced by the over 20,000 members of the Weffriddles forum.  One of the players posting there got impatient while waiting for a new batch of riddles to be prepared and started one of his own. I've bookmarked it but don't dare start to play.

Meanwhile, I've got twelve weeks left in which to finish up with as many of the books and movies and other library dependent projects as possible.  If only there were a way to eliminate the need for sleep!  My insomnia seems to have deserted me when I most need it.  It hasn't really returned since I had the flu during the first three weeks of December.