My New Extreme Sport

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Are you looking for a new challenge? Is parachuting getting you down? Is mountain biking a bumpy ride? Have ultra-marathons taken you too far?

I’ve got just the thing.

It will take guts and determination. It will take all your focus and intelligence. It is a sport not undertaken lightly. Prior experience in lower levels could be beneficial but ultimately success will come only through hard work.

Are you ready for it?

Dot1

Can you tell what it is?

Yes, that’s right. Dot-to-dots. What? That’s one thousand dots there. It’s Extreme Dot-to-dots.

So, do you think you’re up to it? Prepared to put your brain and writing hand on the line for this challenge? Okay. Here’s a few things you need to know.

This is not a high level equipment sport. You will need a pen. That’s it. Or a pencil, if you’re the wussy type. Oh, and an ability to count to 1000. And maybe a ruler, if you’re anally retentive about straight lines or an engineer.

If you’re thinking, “I did heaps of dot-to-dots when I was a kid; this will be a breeze”, you need to understand fully that this is nothing like those. The numbering does not follow a predictable pattern. You will find yourself wandering across the page and back again. It will feel like you are covering old ground. Keep your eye on the numbered signposts. One misstep and you’ll be lost forever.

But don’t panic. There is help at hand. Each one hundred group of numbers is colour-coded. This will make it easier to find 457 when it is hiding amongst the 800s. And they will. Hide, that is. If you can’t find your next signpost in the immediate vicinity, it is best you wander further afield to locate it. Just don’t lose sight of whence you came.

Dot2

Looking for 389…

Be attentive. Always. This sport will play tricks on you. It will try to convince you that the number after 334 is 345 by placing the numbers right next to each other while the number you are looking for will be hidden across the page in the 670s.

Don’t be tempted to travel backwards between two numbers because it’s easier to hold the pen that way. You take a great risk of heading off along the path from the wrong point and that way confusion lies. Also the picture won’t work.

This is a gruelling event. It is possible to undertake the challenge in stages but where’s the fun in that? However, if you choose to complete it in one go, be warned that you will in all likelihood lose the ability to count by about 825. This is when you will really need to focus if you are to claim the prize at the end.

Dot3

Halfway there. Don’t give up!

By the end of the challenge your head will hurt, your hand will ache and your brain will be so muddled you will have trouble remembering your own name. Unless you can spell it out in numbers.

But it will be worth it!

Dot4

Now do you know what it is?

This is not a sport for the faint of pen. You’ll need a good solid colour or you won’t get the full effect.

One final warning. This sport has a tendency to become addictive. You will want to go again almost immediately after completing your first challenge. This is not recommended. It is suggested that you wait a minimum of 24 hours before attempting the sport again or you are likely to find yourself unable to speak coherently.

Think you’re brave enough? Good. See you out on the Dot Field.

Dot Croc

Never smile…. (There’s a mistake in this one. Can you find it?)

Dot Chimp

Yeah, same to you, buddy.

Dot Cat

Everybody now… one, two, three… AWWWWWW.

Dot5

There’s two more books I can get when I’ve finished this one.

With many thanks to the Button Pusher friend who gave me this for Christmas. She knows me a bit too well, methinks.

 

 

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67 thoughts on “My New Extreme Sport”

    • You can lift it to look for the next number because it’s quite possibly under your hand. I don’t know about doing it for “thinking time”. I might allow it in the higher numbers while you think about what number comes next (it can take a while by then).

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  6. AWE-SOME!! I must have one of these books!! I absolutely loved these as a kid …. connect the dots and paint by numbers. My two favourite gifts!!
    …. I must admit however I do tend to lose count after 4.

    Your Button Pusher friend is the BEST!! 🙂

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  8. Parachuting should always get one down. Just saying. Now on to the fun stuff. I know I am failing at some sort of Rorschach test here, and I am mildly obsessed with owls, but in the first picture, doesn’t it look like three little owl chicks? Anyone? Is it just me? Sigh.

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    • I’m just following the dots. The amazing one is the person who put these together.
      I grew up doing jigsaws. We had our own kid ones but we would also help with the big 10,000 piece ones we did as a family. I remember sorting pieces into sky, water, grass, building, etc. We had so many jigsaw puzzles we had to number the pieces with a code so if a piece was found on the floor we knew to which puzzle it belonged.

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      • I read somewhere that women tend to enjoy pattern-matching ‘games’ more than men do — and my personal experience tends to bear that out. I really do enjoy Sudoku (sorry I mis-spelled it the first time), even though I’ve done so much of it I’m getting too good to really enjoy the challenge any more 🙂

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  14. This is amazing. Dot-to-dot as a sport, I’ve never seen anything like this so complex, never thought dot-to-dot could be this mind-boggling. I think if I do try this, the challenge would be for me to sit there for a few hours to finish one of them. Now that summer is heating up, this looks like a good activity to stay home and do 😀

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    • The first one I did blew me away. You’re busy zig-zagging all over the place, you don’t really notice the picture emerge until the end and then it’s hard to believe that all those straight lines could make something that looks so amazing.
      They take me something like half an hour to an hour (I think – I am yet to time one properly), if I do it all in one go. And the time passes very quickly. I highly recommend it, Mabel. 🙂

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  23. Very interesting post. I can see the fun and compulsion. I adored dot-to-dot as when young. The end products of these are clever but too scratchy to me–they hurt to look at them. (I have major trouble with brushed aluminium surfaces, too.) I don’t know why–Asperger’s, age, or more likely, general crabbiness.

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    • That is interesting. Hm. I shan’t show you any of the new ones then as they are even scratchier. I think the new one (it’s of famous people) must have been the first one published because I can see the improvements that were made with the one in this post.

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      • These things are so unpredictable with me–I don’t know about other Aspies. If I did the dot-to-dot myself, perhaps the appearance would not matter the same. (I suspect it would, though. That brushed aluminum thing can be like nails on a blackboard.)

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