A Bonus Edgar Allan Poe-st (Puzzle to Solve!)

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This grid, sadly, was too ambitious for my puzzly skills...

Our traditional Halloween Punny Costume Game went up yesterday, but for the crossword aficionados, I have cooked up a little something in honor of the spookiest day of the year.

I’m not much of an artist, but I did try to do a puzzle grid pixel art rendition of one of the classic eerie authors in today’s grid.

In addition to the theme entries, I also placed the title of one of his puzzliest works in the left side of the grid reading down, and a word we all associate with him in the right side of the grid reading down.

I hope you enjoy today’s puzzle. It’s to die for! (In a sinister and ironic way, of course.)

[Click here to download a PDF of the puzzle!]

Happy puzzling, everyone! And Happy Halloween!

A Punny Costume Challenge Full of Tricks and Treats for Halloween!

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Happy (almost) Halloween, fellow puzzlers!

One of the best things about Halloween is guessing what people’s costumes are. Clever costumes can be great fun, and I’m a huge fan of costumes that only cost a few bucks to put together, because they really let your creativity shine through.

Punny costumes lend themselves to the low-budget costume genre brilliantly. So it’s only appropriate that we celebrate Halloween in the puzzliest way possible — by looking at some punny costumes!

It’s simple. I post a picture, and you guess what the costume is.

For example:

She’s a deviled egg!

I’ve compiled ten costumes for you to figure out. Some are mashups, some are straightforward puns. Let’s see how many you can get!

PuzzCulture’s Punderful Halloween Costume Game!

#1

#2

#3

#4

Our first dog costume! (Redacted to hide the pun.)

#5

(Redacted to make the pun less obvious.)

#6

#7

Again, redacted to hide the pun.

#8

#9

#10

How many did you get? Have you seen any great punny costumes we missed? Let us know in the comments section below. We’d love to hear from you. And Happy Halloween!

Product Review: Seas of Havoc

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[Note: I received a free copy of this game in exchange for a fair, unbiased review.]

The life of a pirate isn’t all about gold and raiding and gold and avoiding the authorities and gold and gold. It’s also about building a name for yourself. And the greatest pirates, the most feared, the most successful, they aren’t just famous… they’re INFAMOUS.

And that’s the goal of every pirate sailing the, uh, one sea in Seas of Havoc: gaining the most infamy through deeds both impressive and treacherous.

Seas of Havoc is a game for 2-5 players that is part resource management and part combat tactics.

The gameplay alternates between an Island Phase (where your skiffs gather resources from the Market or the islands surrounding the sea) and a Sea Phase (where the pirates maneuver their main ship around the board to wage war and damage their opponents’ vessels and reputations).

There is no set number of rounds in Seas of Havoc. Instead, the game ends whenever the damage deck has been depleted during a Sea Phase. That phase is completed by the players, and then they total up their infamy.

I quite like the fact that player choices (and not an arbitrary number of rounds) determines the end of play. It adds agency and urgency to the proceedings.

Now, you CAN play the game by acquiring infamy through upgrading and collecting cards and trying to avoid combat, but you’d be playing with one arm tied behind your back. Cannonball attacks and ship ramming are such big components of the gameplay that you can’t really win unless you’re at least a little bit of a bastard, if not a right bastard of a scurvy seadog.

I know adversarial games aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, so it’s worth noting there is another way to play Seas of Havoc as a solo or a collaborative game, where you (or you and your fellow players) tackle the threat of the Ghost Fleet.

I did enjoy the collaborative version of the game against the Ghost Fleet — I’m an easy mark for cooperative gameplay that’s the players vs. the game — but I also absolutely had a blast seeing how ruthless I could be against a band of friends going whole hog with cannonballs. (Especially when we grabbed some LEGO cannons and actually started firing at each other like proper scalawags.)

Speaking of cannonballs, I need to highlight how much thought clearly went into all the physical components of this game. The cards are high quality, all of the materials are sturdy, and this feels like a game that will endure many playthroughs without wear and tear.

And the designs help with your immersion! The spinning wheel on the character board, the ship pieces, and especially the flattened edge on the cannonballs… all terrific, creative choices. (I am so glad the cannonballs aren’t round, what a nightmare that would’ve been.)

That level of care means a lot to me as a board game fan, and clearly it means a lot to the team at Rock Manor Games.

Factor in the different ships and captains (allowing for great replay value as you try out various combinations) and this is a game meant to challenge newcomers and experienced players alike across many sessions at the table.

Seas of Havoc delivers exactly what it promises: chaos on land and on deck as a band of avaricious pirates scheme and smash and blast their way into high-seas history.

The mix of all-out combat with carefully tracking and taking advantage of resources offers multiple levels of gameplay that keep either phase of the game from dragging on too long.

Don’t wait for Talk Like a Pirate Day. Give this one a shot soon.

[Seas of Havoc is for ages 14 and up, and it’s available from Rock Manor Games and participating websites, starting at $60. It can also be found in this year’s Holiday Puzzly Gift Guide, coming soon!]

Cracking the Cipher of “The Subtelty of Witches” Was Just the Beginning!

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I started the Halloween season off by discussing the dubious claim of TikTok witches that they’d solved the Voynich Manuscript.

So it feels apropos to close out the Halloween season with a post about two women who actually unraveled some of the mysteries surrounding an encrypted manuscript involving witches!

This video by Kat Saturn details the fascinating journey she and Rian Hagebeuk embarked upon to unravel the secrets of a book entitled “The Subtelty of Witches,” supposedly published in 1657.

It was one of the longest encrypted works of the period, and yet, it sat in the British Library for decades without anyone digging into the cipher or the manuscript’s contents.

In 2018, Kat stumbled across “The Subtelty of Witches” in a list of encrypted manuscripts, and started investigating.

Along the way, she teamed up with Rian, whose facility with Latin helped immensely in unraveling the manuscript’s true contents. They reached out to professionals and fellow amateurs alike, delving deep down the rabbit hole of this manuscript.

Along the way, she and Rian determined:

  • the year was incorrect (the text is actually OLDER)
  • the contents of the manuscript had nothing to do with witches (it’s a list of verbs in Latin and Dutch from a Calepino dictionary)
  • the cipher was consistently applied throughout (meaning it’s unlikely this was a practice exercise for improving the author’s facility with the cipher)
  • the real mystery of this text wasn’t in the cipher…

It was in the book’s creation and reason for existing at all.

The cipher was easily cracked — a one-to-one substitution cipher wouldn’t deter even a casual puzzler — but so many questions still remain.

Who was the author? Why was the manuscript titled this? Why were a dictionary’s partial contents encoded? What is the meaning behind the cover stamp?

Like some of the more puzzly mysteries we’ve pursued in the blog over the years, there’s always more to uncover once the puzzly part is resolved.

I purposely haven’t gone into too much actual detail — hopefully I’ve included just enough to give you a sense of the story here and pique your interest — because I think you should take the time to watch Kat’s entire video. It’s always best to hear from the creators themselves!

This story is the perfect counterpoint to the Voynich discussion a few weeks ago.

I made a point in that post of highlighting that I wasn’t throwing shade at nonprofessionals in scholarly fields. I simply wanted something more reliable than “this looks like this, so they must be related” and wild conjecture.

And Kat and Rian’s work is exactly what I was talking about.

Kat and Rian aren’t professionals, they’re enthusiastic amateurs, but they are scholars nonetheless. They’ve done fantastic, reproducible work, drawing reasonable and insightful conclusions from verifiable data.

They’ve thoroughly and meticulously documented their steps, they’re continuing to pursue leads, and they have genuinely, impactfully contributed to both awareness of the manuscript and the facts surrounding it.

Heck, they published a peer-reviewed paper on the manuscript, and you should absolutely check it out.

TikTok witches and Voynich Manuscript enthusiasts, please take note: this is the way.

Do you have any theories about “The Subtelty of Witches,” fellow puzzlers? Let us know in the comments section below! We’d love to hear from you.

The Week in Puzzles and Games (October 26th)

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There’s a lot going on in the intertwined worlds of puzzles and games, so let’s skip the intro and get to it!

Conversations with the New York Times Games Team!

There are two events coming up for fans of NYT puzzles and games.

First, the 92Y is hosting a New York Times Games Night tomorrow night to celebrate the launch of the new Connections book.

Wyna Liu, Joel Fagliano, Sam Ezersky, and Tracy Bennett will be in attendance to talk shop and engage in some live gameplay with attendees.

Click here for ticket info and here to check out the new Connections book.

But that’s not all.

On Friday, October 30th, the Wordle Review comments section will be hosting a Q&A at 1 PM Eastern with Josh Katz and Tom Giratikanon, the designers behind Wordle Bot and Connections Bot!

Learn more about how the bots work, why they’re so sassy, and meet the team who makes the Bots go.

Cryptic Crossword Updates (and The Independent)

Speaking of crosswords, there has sadly been no sign that The Independent’s managing editor will reverse course on cancelling their daily cryptic crossword.

But even with that dark cloud hanging over the puzzle community, there is plenty going on in cryptic crossword chatter for solvers and setters alike to enjoy.

Chameleon posted a terrific article on MyCrossword about an interesting variation on the hidden-style clue. For example, a traditional hidden clue would have “Scottish snack offered in disco nearby” cluing SCONE, since it’s hidden in “diSCO NEarby.” But Chameleon’s version is slightly more difficult. (Personally, I love it!)

Setter Paul Henderson (known to Independent solvers as Phi) has announced he’ll be continuing his Phidays tradition on his website.

Duncan over at fifteensquared has shared the puzzles being distributed at this year’s York Sloggers and Betters 2026 gathering, so get solving. Feedback is welcome!

And if there’s more news in the cryptic world I’ve missed, please let me know!

Bonmo.app Releases Their 1,000th Puzzle!

We talked about Puzzmo celebrating 1,000 days back in July, but it turns out they’re not the only puzzle app crossing the millennium mark this year.

Bonmo.app just released their 1,000th puzzle, a delightful grid from constructor Carina da Rosa. If you’re an Apple user, check them out!

Reminder: Cultura Connector and the GRIT Ukraine Program Still Seeking Funds

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a charity effort to inspire Ukrainian youths through LARPing.

And the team at Cultura Connector have announced that they’re 60% of the way to unlocking a $20,000 match for the charity!

They are raising funds for their first GRIT Ukraine program, enabling Ukrainian facilitators to lead a 12-week LARP program with Ukrainian young people living in Poland to strengthen resilience, communication, emotional awareness, problem-solving, and connection with Ukrainian youths.

And with a week left to go, your help could make a huge difference.

Please share the link and donate if you can. It would be so amazing to reach out to young people halfway around the world and show them the magic of storytelling while helping build them up.

You can also click here for more details on Cultura Connector and the GRIT program.

The BackerKit Holiday Market Launches Soon!

Crowdfunding is a cornerstone of the puzzles and games industry these days, especially for smaller and independent creators, so I’m stoked to hear that the BackerKit Holiday Market is returning for a second year.

Hosted between November 18th and December 1st, numerous puzzle and games companies (among others!) will be participating.

Unlike most crowdfunding efforts, there’s no funding goal and products will be ready-to-ship immediately.

Some of my favorite shops like Scarlet Envelope and Morgan’s Escapes will be participating, so be sure to check it out!

What Puzzle Words Sent American Solvers to Google?

I love digging into data. It’s fascinating to see what you can learn from sifting through carefully cultivated information.

And I’m not alone in that. The team at UnscrambleX also love data, and they’ve shared some of their findings.

UnscrambleX is a free word scrambler, anagram solver, and Scrabble word finder all in one, and they’ve been crunching solver data for the last year.

And it turns out, between June 2025 and October 2026, the words that baffled or eluded solvers weren’t small, obscure ones, overly long entries, or crosswordese.

As Adrian Talvik, spokesperson for UnscrambleX told me, “The words that stop people aren’t the long ones. They’re words people have seen on a menu or a perfume label but never had to spell.”

NEROLI topped the list with 65,684 US searches on May 28, 2026, twice the next word (POMELO, 31,911 on May 18). Three of the five hardest came from the fruit bowl or the perfume counter, hard days come in themes (BÉCHAMEL, TERIYAKI and TZATZIKI on July 2)…

You can check out their full article here, including how they gathered and analyzed their data.

And we’ll have more interesting puzzle-data tidbits from UnscrambleX in the coming weeks!

Unfortunately I didn’t have time to test out any new puzzle apps or sites this week, but I promise that feature will return next Monday.

Did I miss any puzzly news or fun board game stories from the last few weeks? Let me know in the comments section below! I’d love to hear from you.

Product Review: THINK. Conversation Cards

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[Note: I received a free copy of this product in exchange for a fair, unbiased review.]

Anne Morrow Lindbergh once said that good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.

And it’s hard to deny that. Whether it’s a late night chat with friends, a conversation over drinks with a colleague or a loved one, or a spirited debate at a cocktail party, engrossing discussion is good for the soul, good for the mind, and good for the ego, whether people agree with you or not.

Sometimes these conversations emerge organically, and other times, someone asks a question that prompts discussion, debate, disagreement, understanding, or some combination of all.

Well, if you’re looking to spark a conversation, THINK. Conversation Cards are an excellent place to start.

Each of the 120 high-quality cards in the THINK. deck poses a question in one of eight headline categories. It could be about faith, technology, morality, public service, or our role in society / the world at large.

For example: What should a society reward more: effort, skill, risk, or results?

And as the discussion unfolds, you can flip the card over and delve into the topic with several follow-up questions. They might ask you to go deeper into your own beliefs, or to ponder a specific scenario related to the main question, or pose a tangential hypothetical.

But each card is carefully crafted to ask difficult questions without judgment, and encourage everyone at the table to share their thoughts and consider the words and opinions of others.

(Obviously some cards will lead to more agreement than others, but most are worded in a way that at least encourages some debate, even if most people will end up agreeing.)

Some of the best social games — Superfight, Cult Following, Secret Hitler — involve passionate discussion and challenging strongly-felt opinions as part of a winning or losing strategy. THINK. bypasses the gameplay aspect entirely, focusing on discussion.

It’s obviously not appropriate for every get-together (I’ll probably leave it at home come Thanksgiving, heh), but I am looking forward to my next chance to pull out the deck and have a thoughtful exchange of ideas with friends.

[THINK. is available for $29.99 at thinkconversationcards.com. There’s no age listing, but I wouldn’t play with kids, given some of the challenging topics. It lists 2-6 players, but the more the merrier, I say.]