Delving into the 2026 Midwest Crossword Tournament Puzzles!

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The 2026 edition of the Midwest Crossword Tournament was this past weekend, wrapping up the summer-to-fall monthly tournament pipeline (unless you live near the Finger Lakes of course).

I had a chance to sit down and try my hands at this year’s tournament puzzles. As always, I have some thoughts.

So, without further ado, let’s see what the Midwest Gridfest constructors had in store for solvers this year!

Puzzle #1: “Well, It’s About Time” by Kate Jenson

This 16×15 grid was an excellent starter for the tournament, offering solid accessible cluing (with some regional color and trivia) and an impressive swathe of long, varied entries all ending with “MN.” This puzzle was tied together nicely by the grid-spanning revealer MINNESOTA GOODBYE.

I wasn’t wild about LEAVES OF AUTUMN as an entry, which kinda felt like a lyric or line of verse that was reworded in Yodaspeak in order to fit a rhyme. (Though a quick internet search does seem to support the constructor, so this is quite possibly a me problem.)

But for the most part, this was a strong kickoff to a day of puzzle-solving.

Interesting grid entries included MASON WASP, BIANNUAL, and OFF-PUT, and my favorite clues were “Beauty brand with a six-shade ‘Ford Mustang’ collection” for OPI and “What a castle by the sea might be made of” for SAND.

Puzzle #2: Local Flavor by Mike Graczyk

The growing number of crossword tournaments each year across the US means we get more interesting location-specific clues, in addition to regional touches of personality. (As a trivia nerd, that’s a huge bonus for me.)

That’s absolutely the case with this 15x themeless crossword.

Now, unlike our constructor, I don’t begrudge people a little ketchup on their hot dogs (and that’s coming from someone who worked at a hot dog stand on and off for the better part of a decade). But I still quite enjoyed (almost wrote “relished” there) all the local references and “flavor” promised by the title.

There are some good crossings in this well-constructed grid, but the cluing is where Graczyk shines.

Interesting grid entries included MARSALIS, ONE AND DONE, SEARS TOWER, and JULES, and my favorite clues were “Feature of Grand Rapids and Green Bay” for HARD G, “Be a little shy” for OWE, and “Its name technically changed in 2009 (What’chu talkin’ ’bout… Willis??)” for SEARS TOWER.

Puzzle #3: Team Spirit by Rena Cohen

This 21x crossword, like Snickers, was guaranteed to satisfy any solvers in desperate need of some sports-based punnery.

Common phrases like BANG FOR YOUR BUCK and GUARDIAN ANGELS were clued to reference Midwest sports teams, and Cohen packed seven of them into the grid, including a grid-spanning centerpiece that taught me that there’s a hockey team called the Minnesota Wild.

Mix that with some excellent grid fill and a tightly constructed grid (UNIDEAL notwithstanding), and you’ve got an eye-catching behemoth to mark the Midwest midpoint of the tournament.

Interesting grid entries included BOCA RATON, LEFT A TIP, BELOW PAR, FIDELIO, PHOENICIA, and BAD PUNS (untrue when it comes to the puns in this puzzle), and my favorite clues were “Garment whose name evolved from French baby talk” for TUTU and “You might have one to get out of an escape room” for HOUR.

Puzzle #4: Take a Michigan Left by Emily Biegas and Sala Wanetick

I’ve solved several excellent collaborations by Biegas and Wanetick this year, so when I saw this byline come up in Puzzle #4, I knew I was in for something good.

What I didn’t know was how devious it would be.

This 15x puzzle featured four theme entries with U-turn signs accompanying them, as well as four black lines at various spots in the grid. It was clear that some sort of wordplay / answer manipulation would be at play here. I figured I would have to go beyond the actual answer to each clue to understand the gimmick involved.

For instance, 17-Across was clued “____ space (stairways, corridors, etc.)”, and the grid crossings resulted in LIMODRIVER. I knew LIMINAL was the answer, and I kept looking around, trying to find a way to replace letters or spell it out with neighboring letters in some way.

But I couldn’t suss it out.

This was, in fact, the second tournament puzzle this year where I completed the grid well within the allotted time, but I definitely didn’t UNDERSTAND the puzzle within the allotted time. (Puzzle #4 at Lollapuzzoola 19, I remember you.)

But after completing the rest of the tournament puzzles and then coming back to stare baffled at my completed grid for far too long, I reached out to a fellow puzzler who I knew was in attendance at the tournament, and she thankfully reassured me that I wasn’t alone in my befuddlement. In fact, many solvers needed the puzzle’s gimmick explained to them with visual aids.

As it turns out, I was on the right path, looking for the answer in a path beyond the actual entry. But U-turn arrows are curved, and so was the path to the answer, including diagonals. (Each one would stop at one of those black lines in the grid.)

WOOF. This one was a doozy. Impressively constructed and smartly clued, to be sure. But a doozy nonetheless.

Interesting grid entries included OK FINE, TEST RUN, SEMPER FI, and DEEP RED (sadly not clued to reference the Argento film), and my favorite clues were “Totally fasten-ated?” for RIVETED and “They turn thoughts into actions” for SYNAPSES.

Wait, wrong one…

Puzzle #5: Chicago Style by Zachary Edward-Brown

After my struggle with Puzzle #4, I regained a little confidence as I tackled this 15x grid that matched Puzzle #1’s welcoming energy, enjoying a breezy, smooth solve.

The theme entries were established phrases that became something new when CHI was added — my favorite was NO NOTES becoming CHINO NOTES — and the grid fill was great fun. Has SKINEMAX ever appeared in the NYT Crossword? (I just checked XWordInfo, and it has not. You scooped them, Zachary!)

Interesting grid entries included SMIRCH, EASY TIGER, PAC-MAN, NO OFFENSE, and the aforementioned SKINEMAX, and my favorite clues were “One assisting with coursework?” for SOUS CHEF and “Archenemy of Odlaw” for WALDO. (Deep Where’s Waldo? lore there!)

Puzzle #6: End of the Road by Jess Rucks

This 15x themeless was the perfect capper to the day’s solving, as Rucks presented a tight grid with loads of long entries crossing and buckets of personality in the grid fill.

There were two sets of clues available for the championship themeless, MINNESOTA NICE and CHICAGO FIRE, depending on your preference.

And Rucks excelled with both sets of clues, hitting the difficulty of each version perfectly and offering tons of style and wordplay to solvers of all ability levels. One of my favorite themeless puzzles this year.

Interesting grid entries included THE GOAT, PSYOPS, ACTION STAR, GICHIGAMI, and the fun pair of OKAY I GIVE and OH GOD NO.

As for favorite clues, here’s a list:

  • MN NICE: “Guy who totally sleighs at gift-giving” for SANTA
  • MN NICE: “Life phases, like ‘villain’ or ‘healing'” for ERAS
  • MN NICE: “What one must do to be the last one standing, so to speak, in musical chairs” for SIT
  • CHI FIRE: “They’re all talk, to some degree” for ORALS
  • CHI FIRE: “It leads to suffering, per Yoda” for HATE
  • CHI FIRE: “Present day figure” for SANTA
  • CHI FIRE: “Many Gen Alpha members (already!?)” for TEENS
  • CHI FIRE: “Doodle bug?” for FLEA
  • BOTH: “Original name for Lake Superior (“great water,” in Anishinaabemowin)” for GICHIGAMI

Plus some shameless puns and a Golden Girls reference. Outstanding clues.

Tiebreaker: Calculus Class by Will Eisenberg

Waiting in the wings for any ties was this 12×9 Midwest midi packed with snark (quite apropos for MEAN GIRLS DAY, one of the grid-spanning answers).

It was a fun, quick solve and a terrific light dessert after a crossword feast.

And, for those who STILL weren’t solving-sated, there was a bonus themeless crossword by Kaye Brown, a Ben Bass cryptogram, and a Mini Meta Suite curated by Sally Hoelscher. Attendees were absolutely spoiled!

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Last year’s Midwest Crossword Tournament puzzles made a big impression on me when I solved them earlier this year, so my expectations were high going into this year’s tournament. And for the most part, this year’s puzzles easily met those lofty expectations.

There were a few odd grid entries, but otherwise the construction this year was terrific. The themes were accessible and full of Midwestern color.

I obviously struggled with Puzzle #4, but that’s not a flaw in the programming, that’s a feature. There should always be one or two puzzles that ratchet up the challenge level and test your puzzly mettle, and Puzzle #4 succeeded at that.

The puzzling here was topnotch start to finish, and I’m already looking forward to next year’s festivities. (Which have already been announced for October 2nd, 2027!)

Did you tackle this year’s Midwest Gridfest, fellow puzzlers, either from home or live in person? Let me know in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you!

Club Drosselmeyer Returns This December (Plus Other Puzzle Events!)

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(I know it’s Halloween season, but it’s never too early to look forward to holiday puzzly goodness for later in the year!)

If you’re a puzzle fan, you’re absolutely spoiled for choice when it comes to puzzly events to explore. Crossword tournaments, treasure hunts, escape rooms, puzzles by mail, puzzles by email, puzzles on your phone.

But I guarantee you’ve never experienced anything like Club Drosselmeyer.

Imagine getting all gussied up in your best 1940s-appropriate garb and grabbing your tickets before heading out to a show in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

What kind of show, you ask? Well, a vaudeville-style variety show with live music, enchanting and exciting performances, and all sorts of mysteries and intrigue playing out before your eyes, all set during the heady days and nights of World War II.

And what if there was an elaborate puzzle hunt tying the entire show together?

In a nutshell, that’s a Club Drosselmeyer event.

And tickets are available this Thursday for their latest immersive show!

There are performances set for December 4th, 5th, & 6th AND December 10th, 11th, 12th, & 13th for a two-hour whirlwind of puzzly theatricality. As the organizers themselves say, “Prepare yourself for another season of magic and mayhem, romance and revelry, champagne and sugarplums.”

Although I’ve never gotten to attend a Club Drosselmeyer event in person, a few years ago I participated in their virtual Club Drosselmeyer Interactive Radio Broadcast of 1943, and it remains one of my all-time favorite puzzle experiences.

I enjoyed two hours of wonderful music while tracking a rogue flying toaster, unraveling a criminal conspiracy during an air raid, decoding secret messages, helping a starlet choose the right lipstick for her show, and even performing a magic trick!

Club Drosselmeyer is run by a small and incredibly dedicated group of writers, performers, puzzlers, and musicians who put their all into this event every single year, and I simply cannot sing their praises loud enough.

But if you can’t wait for December…

Our friends at Club Drosselmeyer have cordially invited you to a wedding!

Back in April, I helped spread the word about The Wedding Party, an interactive puzzle experience that ran in Boston through the summer.

And it’s been extended (again)! The Wedding Party will be running in October and November as well!

That’s so many new opportunities to check out this delightful “playable theater” experience.

It seems our good friends, Jack and Norah, are finally getting married. You know Jack and Norah, right? Of course you do, EVERYBODY knows Jack and Norah! They both work at Harmonics Inc. (Not the game studio, the global telecom services company founded by the Lane family. Right, that one.) Their reception will be at the W Boston Hotel downtown. They’re thrilled that you’re coming and we’re absolutely certain it will be an entirely normal wedding with absolutely no surprises at all.

…

The Wedding Party will have all of the Drossely craziness that you love but set in 2026 — and with dinner! This wedding will have it all: wonderful food, champagne and custom cocktails, decorations, a charming bridal party, spies, puzzles, intrigue… all the best things of a totally regular normal-person wedding.

Who doesn’t love a wedding with all the pomp and circumstance and spies and secret plots and potentially world-endangering threats?

You know, wedding stuff!

Nope, we’re STILL not done with puzzly Drosselmeyer promotions!

Blood Hunt is a comedy vampire bar crawl on Halloween night in Malden, Massachusetts! It’s What We Do in the Shadows with a puzzle hunt twist, loaded with fun characters, good drinks, and silly, spooky fun.

Check out the pitch:

You are newly turned. Freshly fanged. Tragically immortal. And before dawn, you must pass trials administered by the most unhinged elders the undead world has to offer. You and your coterie have until dawn to prove yourself worthy of the ancient vampire council — four locations, each with trials and elders who have survived plagues and empires and are somehow most annoyed by you specifically.

Can you endure all four stops and prove your vampiric value?

Click here for tickets and more details on the event!

Will you be attending any of these delightful immersive puzzly experiences, fellow solvers? Let us know in the comments section below! We’d love to hear from you.

The Week in Puzzles and Games

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There’s so much going on in the intertwined worlds of puzzles and games, so let’s skip the intro and get to the good stuff!

boswords new

The Boswords Fall Themeless League Kicks Off Tonight!

There’s still time to register for this year’s Fall Themeless League, which officially starts up tonight! (There was a preseason puzzle last week.)

If you’re unfamiliar, the Boswords Fall Themeless League is a clever weekly spin on traditional crossword tournament-style solving. Instead of cracking through a number of puzzles in a single day (or two), the Fall Themeless League consists of one themeless / freestyle crossword each week, scored based on your accuracy and how fast you complete the grid.

Look at that lineup of talent!

Each week’s puzzle only has one grid, but there are three sets of clues, each representing a different difficulty level for solvers. Smooth is the least challenging, Choppy is the middle ground, and Stormy is the most challenging. (When you register to participate, you choose the difficulty level that suits you best.)

Look how many people are participating this year!

Each week’s puzzle is accompanied by a one-hour broadcast on Twitch, starting with a preseason puzzle and broadcast.

The Fall Themeless League then runs the next nine Monday nights starting at 9 PM.

Congrats to the Midwest Crossword Tournament Winners!

The 2026 edition of the Midwest Crossword Tournament was this past weekend, and by all accounts, it was a massive success.

Organized by Shannon Rapp and Sally Hoelscher, the excellent lineup of constructors and editors guaranteed a lively and occasionally devious experience for all involved!

The Chicago Fire was the tougher division, and Minnesota Nice the less-tough-but-still-devious division.

Congrats to all the winners and everyone who participated this year!

Oh, and if you want to watch the Chicago Fire live-solved finals, check out the video:

My deep dive into this year’s tournament puzzles will be posted on Thursday.

More on The Independent Cryptic Crossword

I have a quick update regarding Thursday’s post about the potential end of The Independent‘s daily cryptic crossword.

There is another email address you can contact to show your interest and support!

All you need to do is message trulyindependentcrosswords@gmail.com with the word “Truly” in the subject line.

Leave the body of the email empty, your email alone will count as another person who wants to see The Independent‘s cryptic crossword continue! You’ll get an automated reply letting you know that your voice has been heard.

Hopefully this will show the managing editor of The Independent that the crossword is worth saving!

Spooky Crowdfunding Roundup!

To close out today’s post, here’s a trio of games to support that fit the Halloween / horror / survival vibe nicely that are currently crowdfunding.

The Mysterious Package Company makes some of the coolest, most immersive puzzle-solving experiences on the market today, and if you were a fan of their Doomensions: Mystery Manor pop-up escape room puzzle game a few years ago, then you’re in for double the excitement this time around.

They’re currently running a Kickstarter for two new Doomensions pop-up puzzle experiences: Cursed Tomb and Crimson Castle.

You’ll get to explore these three-dimensional set pieces as you unravel the mysteries behind each puzzly setting.

The attention to detail with Mystery Manor was fantastic, and I really enjoyed the hours spent revealing the puzzle’s hidden secrets and facing each new twist and mystery as it emerged.

If you like at-home escape room puzzle games, you should definitely give one (or both) of these Doomensions a shot.

Another horror-themed sequel game is crowdfunding right now, as the smash hit game Don’t Go In There has gotten a die-rolling successor in, you guessed it, Don’t Go Back There.

This standalone expansion is built on the same template as the original, but with new foes and new effects to deal with.

Plus you can mix and match this game with the original and test yourself against BOTH games’ mechanics and monsters.

Don’t Go In There was part of my 31 Games of Halloween countdown last year, and rightly so. I have no doubt the Road to Infamy team have exceeded themselves with the sequel.

Click here to check out the Kickstarter!

And since we’ve been talking about The Oregon Trail in game form recently, it’s serendipitous that our friends at 9th Level Games have a Backerkit running right now for their new game, Portland, Oregon Trail.

Here’s the pitch:

Like in the OG Oregon Trail game, you might have to ford a river in your Ford and you’ll definitely be contracting a variety of illnesses. But the main obstacle between you and Portland will be capitalism. Your characters have limited resources (and no health insurance), and your roles as societal misfits will make you a target for capitalist villains who hate that you don’t follow their rules. In this game, though, conformity is as good as death.

This GM-less roleplaying game is a collaborative adventure to endure all the nonsense of road trips with modern day anti-capitalist rebel spirit, all in the familiar flavors of the original Oregon Trail we all know and either love, hate, or love and hate.

Check out the Backerkit campaign here!

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.

Help Save The Independent Cryptic Crossword!

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Although I have dabbled with cryptic (or British-style) crosswords for years, this year I’ve made more of a dedicated effort to improve my cryptic solving. I’ve tackled Josh Wardle’s Parseword game, sampled cryptics from many different outlets, and tried to learn more about the history of cryptic crosswords.

Along the way, I delved into Sondheim’s love of cryptics and celebrated milestones like 100 years of The Observer‘s crosswords and The Guardian publishing its 30,000th cryptic.

But it was the solving, experiencing all of those different voices and styles across many different publishers, that taught me about the incredible diversity and creativity of the cryptic setter community. Over the last year, I’ve solved puzzles from The Guardian, The Financial Times, The Observer, The Globe and Mail, the Cox and Rathvon archive, and more, as well as a backlog of cryptics from puzzle suites I’ve purchased in the past.

One of my most frequent cryptic crossword stops is The Independent.

And sadly, they’ve announced that they plan to stop publishing the daily cryptic crossword as of October 31st.

The Independent crossword is widely regarded as a breeding ground for new talent. Many commenters have rejoiced in all the new bylines and setters they see on a weekly basis, and solvers all over are lamenting the loss of a marvelous cryptic crossword outlet.

But thankfully, solvers are reaching out.

Simon Anthony at Cracking the Cryptic has shared the news with the CTC audience in the hopes of encouraging solvers to step up in support of The Independent crossword.

If you would like to add your voice to the chorus, you can share your thoughts (respectfully, please!) with Richard Best, managing editor of The Independent, at managingeditor@independent.co.uk.

I’ve already sent a few words there myself, hoping to be a small drop in a larger, more influential torrent of hope, interest, and protest.

If you’re unfamiliar with cryptic solving in general or The Independent crossword in particular, please click the links here and here to read more about the crossword’s influence and see the outpouring of support in the comments.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but The Independent crossword is one of the first cryptic crosswords I ever seriously attempted to solve.

It was 2013 and I was reading John Halpern’s The Centenary of the Crossword, where he chronicled a century of crossword solving on both sides of the Atlantic.

There were many puzzles included in the book, and after exhausting all of the American-style crosswords, I decided to try my luck with the cryptics.

It went poorly.

It was slow going at first.

Years later, I returned to those puzzles, determined to try again. Among the puzzles I finally completed were a 2012 cryptic set by Anax and a 2009 cryptic set by Nimrod, both from The Independent.

So this year, when I decided to improve my cryptic solving, I remembered those puzzles, and made The Independent a regular part of my solving.

Do I still struggle? Absolutely. I am, at best, a mediocre cryptic solver. At the start, I ended up figuring out the word from crossings in the grid and identifying the definition part of the clue, and then reverse-engineering how the clue worked from the answer.

But more and more now, I’m learning the tricks and techniques, and I have slowly started getting better. The moments of total bafflement upon reading a clue are fewer and farther between, and grids are filling faster each week.

And it’s sad to think that — now that I’m finally getting the hang of it! — one of those cherished cryptic outlets is going away.

Hopefully enough people reach out and the managing editor is convinced to reverse his decision. Maybe they’ll follow the template laid out by other outlets and charge a small subscription fee to solvers to offset costs. I think it would serve them well to try.

Solvers aren’t the largest group in the world, but they are among the most loyal.

Here’s hoping The Independent recognizes that.

Did Tiktok Witches Just Crack the Voynich Manuscript? … Probably Not.

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Image courtesy of BBC.com

The Voynich Manuscript is a cryptologic curiosity unlike anything else we’ve seen before, one that has baffled linguists and puzzlers for decades. This hand-written book was discovered over a hundred years ago, but it’s believed to date back to the fifteenth century.

The writing, which reads from right to left, has yet to be identified. It’s unclear if this is some sort of sophisticated code, an unknown or lost language which was then encoded, an invented language, an example of glossolalia (a written equivalent of speaking in tongues), or simply an elaborate hoax.

The only known copy of the text resides in Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

From the Yale University website:

Many call the fifteenth-century codex, commonly known as the “Voynich Manuscript,” the world’s most mysterious book. Written in an unknown script by an unknown author, the manuscript has no clearer purpose now than when it was rediscovered in 1912 by rare books dealer Wilfrid Voynich. The manuscript appears and disappears throughout history, from the library of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II to a secret sale of books in 1903 by the Society of Jesus in Rome. The book’s language has eluded decipherment, and its elaborate illustrations remain as baffling as they are beautiful.

One of several fold-out pages in the manuscript.
Image courtesy of Wikipedia.org.

There have been many theories regarding what form of encryption may have been employed in the Voynich Manuscript.

Some investigators theorize that vowels have been removed from the words in the text in order to obscure their meaning further, while others suggest writing that has been mirrored or otherwise written backwards. Anagrams and other forms of word manipulation are another common theory.

Attempts at decryption are further complicated by Lisa Fagin Davis’s 2020 paper that concluded through handwriting analysis that five different scribes contributed to the Voynich Manuscript.

So, what does all this have to do with witches and TikTok?

A TikTok user has gone viral claiming to have cracked the Voynich Manuscript. She says it’s a document cataloguing the menstrual cycle, and that the reason it wasn’t cracked sooner is because it was written by women, and male linguists overlooked that possibility for the last century or so.

(There’s also a bunch of stuff about magically growing plants in menstrual blood, but I’ll be ignoring that pseudoscience and focusing on the decoding/interpretation of the manuscript.)

It’s a very interesting theory — the menstrual cycle part, not the casual misandry part — but not exactly a new one.

Given the predominant plant imagery, as well as the drawings that resemble medieval calendars throughout the manuscript, there’s a prominent theory that the plants featured could be used to induce abortions, and were being catalogued as such.

That would be very valuable information to preserve and disseminate, given the power dynamics between men and women at the time and the key role that reproduction served across all levels of feudalist society.

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Image courtesy of Wikipedia.org.

But can I point out the obvious? They didn’t solve the manuscript. They didn’t crack or decode anything. They looked at the images and made assumptions.

The poster talks about women having limited access to written language, which is absolutely true, and claims that they mostly communicated through imagery. When you ask the obvious follow-up question — why the huge swathes of text, then? — she suggests it’s a manufactured language to hide this information from the men hunting down women with this knowledge.

But why? Why would you hunt down people with knowledge of the menstrual cycle, which would be beneficial to reproduction? That doesn’t make any sense. (It would make more sense to hunt down women spreading information about plants that could induce abortions, which is the OPPOSITE of what she’s suggesting.)

Because she admits to never actually decoding the text, she is drawing all her conclusions from the images. That reminds me of that parable about the blind men and the elephant, where each person touches a different part of the elephant (the trunk, the tail, etc.) and arrives at a different conclusion.

Without any of the text to accompany the images, crucial context is missing.

Now, I don’t mean to demean the efforts of nonprofessionals trying to solve mysteries or cold cases. I myself am an enthusiastic amateur in many respects. Research and discovery are not the sole property of universities and professionals, and some incredible, insightful leaps in many different fields have been made by those that are not part of established organizations.

Could these self-described witches have uncovered or recognized patterns that escaped 125 years of linguistic analysis? Absolutely.

BUT.

The way that they present their argument is reductive. They don’t pose it as a fascinating discovery or a triumph of long-held traditions resurfacing. They sneer at the failure of a century of men trying to solve it. Which is, frankly, stupid.

It’s stupid because it ignores the CRUCIAL role many female linguists and translators have had over the years. Just look at the amazing work Emily Wilson did with her translation of The Odyssey, offering new insight into a classic tale. (Also you need to read her review of the movie, because Nolan claimed he based the movie on her translation, and if that’s the case, boy, did he miss the mark.)

But I digress.

This TikTok post lumps “men” and “professionals” together to the detriment of all women, just to cater to a weird, desperate anti-intellectualism crowd that looks down on years (or even decades) of hard work and study by men, women, and nonbinary researchers in favor of viral shortcuts and faux grassroots equality.

Everyone has failed at cracking the Voynich Manuscript, not just men. This isn’t a gender-based thing. Lisa Fagin Davis, the medievalist and expert in manuscript study I mentioned earlier, is widely considered the foremost researcher when it comes to the Voynich Manuscript, and she spent years handling all the Voynich-related requests and materials while at Yale.

Her 2020 paper about the five scribes of the manuscript is the result of genuine research, analysis, and deduction, not the hand-wavey pseudointellectual astrological alchemical… whatever this TikTok content creator is doing.

I’ve read some of the discourse surrounding all this, trying to get a sense of people’s reactions, both within and outside the WitchTok community. Several commenters shared this Ursula K. Le Guin quote during the discussion, which feels very appropriate for the topic at hand:

But I didn’t and still don’t like making a cult of women’s knowledge, preening ourselves on knowing things men don’t know, women’s deep irrational wisdom, women’s instinctive knowledge of Nature, and so on. All that all too often merely reinforces the masculinist idea of women as primitive and inferior – women’s knowledge as elementary, primitive, always down below at the dark roots, while men get to cultivate and own the flowers and crops that come up into the light. But why should women keep talking baby talk while men get to grow up? Why should women feel blindly while men get to think?

In the end, despite generations of effort, we still don’t know what the Voynich Manuscript says.

And I don’t think it’s because of gatekeeping or snobbish intellectualism or misandry or misogyny or dismissal of female viewpoints.

I think it’s simply because we haven’t figured it out yet.

This kind of decryption can’t always been brute-forced through computer power. Languages are complex and nuanced, and with five different scribes, the handwriting and personal quirks of each writer could be coloring or even masking different options. What if an S in one person’s hand looks like an F in another?

And that’s not taking into account the possibility of an encryption code or an additional linguistic trick like the vowel exclusion I mentioned.

Or that mistakes could’ve been made, so the encryption isn’t consistent. Human error is always a possibility, as we’ve previously seen in the case of Brian Patrick Regan.

In the end, human ingenuity created it, and a lot of human ingenuity will no doubt be required to finally reveal its secrets. And everyone who contributed or attempted to contribute to the solve, gender be damned, will be a part of that legacy.

Of course, if you want to take a crack at solving it yourself, you can pick up a copy from the Yale University Press for $55.

Puzzmo Looking for New Puzzle Games (Plus a Puzzle to Solve!)

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Puzzmo is one of the best puzzle game apps out there. Their puzzles are terrific, their games are as diverse as they are engaging, and if you’re not using the app, you’re missing out.

And they just put out a request for puzzle game submissions to add to their dynamite lineup:

We’re thinking about having a handful of games from members of our community appear on Puzzmo later this year. We’re always working towards Puzzmo being the place for thoughtful puzzles, so this project is us trying to connect our platform and community with interesting new games that otherwise don’t have a perfect place to be noticed and played on the internet.

So any game designers out there, if you’ve got a puzzle game that you think is ready for the world to see, be sure to click this link and check out what they’re looking for!

But be timely about it, the window for submissions only lasts until October 2nd!

And speaking of puzzles, I’ve got one for you to solve today.

I didn’t have time to finish this one last weekend, so sadly, it’s not as timely as I’d like.

One of my favorite character actors, Gerrit Graham, passed away recently, and I wanted to do a little tribute puzzle to him. Rather than a usual crossword grid, I thought I’d use a cryptic-style grid, so I could put more themed entries in the puzzle than a traditional crossword would allow.

Even with this looser format and fewer crossings, I still couldn’t fit in all the film and TV references I wanted to. I had to leave out the films Used Cars, The Little Mermaid, and Police Academy 6: City Under Siege (which sucks, but he’s GREAT in), as well as noteworthy appearances on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, Parker Lewis Can’t Lose, Tales from the Crypt, Sledge Hammer!, The Tick, and Babylon 5. (He also wrote teleplays for The Twilight Zone!)

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

Happy puzzling, everyone, and good luck to everyone who submits to Puzzmo’s open submission for new puzzle games!