Greetings, fellow puzzlers and enigma enthusiasts!

I’m attending a Nerd Potluck next weekend, and I could use your input.

Now, for the uninitiated, a Nerd Potluck is a party where everyone brings something suitably nerdy. It could be a game, a puzzle, a brain teaser, or something else that fits the nerd party aesthetic.

This is a natural extension of other parties my friends and I used to throw. We’re all gamers, RPG fans, and puzzle nerds.

No matter what the occasion — birthday, homecoming, reunion, Thursday — I can’t remember a party that didn’t include a few rounds of Mafia or a spirited game of the trivia/Truth-or-Dare hybrid my friend Dan invented, Who Wants to Eat a Millionnaire?

Last time we threw a Nerd Potluck, my contribution was a handful of Politos, jokey off-kilter summaries of movie plots.

(I based the idea on the writings of Rick Polito, a writer for the Marin Independent Journal in California, who is known for his sharp single-sentence summaries of films.)

Example: Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again.

Answer: The Wizard of Oz

How great is that?! The answer is very. Very great.

So, I opted to come up with some of my own to challenge my fellow puzzle-loving movie buff pals. Here’s a sampling of them:

–A suicidal man has an intense hallucinatory psychotic episode, then is saved by a timely family-organized intervention.

–The minds and opinions of a group of prisoners are gradually changed by a charismatic knife-wielding stranger.

–An improperly supervised gang of miscreants, when left to their own devices, commit acts of trespassing, property damage, assault, consort with known criminals and pillage historical artifacts for their own gain.

–A group of friends scatters and licks their wounds after bullies wreck their secret snow fort.

(Feel free to leave guesses in the comments section. I’ll follow Eric’s example, and ask you for one answer per person. I’ll post the answers in the comment section later!)

It was a fairly popular exercise in outside-the-box thinking, but it feels a bit “been-there, done-that.”

This time around, I’m working on something new, more brain teaserish than anything else.

It’s not quite ready; I’m still ironing out a few kinks stylewise. (If I have the chance, I’ll post it here next week, a few days before the Nerd Potluck. I’m sure your input would be helpful.)

But a ladyfriend of mine will be attending, and she has a different challenge in mind.

She wants to make a puzzle-themed dessert.

Naturally, I suggested strawberry shortzcake, but she was considering tiramisudoku. (I know, a puzzle fan with a sweet tooth. She’s awesome.)

So, any suggestions for puzzly dishes? Cryptograham crackers could be fun, but who wants to do all that writing in icing?

Oh well, if not, no worries. I’m sure she’ll come up with something. (Hopefully I will too!)

But in the meantime, thanks for reading. Keep calm and puzzle on, gentle readers!