Monthly Archives: September 2015

PuzzleNation Product Reviews: Fluxx Dice and Adventure Time Fluxx

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The flagship game of the Looney Labs brand, Fluxx, at its core, is a card game that mixes flexibility and strategy in gloriously chaotic fashion. The basic mechanics of Fluxx — collecting keeper cards in order to complete a certain goal — remain the same each time you play, but with constantly shifting rules and goals (as well as obstacles your fellow players employ), every time you play, it’s a brand new game.

And quite honestly, given how often the rules change during a game, I didn’t think Fluxx could get more chaotic.

Enter Fluxx Dice.

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Fluxx Dice adds five cards to your Fluxx deck, and they all concern using (or not using) the two Fluxx Dice to change how many cards you draw per turn and how many you play per turn.

The addition of dice-rolling randomness to an already hectic game offers a level of unpredictability that even a well-shuffled deck cannot. Especially since a sufficiently tactical Fluxx player can often overcome the game’s inherent instability with the proper strategy. But no one can prepare for a chance roll of the dice!

Although I’ve only tried Fluxx Dice with the standard game, Batman Fluxx, and today’s other review product so far, I can confidently say that you will not believe how big an impact five little cards and two dice will have on your gameplay. What a terrific way to add a touch more luck and consequence to a game that already employs both so deftly.

This brings us to Adventure Time Fluxx.

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[A small sampling of cards given the Adventure Time touch.]

Adventure Time is a Dungeons and Dragons-inspired cartoon show about a boy named Finn and his best friend, a shape-shifting dog named Jake, as they have adventures in the Land of Ooo. In a world populated by talking sweets, numerous princesses, and monsters galore, Finn and Jake must deal with the return of magic to the world and the aftermath of the Great Mushroom War.

As you can see, the show’s fingerprints are all over this themed Fluxx deck, and given that the show itself has a very strong “anything can happen” vibe to it, this is clearly a match made in heaven.

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[Two of my favorite characters become valuable Keeper cards in this edition of Fluxx.]

Although I hoped some of the cards would offer fans of the show gameplay incentives — akin to the Batman Fluxx card that rewarded players wearing something with the Batman symbol on it — my fellow players and I did come up with an appropriate Adventure Time-fueled variant.

Each time a keeper card was played, the person who played it had the opportunity to repeat a quote or popular line from that character. If they did so, they received either an additional card to be played immediately OR a roll of the Fluxx Dice to alter the current rules of the game.

For a show that rewards sharp-eyed attentive viewers with in-jokes and humor, this felt like a suitably Adventure Time-y wrinkle to add to the game.

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The family of Fluxx games continues to grow, and although Adventure Time Fluxx didn’t really bring anything new to the table gameplay-wise, the immense charm of its themed cards and references to the show still make it a worthwhile addition to any Fluxx fan’s collection.

And as for Fluxx Dice, it may be a small set, but in terms of sheer gameplay impact, it packs one heck of a punch.

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and be sure to check out the growing library of PuzzleNation apps and games!

A Guide to Crossword Clues

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[Image courtesy of npr.org.]

For someone who has never solved a crossword before — or has solved them before with less-than-stellar results — the field of clues that accompanies the grid is a daunting sight.

But if you take those clues one at a time, you’ll quickly find that there are different kinds of crossword clues, each with their own flavor and level of difficulty.

Now, I’m referring to American-style crosswords here. Cryptic or British-style crosswords have a completely different language when it comes to cluing. (Let me know if you’d like me to do a post on cryptic cluing!)

By far the most common style of crossword cluing is the synonym clue. The default form of cluing is simply offering a synonym or definition of the word. You practically can’t have a crossword puzzle without at least one.

Some recent examples of synonym clues from our Crossword Clue Challenge every weekday on Facebook and Twitter include “Before sunrise” for PREDAWN, “Ample” for ENOUGH, and “Talent” for KNACK. Simple and straightforward.

Another common cluing form is the fill-in-the-blank clue.

These clues can vary wildly in difficulty depending on how much information is offered. For instance, “Quentin Tarantino’s ____ Fiction” is a super-easy clue, whereas “____ Sea” would be pretty tough, even knowing how many letters are in the answer.

Along the same lines are the see-also clues. These are clues that reference other clues in the same puzzle, often by spreading a multiple-word answer across several entries.

For instance, you look at 3 Across, and it says “See 9 Down.” And when you look at 9 Down, it says, “With 3 Across, popular song by The Verve.” But you might need help from the crossings to get BITTER SWEET SYMPHONY reading across several spaces in the grid.

[Wait, wrong Clue…]

Some clues offer more information than you expect, if you’re observant. For instance, it’s common in many crosswords to signal a variant spelling, a foreign word, or an abbreviated word as an answer within the clue.

For instance, if the answer is AMEER (instead of EMIR), you might clue it as “Moslem chief” instead of “Muslim chief” to indicate the variant spelling. For REP, a standard clue would be “D.C. fig.” For SRA — short for SENORA — you might get “Mrs., in Madrid”.

(You can also employ wordplay with entries like these. For a French-fueled clue, how about “Nice, in Nice” for BIEN?)

And that serves as a marvelous segue into our final crossword cluing style: wordplay clues!

[Image courtesy of Rocky Smith Files.]

Wordplay clues employ some sort of pun or linguistic trickery to take them a step beyond the average clue. Often, these clues are marked with a question mark, indicating that there’s something going on beyond the surface meaning of the clue.

As you’d expect, wordplay clues are a favorite of mine, and they’ve been featured several times in our weekday Crossword Clue Challenge. Some previous examples include “Tot rod?” for TRICYCLE, “Tread the boards?” for WALK THE PLANK, “Star trek?” for SPACEWALK, and “Take the honey and run?” for ELOPE.

If you’ve never solved a crossword before — or never had much luck with them in the past — hopefully you’ll find some helpful tools here to guide you toward crossword-solving success.

And hey, if you need more practice, you can always check out the Crossword Clue Challenge every day at 2 PM EST on Facebook and Twitter!

Good luck!

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and be sure to check out the growing library of PuzzleNation apps and games!