Monthly Archives: December 2015

It’s Follow-Up Friday: Star Wars edition!

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Welcome to Follow-Up Friday!

By this time, you know the drill. Follow-Up Friday is a chance for us to revisit the subjects of previous posts and bring the PuzzleNation audience up to speed on all things puzzly.

And today, we’re returning to the subject of Star Wars!

Star Wars: Episode VII: The Force Awakens hits theaters this week, and I thought I’d offer up a few links and some puzzly fun in the spirit of this much-beloved franchise.

#1: Google

Do yourself a favor and go to Google right now and type “A long time ago in a galaxy far far away” into the search bar. You will not be disappointed.

#2: A Star Wars StearsWords!

Crossword constructor and friend of the blog Robin Stears created this great Star Wars-fueled puzzle last year, and it’s a perfect way to celebrate Star Wars in a puzzly way. The loose grid construction allows for a lot more themed fun to be had!

#3: Holiday Special Trivia!

Our friends at Puzzopallo noted that it’s only appropriate for a new Star Wars film to open during the holidays, since Star Wars has something of a tradition with holiday releases.

They’re referring, of course, to the much-maligned Star Wars Holiday Special from 1978, which infamously featured a Wookiee holiday called Life Day, some hit ’70s musical acts, and some dubious comedy from Harvey Korman.

And they’ve come up with some Holiday Special trivia for ambitious Star Wars fans!

#4: Star Wars Riddles!

Naturally, I couldn’t resist throwing out some Star Wars-themed brain teasers for you to unravel. Can you puzzle out the answers to the four riddles and poem below?

1. Why do doctors make the best Jedi?

2. What do Gungans put things in?

3. What do you call the website Chewbacca started that gives out Imperial secrets?

4. What side of an Ewok has the most hair?

5. (written in Yoda-speak, it appears)

Atop my head, a crown I bear,
Nearby my crown, two guards uphold,
Life I devour, metals I dissect,
When seen I am, all life trembles,
If opposed I am, a thousand spears rain,
When cornered I am, hornets I unleash,
Yet controlled by thousands I am.
What am I?

Hopefully, you’ll enjoy one or all of these puzzly Star Wars treats! May the Force be with you, fellow puzzlers and PuzzleNationers!

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PuzzleNation Product Review: Give Me the Brain!

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In today’s product review, we look at a game that’s all about using your smarts to get the job done…before someone snatches them away from you.

Welcome to Friedey’s, the fast food restaurant run by zombies. Every zombie has several jobs to do. Some of them are easy, but others are tougher and require a limited resource: the one brain shared by every employee. Only one player can use the brain at a time, so use it wisely before another player steals it!

Give Me the Brain! starts with a very simple premise: empty your hand of cards before your opponents do. But behind that easy-to-follow mechanic lies a game fueled by luck and strategy alike.

There are bid cards (blue) and job cards (yellow and pink). The bid cards are used to try to gain control of the brain, either by stealing it from an opponent or by taking advantage when another player drops it. The job cards come in two varieties, pink ones that require the brain and yellow ones that don’t.

Since, as a zombie, you’ve got two hands (literal hands, not hand like “a grouping of cards”), you can either use two one-handed job cards or one two-handed job card per turn. For jobs that require the brain, you need to roll the die and beat the number on the job card. If you roll higher than the number on the card, you drop that card and keep the brain. If you roll lower, you drop the brain and other players can try to grab it.

Between the different effects the job cards have and the requirements for playing them (one hand or two, needing the brain or not), this quickly becomes a game about maximizing opportunities.

The game comes with the deck of cards and a six-sided die (which also represents “the brain” in play), but you can add a little brain to your set for less than a dollar extra, and I’ve found that passing the brain around the table is much more satisfying than stealing the die from an opponent.

The premise is silly, the artwork is appropriately ghoulish, and the game play is topnotch, offering plenty of replay value. Picking this one up is a no-brainer.

Give Me the Brain! is available from Cheapass Games for $25 and is featured in our Holiday Puzzly Gift Guide!

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Keep your Get Out of Jail Free card handy.

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Recently, friend of the blog Chris Begley sent me an article about some interesting math facts. Most of them were about probability and how many people misinterpret the likelihood of various events happening based on bad assumptions about probability.

For instance, since you have a 50/50 chance of heads or tails when you flip a coin, it seems logical that if you flipped a coin ten times, you’d get heads five times and tails five times, whereas in reality, it’s common to have runs of one result or the other that fly in the face of that simple 50/50 assumption.

But that wasn’t the fact that caught my eye. I thought it was much more intriguing that not all spaces on a Monopoly board have an equal likelihood of being landed on.

And that can affect how you play. For instance, if you believe each spot has an equal chance of being landed on — 1 in 40, given the 40 squares on the board — you might opt to buy all three colors in a given area to give yourself a 3/40 chance (7.5%), or you might go for all 4 railroads to give yourself a 4/40 chance (10%).

[A breakdown of spaces and likelihood of landing, based on the UK version.
(Chance and Community Chest cards differ between UK and US versions,
though probabilities for spaces in the US version are quite similar.)]

But that’s not how Monopoly actually works. Some spaces are far more likely than others. This is partly due to rolling two dice every time you move (which makes 6, 7, or 8 spaces the most likely results). There are also rule cards that make some squares more likely than others.

The most common space to land on is Jail (due in no small part to the Go to Jail square and where Chance and Community Chest cards send you). The most common PROPERTY to land on is Illinois Avenue, followed by B&O Railroad, Tennessee Avenue, New York Avenue, and Reading Railroad.

[A breakdown of space probabilities for the US version of the game.]

On the flip side, Mediterranean Avenue is the least likely to be landed on, followed by Baltic Avenue, Luxury Tax, Park Place, and Oriental Avenue. (Again, the Go to Jail square comes into play, as Park Place is seven squares away and the most common dice roll is 7.)

I like that a little properly applied math might make you a better Monopoly player. (Though if I’m going to walk the Boardwalk, I’d rather be playing The Doom That Came to Atlantic City.)

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You can also share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and explore the always-expanding library of PuzzleNation apps and games on our website!

It’s Follow-Up Friday: Holiday Wordplay edition!

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Welcome to Follow-Up Friday!

By this time, you know the drill. Follow-Up Friday is a chance for us to revisit the subjects of previous posts and bring the PuzzleNation audience up to speed on all things puzzly.

And today, I’m posting the results of our #PennyDellHolidayPuzzles hashtag game!

You may be familiar with the board game Schmovie, hashtag games on Twitter, or @midnight’s Hashtag Wars segment on Comedy Central.

For the last few months, we’ve been collaborating on puzzle-themed hashtag games with our pals at Penny Dell Puzzles, and this month’s hook was Penny Dell Holiday Puzzles, mashing up Penny Dell puzzles and anything and everything having to do with winter, Christmas, the holiday season, festive songs, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Festivus, Voodoo Day…whatever you celebrate in December!

Examples include: Oh Little Puzzler of Bethlehem, ChristMasterwords, or HoliDaisy!

So, without further ado, check out what the puzzlers at PuzzleNation and Penny Dell Puzzles came up with!

Come they told me, pa-rum-pa-Home-Runs, the Diamond Rings to see, pa-rum-pa-Home Runs…

Deck the Halls With Bricks and Mortar, fa la la la la…

We’ll frolic and play, the Eskimo Right of Way, Walking in a winter wonderland.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Simon Says

Chess Words Roasting on an Open Fire

Here We Come A-Puzzling

Anagramma Got Run Over By a Reindeer

Do You Hear What I Here and There? / Do You Hear What’s Left?

Places, Please Come Home for Christmas

Ups and Downs on the Housetop / Up on the Housetop to Bottom

All I Want for Christmas Is My Two-for-One Teeth / All I Want for Christmas Is My Two by Two

Take a Letter to Santa / Writing a Letterboxes (or Letter Tiles) to Santa

The Little Drummerman / The Little Puzzler Boy

The Three Wise Men of a Kind / These Three Wise Men

Merry Christmas to All Fours, and to All a Good Night!

God Bless Us Every One and Only!

It’s the Most Wonderful Timed Framework of the Year

We Need A Little Chinese Christmas / Yes, we need a little Pine Cone

So You Say This is Christmas

Try-Angles We Have Heard on High

March of the Wooden Quotefalls

‘Tis the season for Flower Power

Santa Classified Ads is coming to town / Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Spelldown

Away in a Double Occupancy

Good Time Wenceslaus

Baby, It’s Codeword Outside

Two-Step into Xmas

Guest Star of Bethlehem

Guess Whoville

I’ll Have a Blue Christmas Without You Know the Odds

Feliz NavidOdds & Evens

Fairy Heads & Tails of New York

There’ll Be No More Matchmakers to the King

Hark! The Sum Triangles Sing!

Blackout! Friday

Reindeer Word Games

Mannheim Steam Roll of the Dice

Crackerjacks Frost

The First and Last Noel

Shadowboxing Day

We’re on the Island of Four-Fit Toys . . .

The Scoreboard in hand bear I, bedecked with Sunrays and Syllability . . .

Salvation Army Ringers

The Polar Exploraword

Home Alone: Who’s Calling?

Home Alone: Step by Step, Brick by Brick—Battle!

A Christmas Story: Everything’s Relative

You’ll shoot your eye Out of Place!

I dedicate this house to the Griswold Family Christmas: You Know the Odds.

National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation: Loose Tiles and Marbles

And, of course, no one could resist trying to do the Twelve Days of Christmas with puzzles:

On the 12th day of Christmas my true love gave to me…

Twelve Crypto-Riddles
Eleven Logic Problems
Ten Rapid Readers
Nine Picker-Uppers
Eight Build-a-Pyramids
Seven List-a-Crostics
Six Mini-Crosswords
Five Diamond Rings!
Four (Who’s Calling?) Birds
Three Perfect Tens
Two Turnabouts
And a Partners in a Pairs tree!

OR…

FIVE BY FIVE golden rings.
FOUR SCORE calling birds,
TRIPLETS French hens,
TWO FOR ONE turtledoves,
And a partridge IN A BIND tree!

OR…

…and a Partridge in a Picture Pairs Tree!

Have you come up with any Penny Dell Holiday Puzzles of your own? Let us know! We’d love to see them!

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! Be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date on everything PuzzleNation!

You can also share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and explore the always-expanding library of PuzzleNation apps and games on our website!

PuzzleNation Product Review: Stuff and Nonsense

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In today’s product review, we look at a puzzly game all about telling stories.

Many games are about grand adventures, but only Stuff and Nonsense is about pretending to go on grand adventures to scam your fellow would-be adventurers. Can you sneak around London and gather the props you need for your impressive lie, all while avoiding the fiendishly clever Professor Elemental?

Stuff and Nonsense is a game of position, strategy, and opportunity. You travel around the game board — made of map cards — visiting various spots and picking up cards that will help you tell your fictional tale of derring-do. When you’ve collected the right cards — or enough to sell your fake story — you head to the Adventurer’s Club to tell your story.

Each time you do so, you can cash in those cards for points. Point values can range wildly depending on the cards you have and the value of your setting at a given time.

The cards are silly, creatively imagined, and often hilarious, discussing mythical events, explaining weird artifacts, and offering much-needed color to help sell your false tale.

All the while, you must dodge Professor Elemental, who is moving around the board investigating your shenanigans. If you end up in the same spot as him, you face a penalty (either losing a card or having every card in your hand drop one point each in value.)

[The game comes with these colored tokens (top), but you can opt for the slightly more expensive (& delightful) Meeples of the Professor & various faux adventurers (bottom).]

What makes this game such a puzzly treat is the mix of strategy and opportunity. You can take whatever cards you get and hit the Adventurer’s Club frequently to rack up smaller amounts of points more frequently, or you can bide your time and then hit the club less often for higher point values.

But either way, there’s always the looming threat of crossing paths with the Professor at a bad time and losing a key card or crucial points.

Plus, the map is different every game based on how you lay it out, so there’s a lot of replay value here.

Stuff and Nonsense is available from Cheapass Games for $25, and is featured in our Holiday Puzzly Gift Guide! What great fun.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuhGMA–r7M]

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! Be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date on everything PuzzleNation!

You can also share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and explore the always-expanding library of PuzzleNation apps and games on our website!

The Crystal Maze returns!

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[Host Richard O’Brien tempts you into testing your mettle in The Crystal Maze.]

Crowdfunding strikes again!

This time around, fan support and puzzly outreach has resurrected The Crystal Maze, a classic puzzly TV show from across the pond.

From 1990 to 1995, contestants would team up to overcome physical and mental obstacles under a tight time limit as they tackled the show’s signature themed zones, including an Aztec one, a medieval one, and an industrial one, earning crystals for every completed puzzle or activity.

Those crystals could then be converted into time allotted to confront the final challenge: the Crystal Maze itself.

The Indiegogo campaign raised nearly double what the team of designers was asking for! But, instead of a TV show, The Crystal Maze is returning as a fully interactive experience for the public, tasking you with completing these challenges yourself.

With the recent popularity explosion of Escape the Room experiences, this seems like a fantastically entertaining next step in immersive puzzle-solving.

[A computer-generated mock-up of the new Aztec zone.]

Not only are there actors to play various roles within each zone, but host Richard O’Brien is returning to “welcome guests in a time-honored fashion.”

Tickets are on sale now for the March 15, 2016, launch of The Crystal Maze experience in London. You can book individually (£50 on weekdays, £60 on weekends), sign up with a full team (8 people), or book an entire session (32 people, since 4 teams can run through each session). Each session runs approximately 90 minutes.

Hopefully you’ll do better than this player:

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! Be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date on everything PuzzleNation!

You can also share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and explore the always-expanding library of PuzzleNation apps and games on our website!