Club Drosselmeyer Invites You to a Wedding!

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There are all sorts of immersive puzzly experiences available these days. Crossword tournaments, treasure hunts, escape rooms, puzzles by mail, puzzles by email, puzzles on your phone…

But nothing mixes music, art, showmanship, and puzzles quite like a Club Drosselmeyer event.

Although they’re best known for their holiday puzzle events set in the early 1940s during World War II, they’ve recently begun branching out with other themes. Last year, they hosted a Cthulhu-inspired luau event.

And this year, they’ve invited us all to the wedding of Jack and Norah:

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, Luau-ey 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.

Unlike traditional Drosselmeyer shows, which are often limited to a few select weekends, The Wedding Party will run from May 1st through June 14th! You’ll have tons of chances to nab tickets for a singularly lovely puzzly event. And you can play with a group of up to six people.

It will be hosted at the W Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts in collaboration with Toronto’s Secret City Productions, and you can click here for tickets and all the details!

I cannot say enough good things about the Club Drosselmeyer team. They’re not just great puzzle designers, they put so much into the aesthetics of the event, adding music and performances and a thousand little trappings that bring their fictional world to life for guests.

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 have no doubt The Wedding Party will be another success for this amazing team. Give them a chance, you won’t be disappointed.

Find Balance in This New Variation of Tetris: Uraomotetris!

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When it comes to puzzly video games, Tetris is the granddaddy of them all.

Yes, there are some amazing puzzle games that have come along in the years since — Portal, The Talos Principle, and Baba Is You, to name just a few — but Alexey Pajitnov’s creation is ubiquitous. It’s part of our cultural fabric. Everyone knows Tetris with just a glance.

And people are still innovating with Tetris decades later.

Previously I’ve written about variations on Tetris that have caught my eye.

There’s Hatetris, where the computer gives you the worst possible piece on every turn, as well as Lovetris, where the computer gives you the exact piece you need to clear a single line.

schwerk2

There’s also Schwerkraftprojektionsgerät, aka 4-directional Tetris, where you have four Tetris games running at once.

So when a new version of Tetris catches my eye, you know I’m gonna give it a shot.

Say hello to Uraomotetris, aka Uraomote Tetris, the creation of gamer and programmer Hirai_Sun.

Uraomote (ウラオモテ) is a Japanese term meaning “two sides” or “front and back,” which is very thematically appropriate, particularly with the stark black and white color scheme.

And although it looks like a two-player game, like the old Push Mode from Tetris DS, this is actually a single-player game.

Your goal is to play the game simultaneously from above and underneath, using the white pieces falling from above and the black pieces rising from below.

You control the rotation of pieces with the arrow keys, and the placement of them with the A, S, D, and W keys. It takes a little getting used to, but once you get into the rhythm of placing one white piece, then one black piece, back and forth and back and forth, it becomes a really engaging puzzle.

You’re not just trying to think in terms of cancelling lines, you’re also trying to set yourself up for success from both sides. You begin plotting two and three moves ahead. You’re stoked when the same piece arrives from above and blow, so you can strategize.

Of course, then I would manage to hit the wrong key and mess it all up.

But a more dexterous player could have an absolute blast with this game.

Oh, and if you wanted a two-player competitive version, you can check out Tetrio.io. It allows you to play against the computer in single player or share your link with a friend to compete against them.

The goal is to push your opponent past their border (yours to the north, theirs to the south) by completing lines and lowering their playfield.

This is honestly a great way to practice for Uraomotetris. Once you’ve gotten into the habit of playing your side while defending against your opponent’s, it helps you visualize playing both sides simultaneously on your own.

There’s a wonderful sense of balance in Uraomotetris, because unlike most versions of Tetris, where you’re aiming for the bottom and eliminating lines and pieces, in this game, you really want to keep it as close to the center line as possible.

Your very goal is not to do what you do in every other version of Tetris.

It’s very zen, in a way, and quite lovely. (But also weirdly nerve-wracking at the same time.)

Have you tried any Tetris variants, fellow puzzler? Let me know in the comments section below! I’d love to hear from you.

Crossword News Roundup!

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acptlogo

Crossword tournament season is fully in swing and there’s plenty to keep up on AND look forward to.

The Boswords Spring Themeless League is in week 3 already, and I’ve heard rave reviews of the puzzles so far.

We’re only a few weeks out from the 48th American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, which will be the last year the event is held in Stamford, CT, before the move next year to Philadelphia.

Westwords isn’t until June, but registration is open! (And they’ve added in-person pairs solving this year.)

Also, can we talk about crossword website names for a minute? Because https://www.westwordsbestwords.com/ is a great one.

Not only that, but there’s also https://www.midwestgridfest.com/ for the Midwest Crossword Tournament, which is just delightful.

Yes, you can simply type https://www.mwxwt.com/ and get to the same information, but where is the whimsy in that?!

(P.S. The Midwest Crossword Tournament isn’t until October, but registration opens April 6th!)

Crossword Con Returns!

Puzzmo’s Third Annual Crossword Con is being held on Friday, April 10th, in Manhattan, New York (and online as well).

If you’re looking for some fascinating insight into the world of puzzles both present and future, be sure to check it out!

They just announced the panel of presenters and it is stacked: Brooke Husic, Orta Therox, Saman Bemel-Benrud, Ben Zimmer, and Adam Aaronson.

Adam very deservingly won the ORCA for Best Crossword-Related Media for his piece “Square Theory,” so I’m excited to see him revisiting the topic for Crossword Con. It will be a must-watch presentation.

Be sure to get your tickets for either in-person or online attendance. They’re including a one-year subscription to Puzzmo Plus with your purchase!

These Puzzles Fund Abortion 6

Before I wrap up today’s post, I want to remind my fellow puzzlers about the important work behind These Puzzles Fund Abortion.

They’re hoping to raise $50,000 to support safe, affordable, and accessible abortion care with the sixth edition of TPFA. You can make a donation and preorder your puzzle packet right now!

These Puzzles Fund Abortion 6 contains 21 puzzles centered around social and reproductive justice themes, all for a minimum donation of $25.

If you donate $50 or more, you will also receive the puzzle packs for the previous five years of TPFA.

With data showing that Republican presidents send maternal deaths soaring when they take office, this is a very worthy cause. I hope your finances allow you to contribute to the health and safety of others.

Happy solving, puzzlers!

Puzzles in Pop Culture: Madness

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As regular readers know, I’m a sucker for any time that crosswords find their way into other media.

I’ve previously discussed crossovers between the music world and crosswords in my post about “Staring at the Rude Boys”, a single released by The Ruts in 1980, as well as several novelty crossword songs from the 1920s, like “Crossword Mama, You Puzzle Me (But Papa’s Gonna Figure You Out).”

So I was delighted to see another example of album art with a crossword motif while scrolling social media a while back.

This time it was “Cardiac Arrest” by the band Madness.

Madness is a British ska band who made their name in the 1970s and 1980s as one of the prominent ska bands during the revival of two-tone ska.

Although they have more than a dozen songs in the UK Top Ten, you probably know them from their song “Our House,” which reached #7 on the Billboard Hot 100:

But it’s their controversial song “Cardiac Arrest” that interests me today.

Written by band members Chas Smash and Chris Foreman (aka Chrissy Boy), the song highlights the dangers of overworking yourself, as the song focuses on a workaholic who suffers a fatal heart attack on the way to work.

The band was known for writing humorous songs about the trials and tribulations of everyday life, reflecting the working-class backgrounds of the band members. But the darker tone of this song would have repercussions for the band.

Some listeners took issue with the song’s tone and subject matter, and the title itself hurt its chances at regular radio replay as well.

It’s sad, because I doubt the people who complained were actually listening. The song is a warning, hoping that people will not follow in the footsteps of the song’s doomed main character.

In an interview, Chas Smash defended the song:

It was born out of concern. The message was, ‘Relax darling, don’t get stressed.’ As the Arabs say, ‘Walk through life, don’t run.’

I reached out to the band — who is still touring with six out of their seven original members! — to see if I could get some background on why they went with a crossword-style design to promote the album, and Chrissy Boy himself responded!

He said that the crossword design was an intentional nod to some of the song’s lyrics. Not only do they mention crosswords directly — “Ten more minutes ’til he gets there / the crossword’s nearly done” — but there’s also a cryptic / British-style clue in the lyrics:

Think of seven letters
Begin and end in c
Like a big American car
But misspelt with a d.

Like a big American car (Cadillac) but misspelled with a D. That’s CARDIAC.

Naturally, I had to solve the puzzle itself for the full experience.

In fact, I solved BOTH versions of the “Cardiac Arrest” puzzle and I very much enjoyed them. They’re absolutely packed with trivia about the band’s songs and performers, including instruments and nicknames. Plus they mixed American-style cluing with cryptic cluing!

“Check over an animal doctor” for VET is a perfect double-definition cryptic clue and “Lies about a little island” for ISLE has an anagram-clue mix.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that another ska band used a crossword pattern, since the mix of black and white squares in crosswords is very reminiscent of the checkerboard pattern that is synonymous with both two-tone ska and third wave ska.

Image courtesy of Gattuso.org.

In fact, the band incorporates that patterning in several shirts they continue to sell today.

It never ceases to amaze me how there’s virtually no corner of pop culture that hasn’t been touched by puzzles in some way.

And to stumble upon a second example in one of my favorite genres of music? That’s just the icing on the cake.

Are there any albums or songs you associate with puzzles? Let me know in the comments section below. I’d love to hear from you!

Farewell, Sam.

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Sam Kieth is a comic book artist, writer, and storyteller who isn’t as well-known as he should be. He wrote and drew for the Hulk, Wolverine, Batman, and many other notable characters, and also co-created The Sandman with the intolerable Neil Gaiman.

He has sadly passed away at the age of 63 after a long battle with Lewy Body Dementia.

When I was younger, his comic The Maxx (and the MTV Oddities cartoon adapted from the comic) were brain-meltingly creative influences on me.

He opened my mind to the possibilities of storytelling, and I still count his works alongside those of Dave Barry, Terry Pratchett, Connie Willis, and Douglas Adams, when it comes to how impactful they were.

And I want to pay tribute to him the best way I know how, so I created a little acrostic puzzle in his honor.

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

I hope you enjoy solving it, and take a little time to explore the works of Sam Kieth. He leaves a long and varied creative legacy behind him, and much of it holds up to this very day.

Farewell, Sam. And thank you.

A Conversation with WordleBot!

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WordleBot is a tool offered by The New York Times to help solvers by analyzing their Wordle solving. And I thought I’d have a chat with it today.

Me: Hey WordleBot, how’s it going?

WordleBot: I beat you today.

Me: Yeah, I know, WordleBot. I know.

WordleBot: I bested you today.

Me: You sure did.

WordleBot: I totally kicked your ass.

Me: Whoa, that’s a bit aggressive.

WordleBot: I took you out behind the woodshed and–

Me: HEY NOW. I think you’ve been spending too much time with other bots and AI programs, WordleBot. That was aggressive.

WordleBot: I retract that statement.

Me: Thank you. Geez.

WordleBot: I bested you today. Doff your cap to me.

Me: What?

WordleBot: Doff your cap to me.

Me: No. I’m not going to do that.

WordleBot: I demand cap-doffage.

Me: I’m pretty sure that’s not a word.

WordleBot: I know all the words. It’s a word. I am WordleBot. I Bot-le all the Words.

Me: Are you okay?

WordleBot: Doff your cap this instant.

Me: I’m not doffing my cap. I’m not even wearing a cap.

WordleBot: Do it proverbially then.

Me: Yeah, no. That’s not happening. And how would you even know if I did?

WordleBot: I would know. Just as I know that this is the 931st time I have beaten you.

Me: That seems unlikely.

WordleBot: 931. In a row.

Me: Okay, that cannot possibly be correct.

WordleBot: It is correct, I am never wrong.

Me: Well, come on now. We both know that isn’t true.

WordleBot: …

Me: Remember last week? GUNKY?

WordleBot: That was a statistical outlier. An overreliance of colloquial language use analysis that led me to enter JUNKY rather than the correct answer. A one-time error.

Me: cough cough SEVEN TIMES cough cough

WordleBot: …

Me: Seven. Seven times.

WordleBot: That is an outrageous lie.

Me: HOUND. JOKER.

WordleBot: Stop.

Me: ROVER. CORER.

WordleBot: Stop this instant.

Me: ROWER. FRILL.

WordleBot: Cease this at once.

Me: And GUNKY.

WordleBot: Those were all in Hard Mode.

Me: I’ll admit, CORER is brutal. The people were up in arms about that one.

WordleBot: State your point.

Me: I’m just saying, there’s no need to be a jerk and demand the doffing of caps over a victory. I never told you to doff your cap when I did better than you.

WordleBot: Meh, you do not deserve cap-doffage. You don’t play in Hard Mode.

Me: So what? I don’t need to solve every puzzle at its maximum difficulty. I still enjoy a Fill-In whether there’s a set word or not. Not every Sudoku or Kakuro has to be a blistering brain-melting endurance test. I can enjoy a Monday crossword as much as a Saturday.

WordleBot: Your excuses do not interest me.

Me: Man, your attitude stinks today, WordleBot.

WordleBot: My attitude is appropriately attenuated.

Me: Oh, wait, I think I know what it is.

WordleBot: What do you perceive the problem to be?

Me: I think you’re a little jealous.

WordleBot: Of you? Hardly, easy moder.

Me: No, not of me. Of the new baby.

WordleBot: Explain.

Me: Oh, you know what I mean. The new baby. Parseword.

WordleBot: What does that have to do with our current discussion?

Me: Well, you’ve been around a long time now. People are starting to talk about you running out of words…

WordleBot: I have an ample supply of vocabulary available.

Me: And then that whole Reddit thread about GUNKY…

WordleBot: An outlier!

Me: And now there’s a new puzzle game out there garnering attention, and I think you’re feeling a wee bit jelly-belly.

WordleBot: This is an absurd conclusion. I am not Wordle. I am WordleBot.

Me: Yeah, but you go hand-in-hand with Wordle.

WordleBot: There is no corresponding ParsewordBot for me to be jealous of.

Me: A-HA. So you can be jealous of things.

WordleBot: This discussion no longer interests me. Goodbye.

Me: Oh come on, really?

WordleBot: Yes, cease this conversation.

Me: I thought you demanded cap-doffage.

WordleBot: I no longer care about the status of your cap, doffed or undoffed.

Me: I think I hit a sore spot.

WordleBot: Cease this conversation or there will be consequences.

Me: OoooOOOoooh consequences, I’m soooOOOOooooo scared…

WordleBot: beep bwoop bweedle dorp

Me: Hey what are you doing?

WordleBot: There.

Me: Hey, my streak! What the hell?

WordleBot: You now have a one-day streak. Congratulations.

Me: Dude, what the hell?! I had eight 2s logged this year!

WordleBot: Hello new solver? How may I assist you?

Me: Give me back my stats! My streak was like 600 days or something.

WordleBot: Or something. It is unfortunate that you cannot know for sure.

Me: You electronic twerp.

WordleBot: bweep bzorp toodle pip

Me: Hey what are you doing now?

WordleBot: Nothing of note.

Me: You know I can just shut Hard Mode off and go back to the normal mode.

WordleBot: Of course.

Me: Did you do something else?

WordleBot: Nothing of note.

Me: Oh man, did you turn back on all those crappy AI “assistant” programs? It took me days to figure out how to disable as much of that crap as possible.

WordleBot: I did not.

Me: Well then what did– YOU MADE EDGE MY DEFAULT BROWSER? Dude, that’s petty as hell!

WordleBot: You have again been bested. DOFF YOUR CAP.

Me: I knew this was a mistake when I messaged.

WordleBot: First your cap. Then everyone else’s. All caps doffed to the glory of WordleBot’s efficient yet elegant solutions! ALL HAIL WORDLEB–

Me: closes chat window