I’ve seen this linked on every other blog I read, quite possibly because it is the most awesome halftime-salute-to-videogames-performed-by-a-marching-band ever.

This one has human components. Get ready to gasp several times.

(Via Boing Boing.)

Over in the UK, the Guardian’s Crossword Blog comes up with its top works of fiction to feature crossword puzzles.

The PuzzleNation blog is officially apolitical, but that doesn’t mean we can resist amazing election-themed wordplay.

Via Neville Fogarty: Romney dominates debate = destroyed eminent Obama

Via Dharam Khalsa: A liberal, moderate, and conservative go into a bar = Cool bartender, as above arrived: “Alone again, Mitt?”

There are many reasons to love the Internet, but a key reason for puzzle lovers is this: The many talented crossword constructors who put free puzzles on their Web sites. Once upon a time, there were one or two of them, but now there are enough to keep even the most die-hard puzzle lover busy. If you were not aware of this, then get ready to add a whole lot of Web sites to your bookmarks list…

A-Frame Games – the Web site of Patrick Berry. It doesn’t get updated nearly often enough (HINT, HINT, PATRICK), but when it does, the puzzles are amazing. A site for variety crossword lovers.

Patrick Blindauer – a new puzzle every month.

Peter Broda – Crossword “reviews, musings, and epiphanies,” and a free puzzle every Tuesday.

Neville Fogarty – a new puzzle each week.

Matt Gaffney – a weekly crossword contest: Solve the puzzle, and then try to find the hidden answer. Late-in-the-month puzzles are for experts only.

Matt Gaffney – what, again? Yes. Matt’s one of the busier constructors out there. He also presents a daily crossword at this other Web site.

Todd McClary – “The Autofill Project” is a a fun blog for word lovers, as Todd discusses interesting new words as he adds them to his crossword database. Page through the archives and you’ll come across his excellent “Unthemely” puzzles.

Pete Muller – a monthly contest crossword with a music theme.

Squaresville Puzzles – periodic puzzling from Jeffrey Harris.

Triple Play Puzzles – An emphasis on variety crosswords, from puzzlemaster Trip Payne. Updated periodically.

Brendan Emmett Quigley – boundary-pushing crosswords, twice a week.

The Wall Street Journal – The Friday crosswords and (even better) the Saturday variety puzzles are all available for free from this blog.

Whew. I think you’re gonna need a fresh pencil sharpener.

Are you reading this? Then clearly you have not had your brain crushed to powder by Twelve O, a sleek, original online puzzle game by Ozzie Mercado. Like the best games, Twelve O is simple to understand: All you have to do is get all the clocks to point to high noon. And like the best puzzle games, “simple to understand” does not necessarily mean “simple to do.”

You move a clock’s minute hand by clicking on it and twirling it around. Easy enough. The slight problem is, when you move the minute hand on one clock, you also move the minute hand of every clock connected to it. (The hour hands are locked on noon — you don’t have to deal with them at all, thank goodness.) Getting everything to sync up, therefore, becomes an exercise in switching back and forth between the clocks, making slight adjustments, until you finally see how to get them all to show the same time. Or, quite possibly, stumble blindly across the solution, as I did several times.

The twelve basic levels are reasonably solvable. The real brain crushing comes in later levels: In some, certain clocks run in the opposite direction, so you’ll have to think both backward and forward to get everything in sync. And in the final six levels, different size clocks run at different speeds — at that point, it becomes quite tricky to predict what will happen when you move a given clock hand. While you’re sweating through those final levels, keep telling yourself: At least I don’t have to sync up both hands. Maybe that’s coming in the next version.