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PuzzleNation App Review: Hedgehog Gardens

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Welcome to the another edition of PuzzleNation App Reviews! Today we continue our quest to explore the world of puzzly games and apps for your tablet or smartphone!

Our resident app player and puzzle fiend Sherri has another intriguing game for us today, so let’s get down to business and dive into her review of Hedgehog Gardens for iPad and iPhone!

Hedgehog Gardens is an iOS game that offers a cute twist on a simple counting game. But in this case, it isn’t so simple at all!

A pretty efficient hedgehog has taken up residence in the Back Garden. His goal, and yours, is to clear out all of the vegetables. To do this, you must number the tiles from 1 to 36, while following specific rules. In much higher puzzles, you must count even higher!

[Where would you place a 3 to continue the
hedgehog’s clockwise path around the garden?]

Each Back Garden puzzle is divided into four different sections, each of which is filled with a different vegetable. There are three rules to follow in order to clear the vegetables and number the tiles: you must move clockwise around the board, you must move in a straight line from section to section, and you can’t revisit a tile.

Now don’t panic about where to start because when you start a puzzle, some of the tiles have already been numbered. Your goal is to complete the puzzle by guessing the remaining numbers and having the hedgehog follow a path from 1 to 2 to 3 and so on.

Once you complete enough Back Garden puzzles, you open up the Orchard, which has its own set of rules. There are other sections you can open once you complete enough puzzles.

If you enjoy counting and Sudoku-type games, this is a great game to play. You get over 1,000 puzzles spread over several sections. However, all of the puzzles are not immediately available. The more you play, the more you open. The sheer volume of puzzles will keep a player busy.

Counting and Sudoku-type games aren’t really my thing, but I find myself playing a puzzle here and there because they are puzzling and almost soothing. They are a pleasant way to work the mind. And I have to admit, the rolling hedgehog is very cute.

Ratings for Hedgehog Gardens:

  • Enjoyability: 3/5 — If you enjoy Sudoku-type numbering games, this one is for you. The sheer number of puzzles, over 1,000, should keep you occupied for a quite a while.
  • How well puzzles are incorporated: 4/5 — The puzzles get progressively harder and bigger the later you go into each section. Since each puzzle has a unique solve, you really need to think and puzzle out how to complete each one, especially with the rule changes in other sections.
  • Graphics: 2/5 — They’re pretty basic, just static pictures related to each particular section. For example, pictures of vegetables in the Back Garden. The rolling hedgehog is rather cute.
  • Gameplay: 2/5 — It’s pretty much the same thing through all of the puzzles. There are different rules for each section, but you’re really just counting. There isn’t much variety.

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!

It’s Follow-Up Friday: Rubik Ridiculousness 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 I’d like to return to the subject of twisty puzzles.

17x17x17_rubiks_cube_11

Last week I wrote a post discussing how 3-D printing is changing the way Rubik’s-style puzzles, or twisty puzzles, are being constructed.

One of the puzzles I mentioned was a monstrous 17x17x17 cube known as the “Over the Top” Rubik’s Cube, created by 3-D puzzler Oskar van Deventer. It’s the world’s largest Rubik’s-style puzzle, and a visually staggering artifact.

Well, as it turns out, not long after that post went live on the blog, I discovered a video of a twisty puzzle enthusiast SOLVING the 17x17x17 Over the Top puzzle:

Solved in seven and a half hours over the course of five days, this puzzle whiz (who goes by the YouTube handle “RedKB”) documented the entire process, then did a time lapse to compress the video into six minutes, as you can see in the clip above.

(For the fascinated, he’s also uploaded the entire seven hours of solving so you can see the complexity of the cube in its full, mind-boggling glory.)

It’s one thing to discuss these puzzles, and quite another to watch someone accept the challenge and then conquer it. A truly impressive puzzly effort.

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!

These puzzles deliver!

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Puzzles are all around us. They’re in our newspapers and on our phones, they’re lurking in math problems and board games and children’s toys.

But as it turns out, according to an article forwarded to me by puzzler and friend of the blog Cathy Quinn, they’re also on our stamps.

At least in Macau, that is.

Late last year, Macau Post released the latest stamps in their Science and Technology series. Previous editions have featured the Golden Ratio, Fractals, and Cosmology, but this time around, they selected a topic near and dear to the hearts of many puzzlers:

Magic squares.

For the uninitiated, a magic square is a grid where the numbers within add up to the same total in every row, column, and diagonal.

Our friends at Penny/Dell Puzzles utilize patterns like this in their Anagram Magic Square puzzle, where a word to anagram accompanies each number in the diagram, eventually spelling out a bonus phrase or quotation.

But at its core, a magic square is about cleverly balancing every element until you reach a harmonious arrangement. It’s a curiously meditative sort of puzzle solving, and I can see how it would appeal to the meticulous nature of stamp collectors worldwide.

Here are the six stamps currently available through Macau Post.

There’s a classic 4×4 magic square grid in the upper left and an ancient Latin palindrome in the upper right, as well as part of a 4th-century Chinese palindromic poem in the lower left and a geometric puzzle in the lower right where the pieces in the inner squares can make all of the designs in the outer squares.

Not only that, but three additional stamps will be released this year, making a total of nine themed stamps, and wouldn’t you know it? The stamps themselves can be arranged to form a magic square when assembled, based on the values printed in the corner of each stamp.

Just another sign that puzzle magic is alive and thriving all across the world.

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!

Video Review: Star Realms

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We do lots of reviews here on the PuzzleNation Blog, between Sherri’s app reviews (returning next week!) and my book reviews and product reviews.

And I’m pleased to announce that Fred, our Director of Game Development at PuzzleNation, is also getting into the spirit.

He teamed up with his son Max to create a video review of the deckbuilding card game Star Realms, and it was featured as a guest review on Edo’s Game Reviews on YouTube!

Check it out:

Fred and Max do a terrific job of breaking down the game mechanics, their favorite aspects of the game play, and the game’s pluses and minuses, all within a few minutes. It’s great stuff, and I hope they get the chance to do another review soon!

And let me know if you’d like to see more video content from us in the future!

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!

It’s Follow-Up Friday: Crossword Contest 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’d like to revisit the subject of The Imitation Game. (And announce a contest!)

Constructor and science guru George Barany recently reached out to me, asking me to spread the word about a puzzle contest with some terrific prizes to offer. And it just so happens that the contest ties into the recent release of The Imitation Game.

The Imitation Game tells the story of Alan Turing’s efforts during World War II to break the German Enigma Code and deserve crucial intel to the British government. To do so, he recruited puzzle solvers and cryptography enthusiasts at Bletchley Park in England to crack the supposedly uncrackable code.

You can tackle the 1942 puzzle that was supposedly used to recruit aspiring cryptographers for Bletchley Park by clicking here!

But that’s not all! You can also wrestle with a Barany crossword original inspired by the movie (created with Ralph Bunker and Michael Hanko), with a chance to win crossword books or even a paid registration to the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament!

Click here to test your mettle against Mr. Barany’s creation! And good luck!

The contest ends this Sunday, January 11, at midnight, so the deadline is looming, but hey, that just adds a little drama to the proceedings, doesn’t it? Rather apropos, considering its inspiration. =)

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!

Puzzles in Pop Culture: Two Hollows

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In today’s edition of Puzzles in Pop Culture, we visit two very different New England towns — Stars Hollow, Connecticut, and Sleepy Hollow, New York — in two very different TV shows.

Stars Hollow is the fictional setting of cancelled WB/CW drama Gilmore Girls, which spent seven seasons following the pop culture-fueled banter of mother/daughter team Lorelai and Rory Gilmore as they navigated relationships, family drama, and all the undeniable quirkiness of small-town America.

Sleepy Hollow is a very real town, but hopefully one unafflicted by headless horsemen, demonic plots, and a secret war against evil that’s been waged since the days of the American Revolution. At least that’s what’s going on in the fictional version of Sleepy Hollow in Fox’s eponymous TV show, now in its second season.

And, as it turns out, each has something interesting to say about crossword puzzles.

First, there’s this brief scene from Gilmore Girls, where Lorelai ponders both the challenge of crosswords and the social implications of NOT being a crossword solver:

Clearly Lorelai and Rory are crossword skeptics, or at the very least, indifferent to crosswords. But given that they’re staring at a collection of New York Times crossword puzzles, maybe they’re simply disillusioned after a few hard end-of-the-week puzzles.

The character of Henry Parrish from Sleepy Hollow, on the other hand, has much kinder things to say about crosswords.

He expressed himself quite eloquently in episode 10 of season 1, “The Golem.”

Lt. Abbie Mills: You doing crosswords?

Henry Parrish: As I said, it distracts me from my troubles. A good puzzle misleads you, it sends you in one direction, fools you into thinking you know what’s going on. But once you discover the trick, you see that’s there’s often a hidden meaning.

Now, there’s a man who has solved some quality crosswords in his time. Maybe he could recommend a few choice ones for the Gilmore girls.

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!