Category Archives: Games

It’s Follow-Up Friday: Sing It 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 return to the subject of hashtag games!

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

Last month, a hashtag game was part of our International TableTop Day festivities. The hook was Penny/Dell Puzzle Movies, and it was great fun.

Well, we’ve decided to make it a monthly game, and this month’s hook was Penny/Dell Puzzle Songs!

Examples might be “Lucy in the Sky with Nine of Diamonds” or “Man in the Mirror Image” or “Dream Weaver Words.”

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

Penny’s from Heaven

We are Crypto-Families

Piggybacks in the U.S.S.R.

Say Say Say That Again

Do You Want To Know A Secret Word

Jenny From The Block Letters

You’re the First and Last, My Everything

Double Trouble No More

Double Crosswords Trouble

Battleships of Fools

Stoplines (In the Name of Love)

More than Codewords

Hip to be Jigsaw Squares

Hip To Be Anagram Magic Square

Anagram Magic Carpet Ride

Crackerjacks and Diane

Jack & Diagramless

Halftime After Time

Too Much Rhyme Time on My Hands

Rhyme Time and Time Again

Give and Take It to the Limit

Give & Take a Chance on Me

We’re Not Gonna Take It from There

Frame By Framework

Freeze Frameworks

Across and Downbound Train

Lay Across and Down Sally

Flower Power of Love

Where Have All the Flower Powers Gone?

Places, Please Please Me

Friends in Low Places, Please

Letterboxes To Me

Love Letterboxes in the Sand

Thick As A Brick By Brick

Brick by Brick to Heaven

Goodbye Brick by Brick Road

Another Brick by Brick in the Wall

Wish You Were Here & There

Pinball Wizard Words

Zigzag Stardust

Mystery State of Love and Trust

A Hard Rains A-Gonna Quotefall

Take Me Out to the Bowl Game

The Itsy Bitsy Spider’s Web

Bull’s-Eye Spiral of the Tiger

Candle in the Windowboxes

I’ve Been Working on the Railroad Ties

Shadowbox Dancing

Under the Scoreboardwalk

Free Your Mind Tickler

Runaround the Block Sue

Ringmaster of Fire

Old Time Rock and Roll of the Dice

Walk Like an Encryption

A Boy Named Su-Doku

Pencil Pusherman

Girls Just Wanna Have Bible Fun

Text Message in a Bottle

Out on the Missing Tiles

The Bookworms of Love

50 Ways to Leave Your Logic Lover

Guess Who Can It Be Now?

Make the Rainbow Connection

Matching Circles in the Sand

Power of Two for One

What’s Left? Of Center

Add One Is the Loneliest Number

Will the Circle Search Be Unbroken?

Alphabet Soup John B

Triangle Sum Kind of Wonderful

Everybody Wants You Know the Odds

The Shadow Knows

I Put A Spellathon You

A View To A Skill-O-Gram

Trans-Europe Crossword Express

Anagrams-a Got Run Over by a Reindeer

Cryptogram-ma Got Run Over By A Reindeer

One fellow puzzler even went so far as to create new puzzly lyrics for some of these songs!

  • Brand New Keyword – Deanna Carter

I’ve got a brand new pair of Cryptograms, you’ve got a brand new Keyword

  • You Don’t Bring Me Flower Powers – Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand

B: You don’t bring me Flower Powers. You don’t give me Codewords.
N: You hardly talk to me anymore, when you solve on that floor at the end of the day

  • Quotefalls – TLC

Don’t go chasing Quotefalls
Please stick to the Fill-Ins and the Takeouts you’re used to

  • Crossword Traffic – Jimi Hendrix

Ninety words per hour, baby, that’s the speed I solve.

All in all, the game was great fun!

Plus, we received some submissions from solvers on Twitter! Friend of the blog Robin Stears submitted Runaround Sudoku, The Old Rugged Crostic, and Do You Believe in Magic Squares?, while @Francespuzzles submitted a boatload of good ones, like Blowin’ in the Windowboxes; That’s All Right Angles, and Crimson and Lucky Clover!

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

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!

Indie 500, Titan Series, and 100 Games updates!

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Today’s blog post is all about what’s going on in the world of puzzles and games, and let me tell you, some awesome exciting things are afoot for puzzlers in the days ahead!

First off, The Indie 500 crossword tournament is this weekend!

There are only a few days left to sign up for this new puzzle tournament spearheaded by constructors Erik Agard, Peter Broda, Neville Fogarty, Andy Kravis, Evan Birnholz, and Finn Vigeland. And if you can’t make it to Washington, D.C., this weekend, don’t fret! For just $10, you can participate from home, receiving the puzzles by mail or email. (There are even bonus puzzles being offered, and you name your own price!)

You better believe I’ve already signed up for both sets of puzzles. I can’t wait to see what the Indie 500 crew has in store for its inaugural event.

Secondly, there are only a few days left to contribute to the incredibly ambitious Titan Series Kickstarter campaign. A three-year, nine-game program masterminded by the folks at Calliope Games, the Titan Series involves some of the top names in the field of board games and card games, including James Ernest, Paul Peterson, Zach and Jordan Weisman, and Eric Lang.

Congratulations are already in order, as the campaign passed its initial funding goal of $135,000 (!!!), and is now pursuing additional games as stretch goals! Although the entire lineup of games created for the Titan Series won’t be completed until 2018, there will be plenty to talk about in the months ahead.

Finally, there is a list floating out there called the 100 Games You Must Know, and Amber Cook has accepted the challenge. She’s launched a blog called The 100 Games Project, and she intends to tackle all one hundred games on the list!

As a member of the Looney Labs team, Amber has contributed to some terrific games herself, so I’m looking forward to reading her thoughts as she experiences all sorts of new games and puzzly challenges.

With so much going on in the world of puzzles and games, it’s hard to keep up, but immensely worthwhile.

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: Mother’s Day Answers 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’ll be posting the answers to our Mother’s Day Unscramblers puzzle!

On Sunday, in honor of the many puzzle-loving moms in the audience, I created a twofold challenge. First, you had to unscramble the names of 12 famous sitcom mothers, and then you had to match them with their respective TV shows.

So, without further ado and hullabaloo, here are the answers!

1. Marion Cunningham — H. Happy Days
2. Samantha Stephens — D. Bewitched
3. Morticia Addams — B. The Addams Family
4. Jill Taylor — L. Home Improvement
5. Peggy Bundy — G. Married… With Children
6. Sophia Petrillo — K. The Golden Girls
7. Claire Dunphy — J. Modern Family
8. Florida Evans — E. Good Times
9. Maggie Seaver — F. Growing Pains
10. Thelma Harper — A. Mama’s Family
11. Harriette Winslow — I. Family Matters
12. Jane Jetson — C. The Jetsons

How did you do? Are you a Mother’s Day puzzle master, or did you sitcom this one out?

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!

PuzzleNation Product Review: Fidelitas

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In today’s product review, we delve into a medieval world where courting influence wins the day and the best players can move people like chess pieces. Welcome to Fidelitas, a card game created by Green Couch Games and distributed by the good folks at Game Salute.

In Fidelitas, each player tries to manipulate characters into position around the city in order to accomplish specific tasks and gain valuable allies.

There are two sets of cards in Fidelitas: Missio cards and Virtus cards. Virtus cards allow you to manipulate the cards and maneuver characters into place, while Missio cards detail the tasks you must complete in order to earn points.

Virtus cards can affect how many cards you play that turn, where you can play them, and sometimes, where other players can play their cards. (Regular players of Fluxx or one of its many variations will be familiar with this sort of short-term rule-shifting gameplay.)

Different Missio cards have different point values, reflecting how difficult that card’s given task is. The player with the most points at the end of the game wins, having proven him or herself the master manipulator at the table.

Seven cards make up the City, the setting of the game. There are nine guild alignments (which work almost like the suits in a standard deck of cards), and several of the locations are tied to specific guilds. With many location-specific Missio cards, a strong knowledge of the City is crucial to advantageous gameplay.

Fidelitas is reminiscent of another card game I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts, Guillotine. But in Guillotine, you’re only manipulating the order of characters in a single line, whereas in Fidelitas, you’re dealing with numerous locations and plots in motion. It ratchets up the difficulty level somewhat, but the core mechanic remains simple and accessible, both key components to a great group card game.

It took me a few games to get the strategy of the game under my belt, since between trying to achieve my own Missio tasks and trying to hinder other players in their gambits, it was hard to be sure if the card I was playing would end up helping me or my opponents and their mysterious Missios.

If you’re hunting for a game with some historic flavor, look no further. This one will test your diplomatic skills as you try to sway people to your side, as well as your poker skills by seeing how well you can read your opponents and devise a plan to thwart their Missio cards from being completed.

Fidelitas incorporates a lot of quality gameplay elements in a small package, not only making it a great quick-play game, but one with more replay value than you’d expect.

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!

Happy Mother’s Day!

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Today is Mother’s Day, and as always, I’d like to celebrate with a puzzle! So, in honor of the day and mother’s everywhere, I’ve conjured up a Penny/Dell Puzzles-style Unscramblers puzzle for you!

Rearrange the pairs of letters in the left-hand column to form the names of 12 TV sitcom moms. Then match them with their TV shows in the right-hand column!

Enjoy! And Happy Mother’s Day to all the marvelous, wonderful, inspiring, hard-working moms out there!

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: More Apps 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 puzzle apps!

On Tuesday, I announced the release of two new puzzle sets for the Penny Dell Crosswords app.

What I didn’t tell you is that today, we’ve got even more new puzzle content for you, as we launch Penny Dell Crosswords Jumbo 2!

Available for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch, Penny Dell Crosswords Jumbo 2 offers all the quality crossword solving you’ve come to expect from PuzzleNation.

You’ve got 150 puzzles (ranging from Easy to Medium to Hard), all with our alternate clue feature, Smart Step navigation, and more!

You can check out all the details by clicking here!

But wait, there’s more! On Sunday, in honor of Mother’s Day, PuzzleNation Blog will be offering a free puzzle for everyone to enjoy! Be sure to check your PuzzleNation feeds this weekend to partake in some Mom-celebratory puzzling!

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!