Category Archives: Games

A day for puzzles and games galore!

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Aloha, friends and fellow puzzle fiends! Just a quick reminder that tomorrow (March 30th) is International TableTop Day!

For the uninitiated, International TableTop Day is the brainchild of Internet superstars and gaming devotees Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day, a day devoted to board games, card games, dice games, roleplaying games (RPGs), and any other communal game-playing activity played on a table or any convenient flat surface.

(And with so many puzzle-based games out there, from Boggle and Scrabble to Jenga and Hex, I think it definitely merits mention here on the PuzzleNation blog.)

While the term “TableTop” was originally coined to differentiate one style of gaming or roleplaying from another. TableToppers were your Magic card-carrying, dice-rolling, character sheet-wielding gamers, as opposed to those who played video games or engaged in Live-Acting Roleplaying (LARPing).

Obviously, the definition has since expanded to include many other types of games, so long as you play with others around a table.

As not only a self-confessed puzzlin’ fool, but a devoted player of Dungeons & Dragons and other RPGs, I’m happy to tell you that some of my all-time favorite puzzles have come from my experiences as a roleplayer.

I remember being trapped in a dungeon in my friend’s game, and there was this elaborate machine that would open the door with flowing water if you could direct the water properly. You did so by way of numerous levers located in various rooms around the dungeon. And as a bare-bones adventuring party, we didn’t have anything with which to draw a map of the labyrinthine corridors, so I basically had to memorize the route in my head, figure out what each of the levers did, then run around the dungeon pulling them in the precise order necessary to unlock the door.

It was mindbending and frustrating and a terrific time. That’s the kind of puzzle-gaming experience I’d love to share with others.

Since Easter is this Sunday and I’ll already be spending time with my nephews this weekend, I’m hoping to introduce them to some of my favorite board games and puzzle games. I’ll definitely be bringing my two-player version of Brick by Brick with me.

A variation on the classic Tangram-style of piece-moving puzzle solving, Brick By Brick puzzles offer a shadowed shape you need to form with irregularly shaped bricks. You can play by yourself or go head-to-head with an opponent, or even team up and use both sets of bricks to solve even tougher shadow puzzles. It’s great fun and a terrific brain-teaser.

I’m hoping it’ll be the gateway drug to other puzzle games as they get older, since they’re a little too young for some of my favorites. (Like U.S. Patent Number 1, the game where you’ve built a time machine, and so have your opponents, and you race to soup them up and travel back in time to register for the very first patent. It’s a blast.)

Oh, and Older Sister? Beware, I’m also bringing Upwords, a marvelous variation on Scrabble where you can place letters on top of other letters in order to form new words. You’re going down, sis!

Of course, in the midst of all this TableToppy goodness, I’ll be bending the rules a bit, since I also plan on sharing the spirit of International TableTop Day by playing some two-player PuzzleNation games with friends abroad. Hey, it’s much harder to gather around the table with an ocean between you.

In any case, I hope you indulge your puzzle fancy tomorrow with some communal puzzle-game goodness. Have a fantastic holiday!

You betcha!

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A few months ago, I posted a video of various bar bets that are perfect for the puzzle-minded prankster looking to earn a buck or two from an unsuspecting friend.

The same people behind that video have produced another, featuring 10 tricks and brain-teasers with which to baffle and challenge your friends. (Of course, if you keep bamboozling them out of money, they probably won’t want to hang out with you anymore, so use these tricks sparingly.)

Enjoy the following ode to visual trickery!

Mindbending illusions!

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There are puzzles to solve and mysteries to unravel… and then there are the mindboggling optical illusions that play with your perception.

Stationary things move, items big and small end up being the same size… it’s simultaneously fascinating and a little unnerving.

The folks as Gizmodo assembled a gallery of twenty optical illusions of all sorts, including several favorites of mine like the Fraser Spiral and a neat variation on the Necker Cube, and you should definitely check it out, if only to challenge your eyes and your brain in a different way today.

When pigs fly? You’ve got yourself a deal!

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I’m a sucker for a good mechanical puzzle. Figuring out which piece goes where to complete a given item or accomplish a certain task is a staple of many roleplaying games and video games, and coincidentally, that’s one of my favorite aspects of each.

Rube Goldberg machines, perhaps the pinnacle of mechanical puzzle tinkering, never cease to entertain or amaze me, as you can tell by some of the videos Eric and I have posted in this blog over the last few months.

(They also make for excellent set pieces in movies, The Goonies and National Treasure providing two entertaining examples.)

Like many of those who enjoy mechanical puzzles, I can trace my interest back to the board game Mouse Trap, which featured an elaborate multi-stage trap to snare your fellow mice. I don’t recall ever actually playing the game as instructed. Instead, friends and I would freely add pieces, complications, rules, and new wrinkles to the mouse trap itself before setting off the trap with glee.

I have plenty of fond memories solving (and designing) mechanical puzzles of all sorts. Unfortunately, I’ve been having a difficult time sparking the same interest in my nieces and nephews.

Sure, I’ve gotten them all hooked on LEGOs, which is a marvelous start for the tinkerer spirit, but more often than not, the kids would build the sets precisely as instructed, and then just leave them that way. No disassembly, no experimentation to build their own sets and ideas.

None of them have a bucket of random LEGO pieces made up from the fragments of a dozen or so disassembled sets, or know the joy of digging through the bucket laboriously in order to find the one perfect piece to finish a creation of their own design.

Thankfully, my cousin delivered the ideal solution as a gift for Nephew #3’s birthday, discovered by chance at Wal*Mart. The Smart Lab Weird & Wacky Contraption Kit.

This thing is great. The goal is to build a path from the top of a velcro-friendly wall to the bottom for a marble to traverse, traveling down slides and through obstacles of all sorts, in order to reach the landing pad at the bottom, which launches a spring-loaded celebratory pig into the air!

It’s similar to plenty of pipe-and-marble toys from years past, but with a lot more adaptability and flair, and it was an instant hit. Not only did every niece and nephew want a turn designing their own contraption, but they freely made suggestions (helpful and otherwise) for each other’s designs.

The best thing about it? When designs failed or the marble stalled, the kids didn’t get disheartened. It just encouraged them to try again and indulge their cleverness even further. It was a blast simply to watch.

And you better believe the adults got into it too, adding new wrinkles and complications to each contraption, and cheering just as loud when the pig was launched into the air after a successful run.

My cousin was roundly praised as king of the gift-givers that day, and I’ve been recommending the toy far and wide ever since. It’s a great mechanical puzzle and a fun time all at once. And it’s got a flying pig! What more could you want?

Answers? Why, you shouldn’t have!

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Apologies for the delay in posting the answers to the Word Mastery for the Holidays post, my fellow puzzle fiends! The holiday season, so ridiculously hectic.

In any case, here are the answers! How did you do?

1.) Move hitherward the entire assembly of those who are loyal in their belief.

Oh Come All Ye Faithful

2.) Listen, the celestial messengers produce harmonious sounds.

Hark, the Herald Angels Sing

3.) Proceed forth declaring upon a specific geological alpine formation.

Go Tell It on the Mountain

4.) Nocturnal timespan of unbroken quietness.

Silent Night

5.) Embellish the interior passageways.

Deck the Halls

6.) An emotion excited by the acquisition or expectation of good given to the terrestial sphere.

Joy to the World

7.) Twelve o’clock on a clement night witnessed its arrival.

It Came Upon a Midnight Clear

8.) The Christmas preceding all others.

The First Noel

9.) Small municipality in Judea southeast of Jerusalem.

Oh Little Town of Bethlehem

10.) In a distant location the existence of an improvised unit of newborn children’s slumber furnishings.

Away in a Manger

11.) Tintinnabulation of vacillating pendulums in inverted, metallic, resonant cups.

Jingle Bells

12.) The first person nominative plural of a triumvirate of far eastern heads of state.

We Three Kings (of Orient Are)

13.) Geographic state of fantasy during the season of Mother Nature’s dormancy.

Winter Wonderland

14.) In awe of the nocturnal timespan characterized by religiosity.

Oh Holy Night

15.) Natal celebration devoid of color, rather albino, as an hallucinatory phenomenon for me.

I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas

16.) Expectation of arrival to populated areas by mythical, masculine perennial gift-giver.

Here Comes Santa Claus

17.) Obese personification fabricated of compressed mounds of frozen minute crystals.

Frosty the Snowman

18.) Tranquility upon the terrestial sphere.

Peace on Earth

19.) Omnipotent supreme being who elicits respite to ecstatic distinguished males.

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

20.) Diminutive masculine master of skin-covered percussionistic cylinders.

Little Drummer Boy

21.) Jovial Yuletide desired for the second person singular or plural by us.

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

I bet you can’t!

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So, I was all set to write a blog post today about using your puzzling skills to win bar bets, employing simple tricks and brain-teasers to bamboozle your friends out of a few bucks.

I mentioned the idea to a buddy of mine, and he forwarded me the following video, which not only covers some of the same bets I’d planned to, but does so in video form!

And so, I gracefully bow out for today, leaving you the following visual ode to trickery. Enjoy.