Category Archives: Games

Puzzled what to get someone for Christmas?

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The holiday season is upon us, and with Black Friday and Cyber Monday already making way for Thoroughly-Frustrated Shopper Thursday, I’d be remiss if I didn’t offer up some puzzly suggestions for holiday gifts.

As you might expect, I come from a puzzly family. So Christmas has always featured brain-teasing toys, 3-D puzzles, and whatever else parents and other relatives could find to keep us busy and baffled. My younger sister has passed this tradition on to the next generation with puzzle boxes for my nephews, ensuring that any holiday money is well earned by mid-afternoon.

Here are a few ideas for the puzzle lovers in your life.

For any Rubik’s Cube masters in your household, Eric suggests a marvelous variation with The Brain Cube. Instead of matching colors, you’re matching the geography of the brain, ensuring that each fold and wrinkle lines up with its neighbors. This is a real brain-teaser, available at Marbles — The Brain Store.

We’ve featured ThinkFun products on the blog before — most notably their puzzly day-to-day calendar — but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. They’ve got puzzle games and brain-teasers galore, suitable for all ages and levels of difficulty. (This hexagon one caught my eye while I was browsing.)

The folks at Hammacher Schlemmer offer all sorts of gadgetry and products, and two of them caught my eye as I perused their catalog for gift ideas.

The first was the maze bank pictured above, The Labyrinthine Piggy Bank. Any coins that fall off the track are safe and secure, but only someone with the patience and dexterity to navigate the ten feet of track within will be able to gain access!

The second piqued my interest as a lover of words and wordplay. It’s The Lexicographer’s Extended Scrabble game, a 21×21 grid with more tiles and squares than the original, allowing for more flexibility and more elaborate words. Perfect for the verbivore Scrabble enthusiast in your life.

If you’re looking for pen-and-paper puzzle goodness, our pals at PennyPress and Dell Magazines offer perfect stocking stuffers, as well as digest-sized and full-sized puzzle books. Whether it’s logic, crosswords, word seeks, fill-ins, sudoku, variety puzzles, or the Brain Boosters shown above, they’ve got you covered.

And, of course, you can’t go wrong with a one-year PuzzleNation gift subscription! With access to ten different puzzle games, as well as score tracking and two-player mode to solve with friends,  hours of puzzle-solving fun await.

This is just a small sampling of the puzzle-wonderful delights available this holiday season, but hopefully these suggestions will help you trim down your shopping list this year. So good luck, keep calm, puzzle on, and I’ll catch you next time.

Puzzle Tech Support, how may I help you?

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All of the best operatives have tech support. Bond has Moneypenny and Q. Batman has Oracle. Punisher has Microchip.

My older sister has me, your friendly neighborhood puzzlin’ fool.

Allow me to explain.

For a few years now, my older sister has competed in various rounds of the Great Urban Race, a city-centric version of The Amazing Race that combines trivia, puzzle-solving, and physical challenges. And an outrageous amount of running around.

(I understand there is a similar event in Canada known as the City Chase. And, of course, there’s the supremely puzzle-focused BAPHL, which Eric covered earlier this year.)

Since it’s damn near impossible to do research on the run, competitors are allowed to have someone as remote tech support to do the electronic legwork while the team is on the move. As a puzzle fiend and a world-class Googler, I was her first and only choice.

So last weekend, for the third time, I found myself hunkered down in front of my laptop with several Google windows prepped, waiting for text messages or emails to roll in.

The first time, she was in Philadelphia.

Where is the only digital printing studio in Philly with IRIS 3047 printer? Where is the Class of ’49 Bridge? What is the river that the St. James Brewery in Dublin is situated on?

And then the kicker. Where is this statue?

I hit Google Image Search immediately, but the dimensions on the picture simply didn’t match up with anything I could find in the Philadelphia area.

Which meant either the photo was compressed or otherwise distorted, or it was taken from a weird angle.

So I went with that, looking for any gargoyles with potential, or at least a similar shape. That’s when I stumbled upon an image from Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary.

They have two gargoyles that are put up on the main gateway in early September, since they do a special Halloween tour every year. They’d gone up on the ninth.

It turns out the picture was of the second gargoyle — the first, with an outstretched claw, was the one that kept turning up on Google Image Search — as shot from below.

Crafty, crafty.

The second GUR was New York City.

Find a certain restaurant. (No sweat.) Track down the business or organization behind a certain slogan. (Took a lot longer, because she gave me the wrong slogan.) Track down a business on a given street. (Nailed it quickly.) Find a theater under former names. (Again, no sweat.) Locate the largest rare goods shop. (Got it.) Unscramble a phrase to find a business’s name. (Anagrammed it in my head.)

But again, an image-search question was the most time-consuming. I had a cellphone-quality picture of a photocopy of a picture of a cigar store Indian statue, and I had to find the exact statue in Manhattan AND its location.

THAT was tedious. But I was eventually successful in tracking him down.

This time around, she was in Las Vegas (which I believe she and her partner qualified for after performing well in the New York City round).

There weren’t any tough Image Searches this time around — or if there were, she didn’t need my assistance with it — but my trivia and puzzle skills did come in handy again.

In one instance, a phone number was translated into another language, and I had to identify and decode the number. (It was Tagalog.)

My anagramming skills again came into play, but this time in a list of comic book titles and characters that had been scrambled. I was stumped by the last one, GECRSOSN MPRIRE, for a while, because while CONGRESS PRIMER immediately jumped to mind, that was total nonsense to me as a comic book fan. Googling that phrase did me no good, either.

It was a while before I started playing around with GECRSOSN again and remembered a defunct comic brand, CROSSGEN. CrossGen Primer. I excitedly texted her back with that.

The first puzzle she sent me, though, was easily the most puzzly of their challenges.

In this zero-ten numbered puzzle, complete this chain:
8 5 4 _ _ 7 _ 10 3 2 0

Did you get it? I’m sure you have by now. From there, it was a quick Google search for the address of a certain wedding chapel where their next challenge awaited them.

I’m sure she’ll participate again at some point, and when she does, I will be there, puzzle skills at the ready.

But in the meantime, let’s all keep calm, puzzle on, and I’ll catch you next time.

A 9-letter word for candy and costume-fueled fun.

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Greetings, fellow puzzle solvers and enigma enthusiasts! Happy Halloween to you and yours!

I had a lot of fun a few weeks ago scouring the Internet for pictures of puzzle-centric tattoos, and with today being the most costume-y of holidays (unless you dress up for Bastille Day or the Fourth of July or something), I thought I’d wander back out into the wilds of the Internet and see what kind of puzzly costumes are out there.

Naturally, I would be remiss if I didn’t post at least one picture of the most famous of the puzzly supervillains from pop culture, so here is your prescribed dose of Batman villain The Riddler, nabbed from deviantart.com’s Dubya87.

Now, when you’re doing any sort of puzzle-focused image searching on the Internet, you’re bound to get jigsaws as well as pen-and-paper puzzles.

There were numerous examples of couples, pairs, and groups going as interlocking jigsaw puzzle pieces, but that’s not really the sort of puzzle costume I was going for. Nonetheless, this jigsaw puzzle costume rendition of Van Gogh’s Starry Night is really impressive, so I’ll share it with the puzzle world at large anyway.

But let’s get down to business. Puzzle costume business, which I daresay is the best kind of business, outside of being paid to eat ice cream.

Astonishingly, there’s simply not a lot of crossword-themed costume play going on. I know! I was surprised too! I did, however, find these crossword grid-patterned pajamas, which could easily double as a costume, or examwear for a tardy college student.

From crosswords, it’s a quick hop to Scrabble costumes, which seem to be much more popular!

This was my favorite of the “replicating the board” costumes I found.

And, naturally, there’s an awkward mass-produced costume along the same lines, which looks both uncomfortable and a bit too pillowy for my tastes.

From there, we get into the more creative interpretations. This woman seems inordinately proud of her Scrabble board dress.

This homemade dress is absolutely adorable. I only wish I’d been able to find a better picture.

And, as above, there’s a “sassy” mass-produced version of the Scrabble dress.

(There’s a more scandalous variation on that costume as well, but for propriety’s sake, let’s ignore that and move onward.)

Sudoku! While not as popular a costume choice as Scrabble, I still had little trouble tracking down several choice examples of sudokuriffic costumes. (Though I really doubt that’s a puzzle of three-star difficulty.)

I’m not sure how racially sensitive this guy’s Sudoku accoutrements are, but it certainly adds some flair to his interactive Sudoku board.

And then there’s this guy! Kudos on finding an appropriately-scaled giant pencil for your Sudoku board. (In case you’re trying to solve his costume, as far as I can tell his forehead is 8, and his mouth 4 or 5. Good luck!)

And, as before, here’s the weird mass-produced costume version for Sudoku. I respect that they kept it to a 4×4 grid, but I still can’t imagine anyone wearing it.

Now, when it comes to puzzles and puzzly games, it’s hard to imagine a more visual one than the Rubik’s Cube. Simple shape, great colors, and instantly recognizable. Somewhere, there are photos of my oldest sister in a Rubik’s Cube costume. (Had I been able to locate them, I would absolutely have posted them here.)

But do not fear. There are plenty of marvelous Rubik’s Cube costume pics on the Internet, and I’m happy to post a few of my favorites.

This one is outstanding. Not only is the center row offset, but I’m pretty sure you can actually spin those rows!

(I imagine it’s quite difficult getting him in and out of the car. I had a similarly boxy Optimus Prime costume as a child and got wedged in the backseat for at least ten minutes.)

This one is undoubtedly an improvised dorm room costume, but it’s still terrific.

I think the young lady’s expression is what really sells this one. She’s obviously proud of getting three yellow squares on a single side.

Okay, I promise that this is the last weird mass-produced costume. But it’s so bizarre and mod that I couldn’t NOT post it. I mean, look at that hat!

I’ve saved the best two for last. The first will instantly ring bells for anyone who has played the puzzletastic Professor Layton video game series. It’s the Professor himself, alongside Luke and Flora!

And, in conclusion, here’s my favorite puzzle-themed costume, and the one that actually inspired the entry.

Yup, two Tetris pieces. Hilarious and very sweet all at once.

Happy Halloween, puzzle fiends of all ages! Keep calm, puzzle on, enjoy your candy, and I’ll catch you next time.

She must be no fun to play Hangman with.

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We’ve all seen some lucky guesses and fortunate letters on Wheel of Fortune and other game shows in the past, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen something like this:

Puzzling with the Kids: Blast-A-Way

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There aren’t many games featuring bombs that make you want to say “That’s adorable!” Blast-A-Way from Illusion Labs definitely manages this feat. In this cheerful kid-friendly game for the iPad, you control a number of adult “Boxies” — basically boxes with legs — and are tasked with rounding up the little ones, who have gotten lost and need some rescuing.

Each level is essentially an abstract maze, and to navigate the maze you will need several kinds of bombs. You’ve got your basic blow-things-to-smithereens bomb — useful for rescuing little Boxies who have become embedded in a wall, or simply to make a path so you can reach the finish line. There are teleporters, which will blip you over to a different part of the maze, as long as the teleport bomb matches the color it lands on. Rebuilders are anti-bombs: They put back together the parts of the maze you previously blew up.

Add to this further complications: Sheets of colored glass will change the color of your bombs. Portals will send your bombs zipping to the other side of the maze. And some levels will require two Boxies to work together to rescue all the little ones.

The puzzles stay at the softball level for at least half of the game’s 80 levels — a smart kid will have no trouble helping to solve them, or pushing you aside and doing it herself. After the halfway mark, you and your child may well need to think things over for a while, and you might even have to leave a Boxie or two unrescued, the poor little things.

Blast-A-Way is loaded with charm. The levels are richly textured — you’ll have just gotten used to the beauty of the wooden-block mazes, when suddenly you’re on to new levels done up in a sleek metal finish, or upholstered in the soft fabric of a kiddie rumpus room. My daughter says at least once during our play sessions, “I love this music!” And then there are the adorable little Boxies themselves, trying to get your attention with a high-pitched “Over here!” and “Miiister!” Blast-A-Way raises the bar on high-polish puzzling on the iPad.

The Nerd Potluck Looms Large!

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Aloha, fellow puzzlers and solvers galore!

Last week, I mentioned that I’d be attending a Nerd Potluck this coming weekend. It’s a celebration of all things puzzle, game, and nerd-centric, and I’ve been working on a new word puzzle to challenge my fellow attendees.

And as promised, you’re getting the first peek at it. I call the puzzle “Word Personals.”

Word Personals is based on the singular parlance of personal ads and dating slang.

Your standard personal ad looks something like this:

SWM, 31, brown hair, brown eyes, calf muscles of a Roman gladiator, enjoys full contact rock-paper-scissors and the films of Ben Stiller…

The breakdown is pretty simple.

–SWM is short for single white male in standard personal ad jargon. SWF would be single white female. (SBF would be single black female, MWM would be married white male, etc.)
–That’s followed by the person’s age and a brief description.

So my idea was to employ this format, but make the ads themselves word puzzles to be decoded by a solver.

Here’s an example:

SWF, 6, one letter once, one letter twice, and one letter three times, enjoys hanging out and giving people the slip.

Again, the breakdown is pretty simple.

–SW stands for “single word.” (If it was “MW,” it would be “multiple words,” indicating a phrase.)
–The next letter, F, stands for “features,” indicating that characteristics of the word will follow. (If it was “M,” it would be “means,” indicating a definition, synonym, or hint toward the definition would follow.)
–The number that follows is the number of letters in the word or phrase.
–Finally, there’s the description, which is in two parts. The first part, as indicated by “F,” gives some characteristics of the word. The second part is a jokey clue to provide further information.

And there you have it, Word Personals. I’m sure you’ve solved the example one already, so how about we check out a few more?

1) SWM, 8, power or vigor, enjoys vowel conservation and Herculean qualities.

2) MWF, 11, can read backwards and forwards, enjoys formal greetings and the days before holidays.

3) SWF, 4, goes from one syllable to three by adding a letter, enjoys taking car trips in the past tense.

4) MWM, 9, stutter-stop way of talking, enjoys frequent breaks and a certain British inspector.

I admit, It’s a bit esoteric, but I like the concept quite a bit, and I think it’ll be a hit.

Naturally, your thoughts are welcome. What’s confusing? What works? Is it too prone to alternates? Too easy? Too difficult? Your input would be very much appreciated.

In the meantime, I hope Word Personals provided you with a bit of brain-teasing today. So keep calm, puzzle on, and I’ll catch you next time. Wish me luck!