Category Archives: PuzzleNation

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!

How did you get into puzzling?

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More than a few people have asked me how I became a puzzler. What strange, meandering road led me to the hallowed halls of puzzlesmithery? Could aspiring puzzlers follow the same path to puzzlewonderful adventures?

There’s no single path to puzzlerhood. Sure, there are some fairly universal commonalities. Do you have a great vocabulary? Mad trivia skills? Are you a whiz with palindromes, anagrams, or other forms of wordplay? These can all help. Also, a background or degree in English doesn’t hurt.

But every puzzler I know took a different route. It’s not as if we all one day awoke to a knock at the door, only to discover a small basket left on the doorstep, and tiny elfin footprints leading back toward the enchanted forest down the street.

Though, admittedly, that would have been awesome.

Here, let me take you through some of the highlights in my puzzle resume, and we’ll see if my experiences offer some guidance or inspiration for those with puzzletastic aspirations.

Unrecognized Wheel of Fortune Grand Champion, USA, 1988-present

Since I was about seven years old, family members have called me into the family room to see who can puzzle out the quotes, phrases, and punny answers behind the lovely Vanna White, and I regularly school both contestants and kin with ease. While Mr. Sajak refuses to recognize my two decade reign as Wheel of Fortune Grand Champion (Stay-at-Home Division), that doesn’t make it any less noteworthy.

Internship with the Riddler, Gotham City, 2000-2001

There are few puzzle personalities in the world with the flair, cachet, and renown of Edward Nigma, otherwise known as freelance detective and occasional criminal mastermind The Riddler. So when I had the opportunity to sit in with him and learn from his decades of riddle-centric shenaniganry, I leapt at the chance.

I studied the intricacies of mechanical puzzles, wordplay, and punsmithery while under Nigma’s wing, and although I frequently found myself in legal and moral gray areas — and on the receiving end of more than a few POW!s and BIFF!s — the experience was well worth it.

Tetris Foreign Exchange Program, St. Petersberg, 2002

There’s no better spacial awareness training than Tetris — I can feng shui the packages in the back of a UPS truck like nobody’s business, and don’t get me started on my legendary vacation-packing skills — and with the addition of that horrendous tension-inducing “you’re near the top!” music, I’m cool as Siberia under pressure.

Puzzle Summit with Will Shortz, New York City, 2007

Okay, it wasn’t so much a historic meeting-of-the-minds as it was me yelling puzzle ideas at him with a megaphone as I chased him down the street. But that totally counts.

Freelance Puzzle Historian, Self-Appointed, USA, 2009-present

Oh yes, puzzle history is a rich and varied field of study, one to which I have devoted a great deal of time and effort, unearthing some fascinating and surprising discoveries. For instance, did you know that Nero did not, in fact, fiddle while Rome burned? He was far too busy being frustrated by the extreme Sudoku puzzle he’d picked up in the marketplace.

PuzzleNation Citizen, PuzzleNation, 2011-present

Yes, I was granted full citizenship in PuzzleNation, with all rights and responsibilities that entails. (Like walking the Diggin’ Words dogs and such.)

Well, there you have it. A brief glimpse in my particular puzzle experiences and how they’ve shaped me. Here’s hoping you can blaze your own puzzlerific trail, be it through decoding Linear B with Cryptogram-ingrained proficiency or anagramming your friends’ names to your heart’s content.

Good luck, and in the meantime, keep calm, puzzle on, and I’ll catch you next time.

PuzzleNation Book Review: Ready Player One

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Welcome to the first installment of PuzzleNation Book Reviews!

All of the books discussed and/or reviewed in PNBR (PBR?) articles are either directly or indirectly related to the world of puzzling, and hopefully you’ll find something to tickle your literary fancy in this entry or the entries to come.

Let’s get started!

Our inaugural book review blog post features Ernest Cline’s novel Ready Player One.

Set in a world not too far in the future, Ready Player One introduces the OASIS, the next generation of videogaming and virtual interactivity. The OASIS allows you to go to school, escape from reality, and go on gaming quests, all from the comfort of home. The impoverished and generally frustrated Wade is just one of the OASIS’s many users, but his lack of funds keeps him from indulging in many of the more lavish adventures and activities available to others in the OASIS.

But things change when James Halliday, the co-creator of the OASIS, dies, leaving a challenge in his will for his fans and followers: find three keys hidden within the OASIS. Whomever finds these Easter Eggs will be granted total control of Halliday’s fortune AND company.

Wade and many of his fellow gamers know that finding the three keys might be the only way to avert a corporate attempt to monetize and economically subjugate the OASIS. Can Wade or one of his fellow gamers find the keys and save the OASIS?

Ready Player One is an outstanding debut novel, capturing the excitement and spirit of both RPGs and videogames, as well as the curious nature of Internet-bred friendships, all wrapped up in a terrifically fun adventure tale.

Both utopian and dystopian in spirit, Ready Player One is confident enough to invest time in the backstory of both Halliday and the world at large, giving the reader plenty of time to acclimate and become invested in Wade’s quest. I was quickly hooked by the intriguing world-building both inside and outside the OASIS.

But amidst the videogame trappings and ’80s pop culture references — cleverly employed as an obsession of the players, allowing them to feel vintage, rather than dated — there is an undeniable puzzly spirit at the heart of the novel: solving riddles.

Halliday leaves a riddle as the clue to unravel in order to locate the first key. Riddles continue to pop up, daring both the characters and the readers to find the solution. (Not only that, but the book itself offered a challenge for sharp-eyed readers, and one skilled puzzler won a DeLorean after solving the embedded puzzle.)

With plenty to keep puzzle fans, gamers, and pop culture aficionados engaged, Ready Player One is a terrific read. One of my favorites from the past year.

Well, I hope you enjoyed the first installment of PuzzleNation Book Reviews, and I look forward to more book discussions in the future. In the meantime, keep calm, puzzle on, and I’ll catch you later.

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.

Now can you dig that?

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There are a lot of great puzzle games out there, but only a few have characters to go along with the puzzle solving.

Several PuzzleNation games have characters that drive or contribute to the actual solve of the puzzle — Crossword Raiders and Tanglewords among them — but my favorite is easily Diggin’ Words, our timed anagram game, because of the Diggin’ Dogs.

In the game, the dogs dig up seven letters, and it’s up to the solver to assemble as many words as they can (from 3 to 7 letters) from those seven in the time allotted.

It’s up to the Diggin’ Dogs to dig up those letters and cheer you on as you shuffle and noodle over the numerous possibilities.

But other than a friendly demeanor and a penchant for amateur paleontology, what does the average solver know about the Diggin’ Dogs?

Precious little.

So, it’s my distinct pleasure to introduce the seven lovable pooches who make Diggin’ Words possible.

From left to right: Stormy, Barkley, Copernicus, Sam, Veronica, Lorenzo, and Kana.

Stormy

The elder statesman of the pack (Stormy’s 3 months older than Lorenzo, the next oldest), Stormy assembled this elite team of expert hole-diggers from a wide range of friends, colleagues, and confidantes he’d made over the years. He’s wise beyond his years and proud of his fellow Diggin’ Dogs.

Barkley

The troublemaker of the group, Barkley is mischievous and playful, always ready with a joke or a squeaky-toy prank to lighten the mood. He also participates in a howling barber shop quartet every Saturday night around midnight behind the farmers’ market.

Copernicus

Alert, attentive, and all around excitable, Copernicus (Nicky for short) is enthusiastic enough for a dozen Diggin’ Dogs. Of course, if letter-inscribed bones rocketed out of the ground in your owner’s backyard, you’d probably be the excitable type too.

Sam

You may recognize him from the famous Dogs Playing Poker painting. Sam has since retired from the professional circuit and now spends his time panting expectantly while players try to anagram on the fly under his watchful gaze. He also enjoys barking at passing cars, birds, and sometimes, nothing at all.

Veronica

Veronica is a former Iditarod champion who stepped down after four consecutive victories. Now enjoying a peaceful lull before her next adventure, Veronica joined the Diggin’ Dogs for some much-needed R & R. Digging up these bones and shuffling the letters around is the perfect way to stay in fighting trim.

Lorenzo

With his love of quoting Shakespeare and coloring suggestive of the Phantom of the Opera, Lorenzo is the mysterious one. No one quite knows what breed or mix he is, and he’s happy to keep them guessing.

Kana

The sweetheart of the group, Kana is the affectionate one in the pack, with everyone’s best interest at heart. She keeps bowls of water offscreen for any of the dogs that start panting too heavily, and makes sure everyone sits far enough back that the bones won’t hurt anybody. You can also thank her for the lack of visible drool.

Without these adorable pups, Diggin’ Words wouldn’t be nearly as fun to solve. Thanks, guys and gals. There’ll be an extra MilkBone for each of you tonight.

And thanks for reading. As always, keep calm, puzzle on, and I’ll catch you next time.

Welcome to the new PuzzleNation.com blog!

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Game of Hounds and Jackals

Game of Hounds and Jackals.
Ancient Egypt’s answer to “Angry Birds.”

There’s never been a better time to be into puzzle games than right now.  There are thousands of them available online, on your mobile device, available for your XBOX, PlayStation or Wii…  No matter where you find yourself or what type of puzzle game you’re interested in, you can usually get your fix pretty much at any time and any way you want it.

But.

There are thousands of puzzle games out there.  The Apple’s iOS App Store sports over 13,500 games in the puzzle category and there may very well be 10 times that number online in the form of Flash and Facebook games.  And let’s face it… Maybe not all of them qualify for the “puzzle game” category, have the highest production qualities, or are even all that fun.

For the puzzle lover looking for something fun and challenging this is a puzzle in and of itself. How to cut through all the dross to find the gold?

That’s where our new blog comes in! As a new feature of PuzzleNation.com, our blog’s goal is to bring you relevant news, opinions, and reviews from the puzzle solver’s point of view to help you find what’s new and interesting in the world of puzzles.

In addition to upcoming topics such as “What the #&!% is a puzzle game, anyway?”, we’re really looking forward to discussing and analyzing some great (or perhaps not so great) puzzle games, new or classic, regardless of whether they’re the traditional word-style games like Diggin’ Words, Classic Word Search or Bookworm,  physics puzzlers like Where’s My Water or Cut the Rope or visual/logic puzzles such as a Myst or Machinarium.

So that’s what we’re doing here — and we’re just getting started.  We hope you like the idea and come along with us for the ride.  Check back often by subscribing to our Twitter Feed or Liking us on Facebook.  And always feel free to comment on our posts or let us know if there’s something you’ve seen in the puzzle world that you’d like us to write about!

The PuzzleNation crew!