It’s National Puzzle Day on Thursday, also known as International Puzzle Day, depending on where you are and whether your puzzly activities extend across borders.
Hopefully you’ve managed to dig yourselves out of all that snow across the US, and you’ve got a jigsaw, a crossword, a logic puzzle, a brain teaser, or some other puzzly activity set aside to enjoy.
We’re delighted to be celebrating this puzzliest of days with you, and as you might expect, we’ve got a puzzle for you to solve in honor of the holiday!
This 15x crossword is titled Better Without. Happy solving!
Yesterday was World Logic Day, a holiday that I must confess I didn’t realize was a holiday until yesterday.
It was started by UNESCO in 2019 as a way to get people invested in logical concepts and their practical applications to the world at large, celebrating humanity’s great successes through reason, knowledge, and logic.
Of course, as a puzzle guy, I’m all for a celebration of logic. I could’ve marked the day with a discussion of different logic puzzles, highlighting the marvelous human ability to make deductions from limited information and snatch unexpected revelations from a few simple clues or facts.
And maybe I will do that in the future.
But today, instead, I have a minor grievance to share.
The built-in search bar for Microsoft had this little logo there for days. I didn’t notice because, honestly, I never use that search bar. But I happened to spot the Rubik’s cube yesterday and I was very confused.
Green, orange, white, yellow, dark pink, light pink, dark blue, light blue…
Many commenters pointed out that the colors are probably the result of shading to create the three-dimensional effect. Several even proved the pattern was legitimate by posting their own Rubik’s Cubes to match. (Although at least one was a tongue-in-cheek posting of a cube with the stickers moved and reattached.)
The cube appears to be modeled on the World Logic Day logo from 2024, based on the color choices, but the shadow effect really makes it look like a child had a coloring book page with a blank cube and just scribbled in it willy-nilly.
So maybe, in the future, on World Logic Day of all days, we could avoid making one of the most recognizable puzzles on the planet look weird?
UNLESS.
gasp
Unless it was intentional.
Unless this was all a master plan to raise awareness of World Logic Day by provoking neurodivergent thinkers with an image practically guaranteed to annoy them, thereby causing them to click on the image, driving more attention to World Logic Day!
If you’re a puzzle and game enthusiast, there are many dates and events to look forward to each year. There’s Free RPG Day, National Tabletop Day, the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, and all sorts of tournaments and contests and reasons to gather.
But after Thanksgiving, as the holiday season arrives, there isn’t really a puzzly or game-fueled event that comes to mind. (Though the Boswords Winter Wondersolve is coming in February!)
That is, there isn’t an official puzzle or game holiday in December.
But in 2013, there was a holiday festivity that brought together the worlds of puzzles and games in truly delightful and chaotically creative fashion.
For 2013 marked the birth of the White Heffalump Gift Exchange.
A heffalump… according to Disney, anyway…
You’re probably familiar with the concept of the White Elephant gift exchange, wherein everyone supplies a gift, and then a game of keeping or swapping takes over, allowing people to take turns, develop friendly little rivalries, and generally enjoy a bit of holiday frivolity.
A White Heffalump gift exchange works the same way, but with one marvelous twist: every gift is imaginary.
That year, puzzle constructor and game designer Mike Selinker brought together more than 50 puzzlers, game designers, artists, and creators from all walks of life to participate in the first ever White Heffalump gift exchange.
Constructors like Eric Berlin, Brendan Emmett Quigley, and Debbie Manber Kupfer joined artists like Stan! and John Kovalic of Dork Tower fame. Game designers like Steve Jackson, Paul Peterson, Matt Forbeck, Elisa Teague, and James Ernest showed off their imaginary creations to other attendees like writer and RPG actual play icon Patrick Rothfuss and cookbook author / Geeky Hostess Tara Theoharis.
And the entire exchange took place on Twitter, so fans and friends alike could enjoy the madcap holiday cheer.
Just some of the amazing White Heffalump offerings from its inaugural year…
A pet squid, a pocket pet named Prudence that GRANTS WISHES, “time to play with toys”, a dapper platypus, and a 29-word crossword were among some of the other silly, impossible, imaginary gifts brought to the exchange.
And although we’ve never seen anything like it again — publicly, at least — there’s no doubt that this festive explosion of maniacal creative expression inspired others to organize their own White Heffalump exchanges.
How do I know this?
Well, because I’ve hosted one for fellow puzzlers for the last eight years now, and the array of ridiculous, delightful, impractical, and mind-bending gifts have been an absolute delight to see shared.
Bob Ross’s Happy Little Trees, complete and total dominion over the planet Pluto, a paid internship with Carmen Sandiego, the ability to harness the magic of unicorn farts (*unicorn not included), a puppy-summoning button, and Your Very Own “No Pickle” Person are just a few of the glorious gifts that have been bandied about over the years of our annual imaginary get-togethers.
It’s an absolute blast, a reason to gather (virtually OR in-person), and all it costs is a little time and imagination.
Given that puzzles and games all start with that — that elusive mote of inspiration, the spark that ignites a creative wildfire — nothing feels truer to both the spirit of the season and to the heart of gaming and puzzling than a bit of White Heffalump fun.
It certainly brightens my holiday season every year. Give it a shot and see if it stirs your soul as well.
Kryptos is one of the great remaining unsolved puzzles.
A flowing sculpture made of petrified wood and copper plating, sitting over a small pool of water. That’s what you see when you look at Kryptos.
It was revealed to the world in 1990, coded by former chairman of the CIA’s Cryptographic Center Edward Scheidt, and designed by artist Jim Sanborn. Designed to both challenge and honor the Central Intelligence Agency, for decades Kryptos has proven to be a top-flight brain teaser for codebreakers both professional and amateur.
Of the four distinct sections of the Kryptos puzzle, only three have been solved.
After a decade of silence, a computer scientist named Jim Gillogly announced in 1999 that he had cracked passages 1, 2, and 3 with computer assistance. The CIA then announced that one of their analysts, David Stein, had solved them the year before with pencil and paper. Then in 2013, a Freedom of Information Act request revealed an NSA team had cracked them back in 1993!
A curious game of one-upsmanship, to be sure. Something that foreshadowed what would follow years later…
Unfortunately for puzzle fans, K4 remained unsolved.
Eventually, Sanborn began offering hints. In 2006, he revealed that letters 64 through 69 in the passage, NYPVTT, decrypt to “Berlin.” In 2014, he revealed that letters 70 through 74, MZFPK, decrypt to “clock.” In 2020, he revealed that letters 26 through 34, QQPRNGKSS, decrypt to “northeast.”
On November 20th, 2025, the solution to Kryptos sold to an anonymous bidder for $962,500, far above the predicted $300,000 – $500,000 estimate from the auction house.
At the moment, we don’t know if this anonymous bidder will reveal the solution or become the new keeper of the mystery.
You might think that the story of Kryptos would conclude there, for the moment.
On September 3rd, not long after I wrote about the upcoming auction, Sanborn received an email with the solved text of K4 from Jarett Kobek and Richard Byrne. They had discovered the solution among Sanborn’s papers at the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art, after the auction house had mentioned the Smithsonian in their auction announcement.
Kobek and Byrne had discovered Sanborn’s accidental inclusion of the solution in the papers donated to the Smithsonian ten years ago during his treatment for metastatic cancer. “I was not sure how long I would be around and I hastily gathered all of my papers together” for the archives, he said.
Suddenly, the auction was in doubt.
Sanborn confirmed to Kobek and Byrne that they indeed had the correct solution. Later that day, he proposed they both sign non-disclosure agreements in exchange for a portion of the auction’s proceeds. They rejected the offer on the basis that it could make them party to fraud in the auction.
Sanborn reached out to the Smithsonian and got them to block access to his donated materials until the year 2075, to prevent others from following in Kobek and Byrne’s footsteps and further endangering the auction. Meanwhile, lawyers for RR Auction threatened Kobek and Byrne with legal action if they published the text.
Sadly, Kobek and Byrne had been put in an impossible position. They have the solution that diehard Kryptos fans have desired for decades, and the possibility of coercing them into revealing the solution is hardly low. Sanborn’s computer has been hacked repeatedly over the years, and he has been threatened by obsessive fans, even claiming he sleeps with a shotgun just in case.
The auction house did disclose the discovery of K4’s solution to the bidding public, as well as the lockdown of the Sanborn archive at the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art.
All parties waited to see what would transpire.
Still, with all this uncertainty looming, the auction closed with its $900,000+ bid, and thus far, neither the anonymous bidder nor the team of Kobek and Byrne have released the solution.
Byrne and Kobek say they do not plan to release the solution. But they are also not inclined to sign a legally binding document promising not to do so.
I waited to write about this story in the hopes that something would have been resolved in the weeks following the auction’s conclusion. But sadly, K4’s solution — and Kobek and Byrne’s potential roles in revealing it — remain unknown at the time of publishing this post.
Despite all this, the fact remains: Kryptos fans haven’t cracked K4.
But they know of four possible sources to find the solution: the Smithsonian (which is locked down), the anonymous bidder (similarly inaccessible), Sanborn (who has been fending them off for decades) and sadly, Kobek and Byrne, who remain in the crosshairs of the media, lawyers, and Kryptos enthusiasts. The pressure is mounting.
Jim Sanborn, until recently the steward and keeper of the Kryptos solution…
I suppose the best case scenario would be for someone to legitimately crack K4 and release their solution AND method for solving it.
That would free Kobek and Byrne from their burden and potential legal repercussions. That would be the triumph hoped for when Kryptos was conceived. The auction’s validity would remain intact.
Because even if the plaintext solution is revealed and someone reverse-engineers how it was encrypted, it’s a damp squib of an ending. Kryptos wasn’t solved. It wasn’t figured out. It would be a disappointing way for a rollercoaster of story to wrap up.
One government agency in England celebrates Christmas a little bit differently than most.
The GCHQ — or Government Communications Headquarters — provides security and intelligence services for the British government. Back when they were known as GC&CS — Government Code and Cypher School — they were responsible for funding Bletchley Park and its successes cracking the German “Enigma” code during World War II.
And now, they provide one of the coolest and puzzliest challenges of the year, designed for solvers aged eleven to eighteen to test their skills, hoping to inspire the next generation of puzzle solvers.
At GCHQ, we love creating puzzles and breaking codes. That’s why every year we create the GCHQ Christmas Challenge, a series of fiendish brainteasers and puzzles, designed by our very own team of codebreakers. It encourages children aged 11-18 to think laterally and work as a team, as well as showcasing some of the skills they might need to become a spy.
The puzzles are not designed to be solved alone, and each student will bring something different to the challenge. At GCHQ, we believe the right mix of minds enables us to solve seemingly impossible problems.
I’ve always been impressed with what festive puzzly efforts GCHQ brings each year, and I can’t wait to see what the 2025 edition has in store for solvers.
So, fellow puzzlers, do you accept this year’s Christmas Challenge? Let us know in the comments section below!
We’ve got two quick updates for you today from the world of crosswords. And both of them involve opportunities for you to get out there and show off your cruciverbalist talents!
On Monday night’s Boswords broadcast, Will Shortz joined Andrew Kingsley and John Lieb to announce some changes for the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.
In 2026, the ACPT will be held at the Stamford Marriott, possibly for the last time.
No, worry not, the ACPT is still going strong. So strong, in fact, that it will be moving to Philadelphia for the 2027 tournament! The new space will be able to accommodate up to 1,250 solvers.
It’s a sad moment for Stamford, but not entirely unexpected. Attendance has been pushing the Marriott’s limits for years, and registration for this year’s tournament closed more than a month early because of high demand.
It’s also not the first time Stamford has said goodbye to the tournament. From 2008 until its return in 2015, the ACPT was held outside Stamford.
You can check out the full announcement here:
Will Shortz joined us on our Boswords broadcast tonight to share news about a future location for the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (ACPT). You can watch the interview at https://t.co/b2iKNr7ExMpic.twitter.com/8Uv6oq6Hz0
Overall, I think this is a great move for the tournament. There’s greater opportunity to attend the tournament, plus a ballroom space fit for voracious solvers of all ages.
I can’t wait to see what 2016 and 2017 bring for the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.
Remember that registration opens on January 1st for former contestants and on January 8th for rookies!
Reminder: Puzzmo Open Submission Week is Fast Approaching!
From the mecca of in-person crossword solving to one of its most ambitious and welcoming online platforms, we move from one impactful puzzly institution to another that has very quickly made its mark on the world of puzzles.
Puzzmo is holding their next Crossword Open Submission Week from December 29th to January 5th, 2026, with new and established constructors all welcome to submit their puzzly creations.
Themed and themeless puzzles are welcome, as long as they fit Puzzmo’s specs, and the Puzzmo team has created an impressively thorough document to assist aspiring constructors with their efforts. Grid specs, examples of previously published puzzles, and more await anyone hoping to see their work pop up on Puzzmo.
It’s a very cool opportunity to test your puzzly mettle in a creative space known for strong crossword fundamentals as well as playfulness with language and themes (particularly their signature “apt pairs”).
I would highly recommend checking out Puzzmo, whether you’re planning to submit puzzles or not. The minis, midis, and big crosswords are all great fun to solve, and new constructors are bound to learn a thing or two from the terrific names on Puzzmo’s roster of puzzlesmiths.
Will you be attending next year’s ACPT or submitting to this year’s Puzzmo Open Submission Week? Let us know in the comments section below. We’d love to hear from you!
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