Happy Holidays and welcome to the PuzzCulture 2025 Holiday Puzzly Gift Guide!
Each year, we scour the world of puzzles and games for the best, the most engaging, the most creative, and the most enjoyable products we can find, and we think this year’s collection is the best we’ve ever had!
We’ve got three different versions of the Gift Guide for your perusal, each of them absolutely loaded with all sorts of puzzly goodness and designed to make your puzzle and game shopping as easy as possible!
You can scroll to your heart’s content or use our handy quick search links to jump to different sections! The products in this year’s Gift Guide are organized by category, by age group, and by price below!
So, if you’d like to view products sorted by category (puzzle games, board games, puzzle books, etc.), click the wreath!
And if you’d like to view products sorted by price from lowest to highest, click the tangram candle!
A lot of terrific companies and puzzle constructors are taking part in our gift guide this year, and we’re sure you’ll find something for every puzzle lover on your list!
Happy browsing and happy puzzling to you and yours!
The PuzzCulture Holiday Puzzly Gift Guide launches next Tuesday — it would have launched this week, but sadly I’ve been ill AND took a tumble down the stairs, good times.
But, to be fair to all the puzzlers and board game fans in the audience, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a huge, first-time-ever collaboration between a plethora of companies to offer great deals before the holidays.
Running from November 18th to December 1st, you can grab bundles of games as well as brand-new games, miniatures, stuffed animals, enamel pins, roleplaying games, and more!
Seeing this kind of collaboration is so cool, especially after a year where tariffs wreaked absolute havoc with the puzzle and game industry. Hopefully people will enjoy discounts and these companies will do well. It would be fantastic to see the Backerkit Holiday Market return next year.
But how about a little more festive cheer before I go today?
Our friends at Penny/Dell Puzzles have put out a free puzzle packet this week in celebration of National Game & Puzzle Week!
I didn’t know it was National Game & Puzzle Week. To be honest, EVERY week around here is Game & Puzzle Week. Who decides these things anyway?
It’s a great mix of art puzzles, deduction puzzles like Logic and Sudoku, plus some of my favorite Penny Press offerings, like What’s Left? and Stretch Letters.
Happy puzzling, playing, shopping, and gaming, everyone!
In case you somehow didn’t know, Deb is a talented crossword constructor, but these days, she’s better known for her role as the head writer and senior editor of Wordplay, the crossword blog and educational/humor column associated with The New York Times crossword puzzle.
You can read her thoughts in today’s Wordplay column, but please allow me to share a snippet of her thoughts from an accompanying Facebook post:
After more than 4,400 bylines and millions of words, mostly in the right order, I can honestly say that this has been the best job I’ve ever had. I’ve had the honor of working with some of the greatest journalists and editors in the business. It has been a wild ride, and as the great David Carr once advised, I have enjoyed every caper I’ve ever pulled at the company: the Trans-Atlantic cruise, the curling adventure, the rogue Crosswords Live. All of it.
…
Hopefully, after an extended period of drooling on myself to get over the deadlines, I can also continue to be part of the puzzle community in some way, because you all are the kindest, most generous, most funny people I know. Also extremely attractive.
As an ambassador into the world of puzzles, Deb’s warmth and playfulness have been the perfect counterbalance for new and inexperienced solvers to the sometimes daunting prospect of tackling a New York Times crossword. Her columns are always funny, more than a little self-deprecating, and very complimentary to each day’s constructor.
I’ve interacted with Deb a few times over the years. I interviewed her for the blog back in 2020, and we had several friendly conversations at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. Her enthusiasm for not just puzzles, but for meeting other puzzle fans, is unmatched, and even during a quick “gotta run!” visit, you come away with a smile.
I’m sad to see her go, but I’m glad to know that she’ll be working on new passion projects, traveling, and leaving the Wordplay column in the very capable hands of Sam Corbin and Caitlin Lovinger.
As one of the public faces of The New York Times Crossword, Deb often found herself the recipient of public feeling toward the crossword. Over the years, she has become rather infamous for reminding people that SHE just writes about the puzzles. “I didn’t do it” has become a catchphrase.
Well, Deb, it was true the vast majority of the time, but allow me to say, when it comes to making puzzles more welcoming and accessible to solvers, you absolutely DID do it.
(I know it’s Halloween season, but it’s never too early to look forward to holiday puzzly goodness for later in the year!)
If you’re a puzzle fan, you’re absolutely spoiled for choice when it comes to puzzly events to explore. Crossword tournaments, treasure hunts, escape rooms, puzzles by mail, puzzles by email, puzzles on your phone.
But I guarantee you’ve never experienced anything like Club Drosselmeyer.
Imagine getting all gussied up in your best 1940s-era-appropriate garb and grabbing your tickets before heading out to a show in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
What kind of show, you ask? Well, a vaudeville-style variety show with live music, enchanting and exciting performances, and all sorts of mysteries and intrigue playing out before your eyes, all set during the heady days and nights of World War II.
And what if there was an elaborate puzzle hunt tying the entire event together?
There are performances set for December 5th, 6th, 7th AND December 12th, 13th, and 14th for a two-hour whirlwind of puzzly theatricality. As the organizers themselves say, “Prepare yourself for another season of magic and mayhem, romance and revelry, champagne and sugarplums.”
Although I’ve never gotten to attend a Club Drosselmeyer event in person, a few years ago I participated in their virtual Club Drosselmeyer Interactive Radio Broadcast of 1943, and it remains one of my all-time favorite puzzle experiences.
I enjoyed two hours of wonderful music while tracking a rogue flying toaster, unraveling a criminal conspiracy during an air raid, decoding secret messages, helping a starlet choose the right lipstick for her show, and even performing a magic trick!
Club Drosselmeyer is run by a small and incredibly dedicated group of writers, performers, puzzlers, and musicians who put their all into this event every single year, and I simply cannot sing their praises loud enough.
Every 85 cents donated means 1 meal given to someone in need. A $40 donation is FIFTY meals.
Tabletop game designers from all over the world are helping amplify the reach of this project, spreading the word across social media and contributing to a special gift for donors.
And there is a bonus for any RPG enthusiasts who donate:
Everyone who donates to this campaign can receive a free PDF bundle including an epic one-shot adventure and a new playable species for Pathfinder and Dungeons & Dragons, letting you and those you love play the heroes in your games that you are in real life. You are saving real lives while forging bonds and memories across the game table.
Please click this link for more information, and if you’re an RPG fan, just use your email to sign up for alerts, follow the instructions, and share the PDF receipt of your donation to receive your free PDF bundle.
And for those unfamiliar with the world of tabletop RPGs, you might be wondering about the origins of the name Power Word Meal.
There are a series of spells in Dungeons & Dragons based on the idea that you’ve learned a word of power, and that by speaking that single word, you can cause a magical effect. Power Word Stun, Power Word Blind, and most famously, Power Word Kill, are terribly dangerous, terribly effective spells.
Which makes it genuinely lovely to see that idea turned on its head with Power Word Meal, spreading the idea that we DO have the power to help others. Not with a magic word of eldritch might, but with a few clicks, a few screen taps, a few dollars, a few moments of our time.
So please cast Power Word Meal with us and make the lives of some deserving strangers better.
The goal? To share research, showcase games, and discuss the future of game studies through the lens of BIPOC experiences (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color).
Here is a bullet point list of themes the conference was designed to explore:
Representation and Identity in Video Games
Digital & Analog Games as Cultural Artifact
Games By & About Black and Indigenous Communities
Decolonizing Game Development & Design
Integration of Indigenous & Black Knowledge Systems
Afrofuturism in Gaming
Cultural Preservation & Digital Heritage
Social Impact & Activism Through Games
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in Playful Technologies
Both board games and video games were topics of discussion across the three-day event, with panels and presentations covering properties as varied as Yu-Gi-Oh!, collegiate Esports, The Last of Us, murder mystery games, Dragon Age, virtual reality, the cultural value of arcades, and more.
“I think one of the most important things to recognize about games is that they are kind of a cultural artifact. And being a cultural artifact, it’s important to ask questions about what these things mean in society, or what these things mean to the people who make them.”
“… One of the things I think is really interesting in game studies is we have the opportunity to think critically about the kinds of problems we’re solving and then also the kinds of solutions we’re offering. So a lot of what people talk about in, say, decolonizing games is about reinvestigating those two questions, what’s the real problem here? What’s the source of that problem? Similarly, how are we solving the problem?”
For years, I have discussed in this blog how the world of puzzles and games not only reflects our culture and choices, but why that’s important. But I can only examine those things through one particular lens, that of a white cishet male. There are blindspots I’m unaware of and experiences I simply don’t have, despite my best efforts.
That’s why it’s so important to have other voices included in the discussion, and events like this are crucial to the health of the games industry and our understanding of why we play games at all.
How the experiences of Black users suffer in virtual reality due to whiteness as a default in so many games.
How the roles of Black and Latinx characters in games like Overwatch and Marvel Rivals contribute to not just representation, but reinforce perceptions of particular ethnic groups only in violent situations, not those of support or providing nonviolent solutions.
How video games are being used to preserve Latinx culture and the artistic legacy of the Hmong.
I learned about topics like Quare Theory and Misogynoir (how racist and anti-Black depictions affect the public perception of Black women), explained through the medium of video games.
But the article I found myself returning to several times over the last few days was “Decolonizing Play: Exploring Frameworks for Game Design Free of Colonial Values.”
It was startling to realize just how many video games are foundationally built on the values of Colonialism, and how easy it would be to NOT reinforce those harmful cyclical patterns.
From the paper by Elaine Gomez: When the topic of colonization arises, many game developers often hesitate to get involved in meaningful and constructive design conversations around how to mitigate values that are heavily ingrained in game theory and player expectations.
Some of the conversations broached by these panels and papers are uncomfortable, but difficult conversations are worth having. Challenging the biases and preconceived notions that games are often built upon is worthwhile. (I’m hoping to reach out to some of the Conference’s participants for more details in the coming weeks to follow up on these enlightening discussions.)
In the meantime, I encourage everyone to read the proceedings from the event and take some time to really ponder the topics presented.
The world of puzzles and games is big enough for everyone, and only gets better when everyone feels included. The 2025 Conference on BIPOC Game Studies is proof of that.
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