Category Archives: reviews

Product Review: Seas of Havoc

Posted on by
Reply

[Note: I received a free copy of this game in exchange for a fair, unbiased review.]

The life of a pirate isn’t all about gold and raiding and gold and avoiding the authorities and gold and gold. It’s also about building a name for yourself. And the greatest pirates, the most feared, the most successful, they aren’t just famous… they’re INFAMOUS.

And that’s the goal of every pirate sailing the, uh, one sea in Seas of Havoc: gaining the most infamy through deeds both impressive and treacherous.

Seas of Havoc is a game for 2-5 players that is part resource management and part combat tactics.

The gameplay alternates between an Island Phase (where your skiffs gather resources from the Market or the islands surrounding the sea) and a Sea Phase (where the pirates maneuver their main ship around the board to wage war and damage their opponents’ vessels and reputations).

There is no set number of rounds in Seas of Havoc. Instead, the game ends whenever the damage deck has been depleted during a Sea Phase. That phase is completed by the players, and then they total up their infamy.

I quite like the fact that player choices (and not an arbitrary number of rounds) determines the end of play. It adds agency and urgency to the proceedings.

Now, you CAN play the game by acquiring infamy through upgrading and collecting cards and trying to avoid combat, but you’d be playing with one arm tied behind your back. Cannonball attacks and ship ramming are such big components of the gameplay that you can’t really win unless you’re at least a little bit of a bastard, if not a right bastard of a scurvy seadog.

I know adversarial games aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, so it’s worth noting there is another way to play Seas of Havoc as a solo or a collaborative game, where you (or you and your fellow players) tackle the threat of the Ghost Fleet.

I did enjoy the collaborative version of the game against the Ghost Fleet — I’m an easy mark for cooperative gameplay that’s the players vs. the game — but I also absolutely had a blast seeing how ruthless I could be against a band of friends going whole hog with cannonballs. (Especially when we grabbed some LEGO cannons and actually started firing at each other like proper scalawags.)

Speaking of cannonballs, I need to highlight how much thought clearly went into all the physical components of this game. The cards are high quality, all of the materials are sturdy, and this feels like a game that will endure many playthroughs without wear and tear.

And the designs help with your immersion! The spinning wheel on the character board, the ship pieces, and especially the flattened edge on the cannonballs… all terrific, creative choices. (I am so glad the cannonballs aren’t round, what a nightmare that would’ve been.)

That level of care means a lot to me as a board game fan, and clearly it means a lot to the team at Rock Manor Games.

Factor in the different ships and captains (allowing for great replay value as you try out various combinations) and this is a game meant to challenge newcomers and experienced players alike across many sessions at the table.

Seas of Havoc delivers exactly what it promises: chaos on land and on deck as a band of avaricious pirates scheme and smash and blast their way into high-seas history.

The mix of all-out combat with carefully tracking and taking advantage of resources offers multiple levels of gameplay that keep either phase of the game from dragging on too long.

Don’t wait for Talk Like a Pirate Day. Give this one a shot soon.

[Seas of Havoc is for ages 14 and up, and it’s available from Rock Manor Games and participating websites, starting at $60. It can also be found in this year’s Holiday Puzzly Gift Guide, coming soon!]

Product Review: THINK. Conversation Cards

Posted on by
Reply

[Note: I received a free copy of this product in exchange for a fair, unbiased review.]

Anne Morrow Lindbergh once said that good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.

And it’s hard to deny that. Whether it’s a late night chat with friends, a conversation over drinks with a colleague or a loved one, or a spirited debate at a cocktail party, engrossing discussion is good for the soul, good for the mind, and good for the ego, whether people agree with you or not.

Sometimes these conversations emerge organically, and other times, someone asks a question that prompts discussion, debate, disagreement, understanding, or some combination of all.

Well, if you’re looking to spark a conversation, THINK. Conversation Cards are an excellent place to start.

Each of the 120 high-quality cards in the THINK. deck poses a question in one of eight headline categories. It could be about faith, technology, morality, public service, or our role in society / the world at large.

For example: What should a society reward more: effort, skill, risk, or results?

And as the discussion unfolds, you can flip the card over and delve into the topic with several follow-up questions. They might ask you to go deeper into your own beliefs, or to ponder a specific scenario related to the main question, or pose a tangential hypothetical.

But each card is carefully crafted to ask difficult questions without judgment, and encourage everyone at the table to share their thoughts and consider the words and opinions of others.

(Obviously some cards will lead to more agreement than others, but most are worded in a way that at least encourages some debate, even if most people will end up agreeing.)

Some of the best social games — Superfight, Cult Following, Secret Hitler — involve passionate discussion and challenging strongly-felt opinions as part of a winning or losing strategy. THINK. bypasses the gameplay aspect entirely, focusing on discussion.

It’s obviously not appropriate for every get-together (I’ll probably leave it at home come Thanksgiving, heh), but I am looking forward to my next chance to pull out the deck and have a thoughtful exchange of ideas with friends.

[THINK. is available for $29.99 at thinkconversationcards.com. There’s no age listing, but I wouldn’t play with kids, given some of the challenging topics. It lists 2-6 players, but the more the merrier, I say.]

Summer Reading: The Murder Game: Play, Puzzles and the Golden Age

Posted on by
Reply

Our Summer Reading series continues this week with a deep dive into classic and modern murder mysteries and how they’ve shaped and been shaped by puzzly design!

This week, join me as I explore The Murder Game: Play, Puzzles and the Golden Age by John Curran.

From the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Agatha Christie, and Dorothy Sayers through to the modern day, mystery writers have been engaged in an unspoken game with their readers. As A.E.W. Mason put it:

The author’s aim is to keep the reader guessing, where the puzzle, the whole puzzle, and nothing but the puzzle is his intention, the crime is discovered in the first chapter and thereabouts, the circumstances are made conventional so as not to distract the reader from the riddle; and the characters one after the other are shown to be all so obviously suspect or all so obviously innocent that no one shall be able to spot the criminal until in his last words the author hands him over to the police.

The puzzle plot, as some call the elaborate web woven by mystery writers, has evolved over the decades. Their rules have changed and grown better defined, authors have included maps and floor plans to aid readers in unraveling the mystery, and the game continues.

… some readers find the same satisfaction in detection that they find in doing a demanding crossword puzzle… You are competing with an adversary who cannot possibly cheat you, and need never outwit you, because his statement is frozen on the paper and he cannot, as he would in, say, a game of chess, adjust his strategy to yours. — Erik Routley

The Murder Game explores the origins of the puzzle plot, offering examples of its earliest iterations and the many, many forms it has taken across thousands of novels since. Curran’s voluminous knowledge of not only the Golden Age of mystery writing, but the present day as well, is truly impressive, and you feel like you’re being escorted through the puzzle plot’s development step by step.

It was great fun to read through the increasing complexity of the mysteries presented across decades, as well as the challenge involved in creating genuinely satisfying locked-room mysteries and “impossible” crimes. The transition from whodunit to howdunit was fascinating!

Despite the numerous examples of various tropes and techniques, Curran never lost sight of how puzzle-solving and mystery-solving go hand-in-hand. He shared examples of how puzzles have helped evolve mystery writing in exciting new directions — jigsaw mysteries, mapbooks, Cain’s Jawbone — all while remaining distinctly separate in important ways.

He even offered a delightful interlude with Clue/Cluedo as both base template and tongue-in-cheek reflection of murder mystery stories, complete with lists of similar suspects, scenarios, and locations from throughout the genre’s history.

Whether you’re a puzzle fan or a devotee of murder mysteries, The Murder Game is an engrossing, enjoyable read that feels like an in-depth study delivered by a trusted friend. It’s literary history, gaming insight, and an exhaustive exploration of the tropes, tricks, and quirks of the genre, all steeped in the attention to detail that can only come from a diehard fan.

Are you doing any reading this summer, puzzly or otherwise, fellow reader? Let me know in the comments section below! I’d love to hear from you.

Summer Reading: Death at Penrose Manor: A Crossword-Fueled Murder Mystery

Posted on by
Reply

Our Summer Reading series continues this week with some puzzle solving and some mystery solving! (Can it top The Case of the Crossword Cipher? Keep reading to find out!)

This week, join me as I investigate Death at Penrose Manor by Desirée Penner and Jeff Sinnock.

An extravagant party awaits at the home of the eccentric and mercurial Roan Penrose, newspaper magnate and man with a penchant for antagonizing those around him.

So it’s no surprise when he turns up dead during the event.

Thankfully one of the guests, police constable Jade Miller, immediately calls detective Jude Marlow, and now Marlow must unravel a web of lies, motives, and bruised egos in order to solve the murder.

Can you puzzle out which of the nine suspects committed the murder? To do so, you’ll have to read through the interrogations, solve a crossword related to each suspect, and crack the case.

Death at Penrose Manor is a fun riff on both Agatha Christie-style murder mysteries and the trappings of the board game Clue, right down to the colorfully-named suspects and the layout of Penrose Manor.

The puzzles are mostly solid (one or two awkward words per grid), but mostly well-constructed and accessible. The cluing is straightforward, with a few sharp and clever clues peppered throughout.

Your average solver will blaze through these grids, and murder mystery fans who aren’t frequent puzzle-solvers should do fine as well.

(I can’t really dig into the book more without potentially spoiling it, so today’s review will be a little shorter than the others.)

But all in all, I had fun with Death at Penrose Manor. The mix of mystery and puzzles worked really nicely, the characters were hammy in the best way, I enjoyed scribbling notes and theories as I progressed throughout the book, and the reveal at the end was a satisfying one.

This one gets a thumbs-up from me.

Are you doing any reading this summer, puzzly or otherwise, fellow reader? Let me know in the comments section below! I’d love to hear from you.

Summer Reading: Across the Universe by Natan Last

Posted on by
Reply

After two Summer Reads that were peripherally about crosswords, it felt appropriate to finally read something definitively about crosswords.

So join me as Natan Last takes on a journey, exploring where crosswords have been, where they are now, and hopefully where they’re going in Across the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of the Crossword Puzzle.

The history of crosswords is peculiar, because the medium itself has ebbs and flows, moments of great cultural prominence and others where it fades into the background of daily life.

And since the crossword is ever-evolving, shaped by new editors, new outlets, and new constructors, the history of crosswords is constantly being reexamined and recontextualized by fresh eyes and previously-unheard perspectives.

Last deftly moves between the past and the present as he chronicles the rich cultural impact (and more importantly, the potential for GREATER cultural impact) of crosswords. There are chapters dedicated to the intersection of crosswords and art, crosswords and technology, and crosswords and identity.

We learn about the rise of Dr.Fill and what makes crosswords unlike other activities like Chess and Go that have been challenged by automated play. We learn about the New Wave of crosswords (which seems quaint at this point) and the current indie revolution that shapes the modern puzzle experience.

Image courtesy of Geek Dad.

We learn about cruciverbalists past and present like Elizabeth Gorski and Mangesh Ghogre, exploring the complex relationship between crosswords, culture, and representation, especially how crosswords have both helped and hindered at points.

Each chapter is a thought-provoking short essay, enhanced by Last’s proficiency as a storyteller. He spins a wonderful narrative, charming and patient, knowing exactly when to deep dive on a subject and when to pivot to a meaningful counterpoint.

And along the way, we get delightful backstory on surprising moments, important voices, and Natan’s firsthand experience in the world of crosswords.

There are a fair number of books that explore crossword history, and what makes each of them worthwhile isn’t the factual information, it’s the perspective offered by the author. And Last takes a fun, if well-trodden topic, and he makes it hum with context, commentary, and an unflinching look at the good and the not-so-good of crosswords past and present.

I had high expectations coming into this book, and Across the Universe met and exceeded every single one. This belongs on any crossword fan’s shelf.

Are you doing any reading this summer, puzzly or otherwise, fellow reader? Let me know in the comments section below! I’d love to hear from you.

Summer Reading: Nancy Drew #44: The Clue in the Crossword Cipher

Posted on by
Reply

Last week I kicked off our Summer Reading review series with Matching Minds with Sondheim.

This week, I decided to go back in time to a book I probably read during a summer break years and years ago. It felt appropriate to read the same sort of book that would’ve been ON a summer reading list for elementary or middle schoolers.

So join me as I take a trip to 1967 as we read Nancy Drew #44: The Clue in the Crossword Cipher by Carolyn Keene (aka Harriet Adams).

Nancy’s new acquaintance Carla Ponce shows her a family heirloom that has been in her family for generations — a wooden plaque carved into the image of a monkey — and asks for Nancy’s help unraveling the mystery of the message on the back of the carving.

While Carla is being menaced by a shadowy figure known only as El Gato, Nancy recruits her friends George and Bess to join her on a trip to Peru to unravel the centuries-old mystery of the monkey plaque.

Despite attempted (and successful) thefts, attempted kidnappings, a sabotaged plane, and a murder attempt atop Machu Picchu, Nancy and her friends unravel both the story of Carla’s missing ancestor and the secret of the monkey plaque. Their journey ends amongst the Nazca Lines as they seek a lost treasure.

I was absolutely a reader of the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew when I was young, so I was definitely interested to revisit one of these books for our Summer Reading series.

And man, this book does not age well.

The adventure itself is fine, dealing with numerous criminal agents and cliffhangers at the end of each chapter (although some of them are just fake-outs resolved in the first sentence of the next chapter).

But the fat-shaming disguised as comedy is absolutely brutal. Every 20 pages, Bess is being called fat or chided about her eating or exercise. It sucks. They even gave this poor girl a cow-sounding NAME.

She runs all over Peru and Argentina trying to save Nancy’s life, and they still give her endless grief over eating delicious homemade local bread. LET THE GIRL BE.

There’s also the little matter of the crossword cipher on the back of the plaque.

It’s described to us in bits and pieces as they try to read the worn-away lettering, but what we have, essentially, are four words in a foreign language which seem to be crossing in pairs.

So, even being generous in our interpretation, this is neither a crossword nor a cipher. It’s not encoded, it’s just in another language. A language one of the primary characters speaks. I genuinely don’t know why they named the book after this detail. Maybe for flow? “The Case of the Worn-Off Crossed Words” doesn’t really grab your attention, does it?

All that being said, it wasn’t a bad way to pass an hour or so. The art peppered throughout the book is fun, and the cartoonish smugglers throwing bombs and trying to toss Nancy off the top of an Incan landmark were pretty entertaining in their sinister ineptitude. (I am a sucker for incompetent lackeys.)

But I still wish there was, you know, a crossword to solve, or a cipher. That would have made the puzzle of the monkey plaque a little more engaging.

Are you doing any reading this summer, puzzly or otherwise, fellow reader? Let me know in the comments section below! I’d love to hear from you.