It’s National Puzzle Day!

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Hello hello, fellow puzzlers and PuzzleNationers! It’s National Puzzle Day (aka International Puzzle Day), and we hope you’re having a fabulous time!

As you might expect, we’re overjoyed to be celebrating this puzzliest of days with you, and we’ve got a few things going on today in honor of the holiday!

You can log into either the Penny Dell Crosswords App or the Daily POP Crosswords App for terrific deals, so be sure to check them out!

And that’s not all! We’ve got a marvelous little puzzle for you as well!

Today we’re testing your vocabulary skills and your Boggle mastery with a Starspell puzzle!

The goal is to form common six-letter words by moving from letter to connected letter in the Starspell diagram. A letter may be repeated in a word, but only after leaving it and coming back.

The letters in today’s puzzle, appropriately enough, all come from the phrase INTERNATIONAL PUZZLE DAY!

We found 28 six-letter words. How many can you find?

Good luck!

How are you celebrating National Puzzle Day, fellow puzzlers? Let us know in the comments below!

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! Be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date on everything PuzzleNation!

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A National Puzzle Day Event a Few Days Early!

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Tuesday is National Puzzle Day, aka International Puzzle Day, but as it turns out, a day is simply not enough for the folks at Barnes & Noble. They have been celebrating National Puzzle Month for the whole of January!

And tomorrow, January 26th, all 630+ Barnes & Noble stores will be hosting a puzzle contest to celebrate National Puzzle Day/Month!

All ages are invited to participate in a variety of puzzle activities with fellow players; complete jigsaw puzzles from start to finish; jump in on a fun word search; or challenge your vocab with crosswords.

We’re also featuring Curious Jane activities full of ideas! Participating players will get a free activity booklet to take home—while supplies last.

Don’t miss this special offer for puzzle fans: Buy 1, Get 1 50% Off All Dell Penny Puzzles from January 25th to January 27th, in stores only.

There’s still time to sign up for their event; check out their Facebook, Instagram, or website for more details.

Not only that, but I can tell you for a fact that the puzzles they’re offering for the event itself are top-notch! How can I be so sure?

Well, our friends at Penny Dell Puzzles are the ones who crafted those marvelous puzzles for the participants! How cool is that?

Will you be attending the #BNPuzzleParty tomorrow? Let us know in the comments below! We’d love to hear from you!

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! Be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date on everything PuzzleNation!

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The Gold Bar Logic Puzzle!

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[Image courtesy of Pinterest.]

As many of our long-time readers know, we’re happy to accept the challenge of any brain teaser, riddle, mind tickler, or puzzle that is bedeviling one of our fellow PuzzleNationers.

So when someone suggested that I tackle the Birthday Paradox brain teaser, I said it was a terrific idea for a post. (As such, I mentioned it in the Facebook post I write every Monday running down the upcoming blog posts for the week.)

I sat down to write it… and I had this unshakable sense of deja vu. I thought maybe I was just overly familiar with the topic, since I’ve explained it to other puzzle fans before, just not here.

But the idea just kept nagging at me. And with good reason.

A quick blog search later, and it turns out the Birthday Paradox brain teaser is a terrific idea for a post. Which is why I wrote a blog post about it. Nearly four years ago.

My apologies to everyone expecting the Birthday Paradox brain teaser today, but I’d rather not double-down on this faux pas.

Thankfully, that wasn’t the only brain teaser someone has suggested to me recently.

[Image courtesy of Law.com.]

So, in lieu of a brain teaser we’ve already covered, let’s look at another devious brain teaser. Join me as we tackle the challenge of the Gold Bar Logic Puzzle.

You’re out traveling and stumble upon a quaint little hotel.

You decide to stay there for seven nights. For some reason, the only currency you have with you is a solid gold bar that is notched into seven separate segments, sort of like a candy bar.

[Kinda like this. But gold.
Image courtesy of American Icons Temple.]

Luckily, the front desk agrees to let you pay in gold segments. You need to pay the hotel daily for each night you stay.

What is the fewest number of times you must cut your gold bar so that one segment is paid to the hotel every day?

I’ll give you some time to consider the puzzle before breaking down the answer for you.

Good luck!

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Hint: You are allowed to ask for change, but the only gold they have is what you’ve given them. This isn’t a quaint little inn in Dubai.

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And no, you can’t just give the hotel clerk the whole bar (or what hasn’t been cut off previously) each day and make the clerk do the cutting. The whole idea is that you’re the one doing the cutting.

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Did you get it? Good!

And if not, no worries, I’ll meet you halfway.

The answer is two cuts. Just two.

Can you figure out how to cut the gold bar to make your stay work out?

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Okay, hopefully you’ve unraveled the puzzle by now, because it’s answer time. Here we go!

You need to cut the gold bar in order to pay the clerk each night, but you don’t need to waste a lot of time slicing through gold. You just need to be clever in how you distribute it.

  • Night One: Cut off one notch of gold from your bar and pay the clerk. You have 6 notches of gold left.
  • Night Two: Cut off two notches of gold from your bar and pay the clerk. Since you’ve paid double, the clerk gives you back your notch from Night One as change. You have 5 notches of gold left (the block of 4 notches and the single notch).
  • Night Three: Pay the clerk with the single notch of gold. You have 4 notches of gold left (in one uncut block).
  • Night Four: Pay the clerk with your four-notch bar of gold. Since you’ve overpaid, the clerk gives you back your notch from Night Three and the two-notch block from Night Two. You have 3 notches of gold left.
  • Night Five: Pay the clerk with the single notch of gold. You have 2 notches of gold left (in one uncut block).
  • Night Six: Pay the clerk with the two-notch block of gold. Again, you’ve paid double, so the clerk gives you back your single-notch block.
  • Night Seven: Pay the clerk with the single notch of gold.

Two cuts, seven nights. Pretty efficient if you ask me!

So, how did you do? Let us know in the comments below, we’d love to hear from you!

[Note: In doing a little research, it appears this logic puzzle was created by Ray Epstein and Ben Kovler, and it appears in their book Fundrum My Conundrum: A Book of Riddles.]

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A Puzzly Nom de Plume?

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[Image courtesy of Writers Write.]

There was an intriguing blog post on The Wall Street Journal‘s website a few days ago about their crossword editor, Mike Shenk.

For those who don’t know, Shenk is a well-respected name in the world of puzzles who has contributed puzzles to numerous outlets, including GAMES Magazine, The New York Times, the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, and of course, The Wall Street Journal.

The blog post revealed that Shenk had published puzzles in the WSJ under pseudonyms in the past, but going forward, that would no longer be the case. In the spirit of transparency, any puzzles constructed by Shenk would appear under his real name.

Greater transparency in crossword publishing is definitely a good thing. If you recall, part of the issue with Timothy Parker’s tenure for the Universal Crossword involved other constructors’ puzzles being reprinted under Parker’s pseudonyms instead of the actual constructor’s name. Ben Tausig found one example, and further investigation turned up others.

From a FiveThirtyEight article discussing the story:

The puzzles in question repeated themes, answers, grids and clues from Times puzzles published years earlier. Hundreds more of the puzzles edited by Parker are nearly verbatim copies of previous puzzles that Parker also edited. Most of those have been republished under fake author names.

Obviously, no such accusations mar Shenk’s tenure at The Wall Street Journal. His reputation is pristine.

[Image courtesy of Politico.]

But it made me wonder. Last year, we discussed how many women were being published in various crossword outlets. From January 1st to April 29th of 2018, nine out of the 99 puzzles published by The Wall Street Journal were constructed by women. Were some of those actually Shenk under a pseudonym? (One of the noms de plume mentioned in the WSJ blog post was Alice Long.)

Naturally, this whole topic got me thinking about pseudonyms in general. In British crosswords, most constructors (or setters, as they’re called in the UK) publish under a pseudonym. Among loyal solvers, names like Araucaria, Qaos, Paul, Enigmatist, Shed, and Crucible are as familiar there as C.C. Burnikel, Jeff Chen, Brendan Emmett Quigley, or Patrick Berry would be here.

How common are pseudonyms in American-style crosswords, do you suppose? Has usage of aliases increased or decreased over the years? I might have to follow up on that in the future.

In the meantime, it’s intriguing to see one of the most respected crossword outlets in the market today, The Wall Street Journal, take a stand on visibility and transparency in puzzle publishing. Maybe it’s the start of something bigger.

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You can also share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and explore the always-expanding library of PuzzleNation apps and games on our website!

Two Puzzly Experiences in the NY/NJ Area!

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For puzzle fans, there are few things more tantalizing than a mystery, and when you wrap that mystery up in a puzzly fashion, you’re virtually guaranteed to be a hit with puzzlers.

But the folks at the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, New Jersey, have kicked things up a notch by adding the Great Detective to the mix.

Yes, we’re talking about a proper murder mystery for puzzlers and escape room fans to unravel, one draped in the trappings of Sherlock Holmes.

The International Exhibition of Sherlock Holmes is an interactive solving experience that places participants in the middle of an investigation set in the 1890s. With the forensic tools of the day at your disposal, your puzzly skills, and the spirit of Sherlock Holmes with you, it’s up to you to observe your setting, deduce what happened, and solve the mystery.

It sounds like a terrific puzzly experience that adds a nice murder mystery twist to the popular escape room genre. And the adventure is running through May of 2019, so you’ve got plenty of time to make the trip to Jersey City for a unique solving event.

Oh, and speaking of puzzly experiences in the Tri-State Area, we’re happy to report that another interactive puzzle event, The Enigmatist, has been extended through the end of March!

“An immersive evening of puzzles, cryptology, and illusions” created by magician and crossword constructor David Kwong, The Enigmatist is based on William and Elizebeth Friedman’s work at Riverbank, a peculiar hotbed for codebreaking in the early days of the twentieth century.

So if you’re in the Northeast, there’s all sorts of unique puzzly events waiting for you, if you know where to look!

The Enigmatist is hosted at the High Line Hotel in New York City. Click here for tickets and information.

The International Exhibition of Sherlock Holmes is hosted at Liberty Science Center, 222 Jersey City Boulevard, Jersey City, NJ 07305. Click here for tickets and information.

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! Be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date on everything PuzzleNation!

You can also share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and explore the always-expanding library of PuzzleNation apps and games on our website!

PuzzleNation Product Review: ThinkFun’s Potato Pirates

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[Note: I received a free copy of this game in exchange for a fair, unbiased review. Due diligence, full disclosure, and all that. Yada yada disclaimer.]

Most of ThinkFun‘s coding-based puzzle games are either solo endeavors or head-to-head races to complete tasks. Potato Pirates adds a marvelous new wrinkle, since 3 to 6 players are required to take to the high seas for some swashbuckling spudly fun!

Potato Pirates is a tactical game where players compete to outlast their opponents and become the most dominant potato pirate the world has ever known, a Dread Pirate Roberts of starchy goodness. You do so by either collecting all seven Potato King cards, or by eliminating every other player at the table.

Each player starts with two ships and twenty potato crew members, along with a hand of five cards. There are control cards, action cards, and surprise cards (along with the aforementioned Potato King cards).

The coding aspect of the game allows you to battle your fellow players. The control and action cards can be combined into commands that you program one round and activate the next in order to attack the other players.

Action cards indicate damage dealt to the potato crew of your target, while control cards indicate conditions for that action, like multipliers to cause more damage or how many ships you can target with one command. (Surprise cards can be played at any time, even when it’s not your turn.)

And that coding structure makes Potato Pirates more strategic and tactical than a lot of other card games where you can play any card at any time. Since you can code a command or modify a command on one turn, and have to wait for the next to activate it, you may leave yourself open to attack during that turn you spend coding.

An important thing to remember is that you code and deploy each ship separately, so since you have two ships to start, you can take the tactic of coding one ship while attacking with the other, and then switching during the next round, so you’re never totally on defense. (My fellow players and I immediately adopted this tactic, which lengthened the gameplay and made things slightly more frantic. That’s two big bonuses for this game.)

[Two commands in progress. The first is ready to go next round, the second is currently attacking this round.]

Since players burn through the coding cards so quickly, reshuffling the deck can slow things down from time to time, but otherwise, the game is nicely designed, and once you’ve read and played around with the control cards for a little while, the concepts become second nature to you and you can really start plotting some devious attacks on the other potato buccaneers at the table.

Oh, and speaking of, making the little potato pirates balls of fuzz is both an adorable aesthetic choice and a kid-friendly way to make the game approachable for young players. Leading off with cards and coding can be a bit daunting, but once they’re divvying up their potato pirates across different ships (with delightful punny names), younger players are hooked.

Although the coding aspect of the game isn’t as predominant here as it is in games like Robot Turtles, Hacker, or On the Brink, the fun gameplay offered here — and the desperate need you feel to play again if your ships sink! — ensures that these basic coding commands and ideas will become familiar through sheer repetition.

And getting saluted each time you find a Potato King card is pretty great as well.

One of these days, fellow PuzzleNationers, I shall be the Potato King. I promise you that.

Potato Pirates is available from ThinkFun and other participating retailers.

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! Be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date on everything PuzzleNation!

You can also share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and explore the always-expanding library of PuzzleNation apps and games on our website!