The New York Times Crossword, Accordion to Weird Al

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 In February of 2017, The New York Times celebrated a landmark in the history of puzzles: the 75th anniversary of the NYT crossword.

And ever since, to commemorate that puzzly milestone, top constructors and Times favorites have been pairing up with celebrity fans and puzzle enthusiasts to co-construct puzzles for the Times!

This year, you might’ve encountered some of these collaborations, like news pundit Rachel Maddow’s March 2nd puzzle with constructor Joe DiPietro, or “How I Met Your Mother” star Josh Radner’s meditation-themed puzzler from January 31st with constructor Jeff Chen.

Over the last year, names as diverse as John Lithgow, Elayne Boosler, Joy Behar, Lisa Loeb, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Bill Clinton have contributed their puzzly efforts to this marvelous project.

And yesterday, another famous wordsmith and master of punnery made his New York Times debut.

[Image courtesy of Instagram.]

Yes, the immortal “Weird Al” Yankovic teamed up with Puzzle Your Kids mastermind and friend of the blog Eric Berlin for a cheese-themed Wednesday outing that delighted fans and solvers alike.

Al has certainly been keeping busy lately, launching his Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Tour — his words, not mine; I loved the show I attended! — and working with Lin-Manuel Miranda to create The Hamilton Polka, an ambitious and hilarious take on the wildly successful musical.

The puzzle was Eric’s 40th Times puzzle, and Al’s first. Not only did the puzzle feature those signature cinematic cheese puns — like A FEW GOUDA MEN and THE PELICAN BRIE — but there was plenty of nerd culture featured in the fill and cluing.

Tom Lehrer and John Cleese were both name-dropped, as well as Legolas, Wile E. Coyote, WALL-E, Mr. Clean, and Bones from the original Star Trek.

Eric offered some insight into the puzzle’s creation while discussing the puzzle with Wordplay’s Deb Amlen:

My very first attempt at the grid included one of my favorites from his list, QUESOBLANCA. I was under the misapprehension that queso is not just the Spanish word for cheese but also a specific kind of cheese. Whoops, not quite. (This was entirely on me, I should note — Al, not knowing during his brainstorming that the end result would be restricted to specific cheeses, had several cheese-adjacent puns in his list, including FONDUE THE RIGHT THING and CHEESY RIDER.)

And appropriately enough, Al had a bit of fun promoting the puzzle on his Instagram, claiming, “If you’re REALLY good, you don’t NEED the clues!”

For the record, I needed the clues.

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The Healing Power of Tetris

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Despite the wealth of data out there — and all the “brain-boosting” apps and products claiming they’ll keep your brain in fighting trim — the verdict is still out on whether puzzle-solving can prevent or positively impact Alzheimer’s, dementia, or other age-related mental issues.

But that doesn’t mean that puzzles and puzzle games can’t help in other ways.

Researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden have been treating people suffering from traumatic flashbacks — a form of accident-induced post-traumatic stress disorder — by having them play Tetris.

 Originally, the researchers tested this concept by showing unpleasant videos to test subjects and having them play Tetris for twenty minutes afterward. Their research showed that people who played the game — versus a control group that wrote about how they spend their time — suffered from fewer unpleasant and intrusive flashbacks or memories over the following week.

Apparently, the act of playing the game interferes with how people form the visual component of flashbacks. The gameplay doesn’t interfere with actual formation of memories, simply whether the brain will recall those unpleasant memories.

As it turns out, this might be a quality unique to Tetris or Tetris-style games. The same research team discovered that playing a quiz-style game made the flashbacks worse for those subjects than for the subjects who played no game at all after a traumatic event.

It appears that not only did Alexey Pajitnov create one of the most popular games of all-time, but that his legacy may also include helping the victims of traumatic events with their healing process. Amazing stuff.

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April Fools! (Update: Solve Puzzles Like Never Before!)

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Alas, we’re sad to inform you that PNVR — PuzzleNation Virtual Reality — the hot new tech on the puzzle scene, is just a delightful conjuring of the PN development crew. There’s no such thing.

(Not yet, anyway. Though, given how Ready Player One is performing in theaters, we might bump PNVR up the priority list.)

But we hope you enjoyed our little April Fools Day prank, particularly the free bonus coins for Daily Pop Crosswords at the end of the proverbial rainbow. It was great fun to cook up and execute, and the response from the PuzzleNation audience was terrific.

Thanks for a fun day, and keep your eyes peeled, because there are always fun, surprising ways to earn bonus coins and other great deals from PuzzleNation!

We’ll see you again soon, friends.

And please remember that puzzling and bike riding don’t mix.

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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Solve Puzzles Like Never Before!

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That’s right, fellow puzzlers and PuzzleNationers! We have something truly special for you today, necessitating that rarest of occurrences: a weekend post!

We were hoping to reveal this marvelous new puzzly breakthrough at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament last weekend, but alas, all was not quite ready, and we had to hold off seven more days for the grand unveiling.

Until today.

Today, we bring you the next step forward in puzzles. Yes, with Daily POP Crosswords, we put the best puzzles in the world in your pocket, at your fingertips.

But, with PNVR, we bring those puzzles to life!

PNVR. PuzzleNation Virtual Reality. It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen! Words leap to life with a wave of your hand! Clues emerge from the ether, floating just beyond your fingertips!

Simply slip on the special PNVR Headset™ — sleek, ergonomic, and suitable for any outfit or occasion — and in an instant, you’re whisked away on a hundred different solving adventures!

Crack crosswords side by side with a robot pal from the comfort of your own home with PNVR! Solve Sudoku from the summit of Mount Everest or K2!

Enjoy a leisurely bike ride through a grid-dappled meadow, plucking puzzles from the grassy hills and dales on a warm summer day! Soar like an eagle and loop answers in word seeks that stretch across the sky!

With PNVR, the possibilities are endless! (As long as your wi-fi is solid and grandma doesn’t hog the headset, that is!)

What are you waiting for? Click here for more details on the greatest thing to happen to puzzles since the mechanical pencil!

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Puzzles for a Good Cause!

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[Image courtesy of Pinterest.]

The puzzle community is really amazing. It’s an incredibly open, friendly, and welcoming band of creators, miscreants, wordsmiths, and trivia buffs from all walks of life, united by a love of wordplay and the satisfying discovery of a solution, be it to a puzzle or a problem.

Basically, if you’re in a bind, if you need help, there’s usually a puzzler there by your side to back you up.

This blog has given me plenty of opportunities to detail wonderful charitable programs spearheaded by puzzlers in the past, and today, it’s my pleasure and my privilege to bring another to your attention, my fellow PuzzleNationers.

Like last year’s Puzzles for Progress (which inspired it!), Queer Crosswords is all about providing a small puzzly incentive to do some good and reach out.

Once you’ve donated to one of the worthy causes detailed here — including the ACLU, PFLAG, The Trevor Project, the Trans Women of Color Collective, and others — you can send a copy of your charitable receipt to Nate Cardin at queerqrosswords@gmail.com.

And in return, you’ll receive a PDF loaded with 22 pages of original puzzles by great constructors like Tracy Bennett, Todd Gross, Mark Halpin, Andrew Ries, Trip Payne, Jenna LaFleur, Andy Kravis, and more.

It’s a little puzzly thank you for playing your part in building a better world, and I applaud everyone involved in this venture.

[You can click here for full details on Queer Crosswords.]

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Those Sudoku Puzzles Can Be Criminally Tough!

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Even when I’m not thinking about puzzles or intending to learn about puzzles, puzzles find me.

I was reading one of the most recent editions of Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, those delightful compendiums of all things amazing, weird, and unlikely. Everything from world records and peculiar habits to once-in-a-lifetime events and mind-bending coincidences are found between the covers of these collections.

And one particular fact caught my eye:

Eighty-six prisoners at Exeter Jail in Devon, England, signed a formal letter of complaint claiming that a Sudoku puzzle in the local newspaper — the Exeter Express and Echo — on May 21, 2015, was impossible to solve.

I was instantly intrigued.

[Image courtesy of The Telegraph.]

Here is the message the prisoners sent to the editor of The Exeter Express and Echo:

Dear Sir/Madam, I am sadly writing this letter in A LOT of disappointment.

As you will see, I’ve enclosed last week’s Sudoko [sic] page and we (along with 84 other prisoners) believe you printed a ‘hard’ Sudoku which is IMPOSSIBLE to complete.

As being prisoners we are only aloud [sic] access to Thursday’s issue, so we couldn’t verify the truth.

Yours FAITHFULLY,

Michael Blatchford
Shane Smith

Yes, The Exeter Express and Echo is printed twice a week, and since the answers to Thursday’s puzzles appear on Monday, and the inmates don’t have access to Monday’s issues, they were unable to check their own work.

So, naturally, I had to see whether this Sudoku puzzle was as unsolvable as the inmates claimed.

Finding a copy of the puzzle wasn’t hard. Here, I’ll post it here, in case you want to try your hand at it yourself:

[Image courtesy of The Telegraph.]

So, is it impossible?

Well, no.

In all honesty, I’m not the strongest or the fastest Sudoku solver. But I did complete this puzzle, difficult as it was. I suspect, given time, you would complete it as well. I don’t mean to impugn the Sudoku skills of the Exeter Jail population. I’m just saying.

As it turns out, the inmates had made a few key mistakes, mostly in the middle section, and since they apparently solve in ink, it made things much harder.

But, in a lovely response, the staff at The Exeter Express and Echo promised to make Monday papers available to the inmates as well, so they can double-check their answers next time. That’s nice.

And here’s hoping their Sudoku solving has been smooth sailing ever since. Apparently, it has been, since Ripley’s has yet to mention them a second time.

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