Twin Films Film Festival Test!

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Are you familiar with the concept of twin films, fellow puzzlers?

The basic idea involves the commercial release of two films with extremely similar plots or concepts being released in proximity to each other.

For example, if I described a 1998 global disaster film centered around an impending impact event that threatens to end most or all life on Earth, what film would you name?

You could answer Deep Impact or Armageddon and be correct either way. These are quintessential twin films.

Wait, no, not this kind of Twins film…

So if I give you the year of release and a description, can you name the twin films that fit the clue?

Let’s find out, shall we?

Twin Films Film Festival Test!

  1. 1997: disaster films centered around volcanic eruptions
  2. 2012: loose adaptations of the fairy tale Snow White
  3. 2024: fourth installments of action-comedy franchises centered around African-American cops
  4. 2004: romantic comedy films about the rebellious daughter of the President of the United States
  5. 1999: supernatural horror films with a man and his relatives, experiencing a series of frightening visions and having the ability to interact with ghosts.
  6. 2017: films prominently feature the planning of the evacuation of Dunkirk.
  7. 1998: computer-animated films about insects, starring a non-conformist ant who falls in love with an ant princess, leaves the mound, eventually returns, and is hailed as a hero
  8. 2018/2019: computer-animated films about abominable snowmen making first contact with humans, both set in the Himalayas.
  9. 2006: films about 19th-century magicians
  10. 2022/2023: adolescent girls who transform into larger creatures under certain conditions.
  11. 1994/1995: films with drag queens going on a road trip across their country (in one case Australia, in the other, the United States) in a journey of self-discovery. Both have eight-word titles.
  12. 2023: films based on Dracula released by Universal Pictures
  13. 1999: caper films focused on the relationship between an attractive female insurance investigator and a male thief who steals an expensive painting by a famous artist. (Coincidentally, the male lead in both films is also played by an actor who has portrayed James Bond.)
  14. 2010: films featuring a stereotypical villain as the protagonist
  15. 1996: alien invasion films where the earth is rapidly and suddenly overwhelmed, only to be defeated by a ragtag group with borrowed technology
  16. 2005/2006: computer-animated films involving similar animal characters from New York’s Central Park Zoo being introduced to the wild.

How many did you get? Let us know in the comments section below, we’d love to hear from you!

The World Cryptic Crossword Championship Is Almost Here!

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Are you a fan of cryptic crosswords and looking for a challenge that suits your skill set and tricky puzzle of choice?

Then you should consider testing your puzzly mettle in this year’s World Cryptic Crossword Championship!

Debuting on the weekend of June 28th and 29th, the WCCC is composed of two events: an individual online championship on the 28th (which is open to any and all competitors) and a World Cup-style offline team championship format on the 29th.

The individual championship involves two cryptic grids, each of which must be solved within 30 minutes. Click here to register!

But please be aware that you’re competing in IST — Indian Standard Time — so you’ll have to adjust your schedule accordingly to have a chance at the cash prize for the top three solvers!

The World Cup Final is being held in person in London on the 29th, and consists of two rounds. The first puzzle will whittle down the field of competitors to the four top contestants from four different countries, who will then compete onstage to solve the final puzzle.

Some of the World Cup competitors have been invited for their past puzzly achievements, but there is an offline preliminary for anyone seeking to try their hand (and can be in London on the day in question to compete).

This looks like my scribblings while solving a cryptic… minus the wedding ring, that is.

I’m definitely not the fastest cryptic crossword solver, so I’m not sure I’ll try my hand at this competition… this year. But if it returns next year, I might just shoot my shot.

Cryptic crossword solving involves many of the same skills as American-style crosswords, but there’s also the wordplay element that makes it quite a different experience for those unaccustomed to that puzzly style.

For a good primer on getting into cryptic crosswords, check out this breakdown of cryptic-style cluing from our friends at Penny Dell Puzzles.

Will you be trying your hand at competitive cryptic crossword solving, fellow puzzlers? Let us know in the comments section below, we’d love to hear from you!

Free RPG Day Is Only a Few Weeks Away!

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Whether you’re a veteran of many roleplaying campaigns, someone who has dabbled in a few dice-rolling sessions, or a total newcomer to the RPG hobby, one of the best days of the year is fast approaching.

Saturday, June 21st is Free RPG Day!

The concept behind Free RPG Day is simple. All over the world (but mostly in the United States), local game shops, hobby shops, and other outlets team up with RPG publishers to distribute new, fresh, and most importantly, free material for all sorts of different roleplaying games, systems, and settings.

Sometimes they’re quickstart versions of the games to introduce new players. Sometimes they’re exclusive adventures or modules to play either in-store or at home. Othertimes, they’re entirely new games, free of charge.

Not only can you receive a wealth of new ideas and playing options in one fell swoop, but it serves as a terrific way to meet fellow roleplayers and build a community of game enthusiasts.

You can click this helpful link to find local spots near you that are participating in Free RPG Day, and I would highly recommend searching online for local game shops, game cafes, and even community centers like your local public library to see who is participating.

These shops will often be running demonstrations of games, tutorials on how to play, hosting raffles and contests, and offering terrific sale prices to encourage you to find the game that fits you best.

Every year, dozens of companies get involved, not only to encourage the growth of the game world, but to promote their own products. And what better way is there to get people hooked than with free exclusive materials begging to be tried out?

Keep your eyes peeled for this year’s edition of the Level 1 Anthology, offered by 9th Level Games. It’s a collection of new games by up-and-coming and established RPG creators, all centered around a particular theme. Last year’s edition was all about programming. This year’s is about the end of the Wild West.

This project is close to my heart because I had a game featured in last year’s Level 1 collection, and I also have a game featured in this year’s collection!

You can check out ANY of the previous years’ Level 1 Anthologies free of charge on the 9th Level Games website!

Are you planning on participating in this year’s Free RPG Day events? Let us know in the comments below! We’d love to hear from you.

Crossword Charities Have No Chill (and That’s Awesome)

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Words are awesome. We use words to express ourselves, to paint pictures for each other, to explain the world and our viewpoints in vivid, meticulous detail. There is a heart-stirring magic in the poetry and art of words.

But words can also obscure, conceal, and mislead. Words can be bent, they can weasel into unlikely positions, they can camouflage and doublespeak ideas as something else. There is a sinister potential in how words can deceive, inveigle, and obfuscate. (That’s one for the diehard X-Files fans in the readership.)

This is not news to puzzle solvers. Crossword cluing is often about playfully duping the reader, using puns, alternate pronunciations, and clever phrasing to challenge the solver.

halloween2
Picture courtesy of ThinkingCloset.com

But there is a certain charm and elegance to speaking directly, to bluntly sharing who you are and what you are about. No room for misinterpretation or misunderstanding. Only truth and honesty, explicitly stated.

And that’s why I appreciate how crossword charity endeavors have been dropping all pretense and simply stating what they’re about.

Like These Puzzles Fund Abortion. They don’t call it reproductive rights or protection for women. They say what they’re doing with no ambiguity. These Puzzles Fund Abortion.

That’s awesome.

And I recently saw another crossword charity project with a similarly unflinching level of honesty and forthrightness that I’d like to highlight today.

A Trans Person Made Your Puzzle.

A collection of 10 puzzles created by trans constructors, A Trans Person Made Your Puzzle celebrates the trans community and their contributions to puzzles and society alike.

Donate $10 or more to an American trans charity (like G.L.I.T.S., Rainbow Railroad, or The Trevor Project) and you’ll receive your puzzle packet.

You can click here for more information, and I sincerely hope you do. It’s an incredibly worthwhile cause.

Puzzle Activism, like our trans friends and fellow puzzlers, is here to stay.

Happy puzzling, everyone!

No Prep Road Trip Games!

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Summer is nearly upon us, and with the arrival of summer, one cannot help but think of road trips with friends and ways to pass the time in the car.

While singalongs, I Spy, and the License Plate Game are all well and good, perhaps you would like a little more challenge with your road trip games.

Well, you’ve come to the right place. Here’s a few suggestions for road trip games that require no preparation, save for a little imagination!

The Movie Game

I learned this game while stuck on a long train ride, and it certainly made the delays go faster.

Someone starts with a film, and the next player names an actor in that film. The next person names ANOTHER film that actor has appeared in, and the next person names ANOTHER actor from that film. And you keep going until someone can’t continue the game.

(If you present an actor or film in the chain that the next player can’t continue, you can only eliminate them by offering another answer, showing that the chain can continue. If you give them a chain link you can’t continue either, you’re out!)

It’s surprisingly difficult, because the more you play, the more devious you try to get. You want to lure other players down garden paths, but you have to make sure you don’t go so obscure that you can’t find your way out as well.

Playlist

Friend of the blog Jen Cunningham created a music-themed version of The Movie Game: Playlist.

In this version, you start with a song and an artist, and the next player either names another song by that artist OR another song using one of the key words in the song.

So, for instance, if you say “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” by the Beatles and you need to match the song, you could do “Owner of the Lonely Heart” by Yes or “Only the Lonely” by Roy Orbison. Then someone needs to name another Yes song or another Roy Orbison song, and then the chain continues.

I find this game slightly more challenging than The Movie Game because of both the musical knowledge (which isn’t as strong as my movie knowledge) and the associative nature of the song title aspect. But many hours have been wiled away with this game!

My Friend Is An Expert… / Conspiracy Theory

In this game, the first player picks two random subjects, and then prompts the next player with them, and it’s the next player’s job to explain in entertaining fashion something fascinating about them that only an expert would know.

For instance, the first player would go “My friend is an expert in ancient archaeology and polka music” and the next player has to riff on those subjects for a bit. Other players can ask questions to continue the silliness.

The game continues with different topics and additional nonsense.

There’s a similar game to this called Conspiracy Theory where someone has to rant about the grand conspiracy behind two seemingly unrelated topics provided by the other players.

Both of these are great fun with a group of improvisers or snake oil salesman during a long road trip.

Alien Ambassador

(I haven’t played this one yet, but a friend recommended it, so I’m happily including it.)

In this game, one player is selected to be the alien ambassador, an alien visiting Earth for the very first time. The other players must answer the alien’s questions and explaining simple concepts to them. (It’s sorta like that comic strip with the aliens.)

As the alien ambassador asks more questions about this, the players will invariably scramble to explain the very weird things we accept as normal, everyday life, and laughter will ensue.

Hastur Horta Hodor Mordor

Inspired by a Dork Tower comic, Hastur Horta Hodor Mordor is a road trip game that actually became a real card game. But let’s focus on the road trip version.

This is a memory game where one player says a word — preferably one related to fandom, geek culture, etc. — in order to begin a nerdy tongue twister. The next player says that word AND another word. The next player says the two previous words AND another word, and the chain continues.

If you can’t complete the chain or you hesitate too long, you get a Hodor point, and a new chain begins.

If you get 3 Hodor points, you can only say “Hodor” for the rest of the car ride. (That’s a reference for the Game of Thrones fans in the audience, if there are any of you left after those dismal final seasons.)

Do you have any favorite no prep road trip games, fellow puzzlers? Let us know in the comments section below! We’d love to hear from you.

A-Ha Moments Stick in the Brain!

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It’s one of the best moments in puzzle solving.

When all the pieces click into place brilliantly. When the wordplay is unraveled. When the cryptic crossword clue is deciphered. When the trickery behind the riddle is revealed.

That rush, that satisfaction that coincides with overcoming the clever, devious creation of another keen mind.

The a-ha moment.

And it turns out that the a-ha moment isn’t just significant for puzzly spirits, it’s biochemically significant as well.

According to a study by Maxi Becker, Tobias Summer, and Roberto Cabeza, the brain remembers a-ha moments better than solutions reached through traditional methodologies.

From a report by Gizmodo:

As study participants solved brain teasers, he [Cabeza] and his colleagues recorded their brain activity with functional magnetic resonance imaging, a technique that measures changes in blood flow associated with brain activity. The brain teasers were visual fill-in-the-blank puzzles that revealed a previously hidden picture once participants completed the image.

And the brain activity resulting from an a-ha moment was comparable to the brain characteristics of important insight events. This means that the solutions derived from a-ha moments were remembered more clearly and with greater detail than those derived from traditional solving or process of elimination-style solving. Some of the solvers still recalled their a-ha moment solution a full five days later!

Researchers are already looking to revamp the ways we teach by utilizing techniques that inspire more a-ha moments, hoping that students will benefit more in the long term from inspiration-focused learning, rather than rote memorization.

Here’s hoping for more a-ha moments for all us! They’re good for the soul and good for the memory banks.

Happy puzzling, everyone!