So I received a box in the mail the other day.

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It seemed like your average Amazon box.

But then I looked a little closer.

Okay. It says it’s definitely not a mimic. That’s good enough for me.

But maybe I should examine the rest of the box.

More eyes. And a mouth. And a warning to roll for Initiative.

Clearly nothing to worry about. Let’s open it up!

Yup, I was right, nothing to worry about! There are even cookies lurking under the packaging paper!

Oh, hey, there’s a note:

YOU ATTEMPT TO RETRIEVE THE COOKIES BY REACHING DOWN THE GULLET OF A PARTICULARLY OBVIOUS MIMIC. BECAUSE, WELL… COOKIES!

And you know what? The note was right. I grabbed those cookies like Gollum going after the One Ring.

At least if the mimic eats me, I’ll go out doing what I love. Eating cookies.

*various munching noises*

Sorry. Cookies.

Hey, wait, I didn’t get eaten by the mimic. What gives?

Oh, another note! Let’s see what it says:

YOU RETRIEVE THE COOKIES. THE MIMIC CLEARS ITS THROAT. YOU’VE SAVED IT FROM CHOKING. IT’S GRATEFUL. ITS FORM CHANGES. YOU NOTICE A FALSE BOTTOM TO THE BOX.

And you know what? This note was right too! There was a false bottom.

I pulled it up and discovered a beautiful wooden box.

It also had a note attached:

BEYOND THE SUGARY GUTS OF THE MIMIC LIES… THE LAIR OF THE DUNGEON MASTER.

YOU HAVE MASTERED IT. IT REVEALS ITS TREASURES TO YOU.

I couldn’t resist. I’d gone this far, risked life and limb for the greatest treasure of all — cookies — and discovered another reward.

I opened the box…

Allow me to explain, fellow puzzlers.

I am a man of many puzzly pursuits, and roleplaying games stand very high on that list. I’ve been running RPG games like Dungeons & Dragons, Star Wars RPG, Dread, GURPS, See You Space Cowboy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG, and many others over the years.

Although I have had the pleasure of being a player in a few games, for the vast majority of that time, I’ve been running the games for others. Be it as a Storyteller, a Dungeon Master, or any of the other terms used to describe game masters for roleplaying systems, running an RPG is one of my favorite things in the world to do.

I get to tell stories with my friends, build a world with them, surprise them with plot twists and villainous plans, and watch them solve puzzles, unravel conspiracies, and defeat great evils with only their wits and some dice rolls.

It’s the best.

I’m currently the Dungeon Master for several campaigns, one of which features some of my lovely coworkers. And they decided to surprise me this holiday season with a small treasure trove of delights, including a notebook, stickers, dice, and a very lovely card.

And one of them went the extra mile to not only package this wonderful gift up with cookies and careful packaging, but to include a small quest for me as well.

Beware of the mimic, people!

Would I brave the potential danger of a mimic for cookies?

As you can see, the answer is yes. Obviously.

I am incredibly lucky to have friends and players like this, and I’m equally blown away by the kindness and whimsy involved in this present. And I simply couldn’t resist sharing the story with all of you.

It’s amazing what people can do with a marker, some construction paper, and a boatload of creativity.

Here We Come A-Wassailing, With Some Reworded Carols!

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village-carolers
Image courtesy of The Sun Papers.

A few years ago, I posted a holiday puzzle that had been floating around the Internet for years. It was a list of Christmas songs and carols whose titles had been reworded, and it was up to the reader to identify the actual titles.

It was a popular post, but something about the list always bothered me. There were 21 reworded titles, which didn’t strike me as very Christmassy at all. I mean, why not 12? Or 24? Or, heck, 25?

So, I did something about it.

I added 10 new reworded titles to the list, bringing the total to 31, one for every day in December. Let’s see how many of you can crack all 31 titles, shall we? Enjoy!

1.) Move hitherward the entire assembly of those who are loyal in their belief.

2.) Listen, the celestial messengers produce harmonious sounds.

3.) Proceed forth declaring upon a specific geological alpine formation.

4.) Nocturnal timespan of unbroken quietness.

5.) Embellish the interior passageways.

6.) An emotion excited by the acquisition or expectation of good given to the terrestial sphere.

7.) Twelve o’clock on a clement night witnessed its arrival.

8.) The Christmas preceding all others.

9.) Small municipality in Judea southeast of Jerusalem.

10.) In a distant location the existence of an improvised unit of newborn children’s slumber furnishings.

11.) Tintinnabulation of vacillating pendulums in inverted, metallic, resonant cups.

12.) The first person nominative plural of a triumvirate of far eastern heads of state.

13.) Geographic state of fantasy during the season of Mother Nature’s dormancy.

14.) In awe of the nocturnal timespan characterized by religiosity.

15.) Natal celebration devoid of color, rather albino, as an hallucinatory phenomenon for me.

16.) Expectation of arrival to populated areas by mythical, masculine perennial gift-giver.

17.) Obese personification fabricated of compressed mounds of frozen minute crystals.

18.) Tranquility upon the terrestial sphere.

19.) Omnipotent supreme being who elicits respite to ecstatic distinguished males.

20.) Diminutive masculine master of skin-covered percussionistic cylinders.

21.) Jovial Yuletide desired for the second person singular or plural by us.

22.) Allow winter precipitation in the form of atmospheric water vapor in crystalline form to descend.

23.) A first-person observer witnessed a female progenitor engaging in osculation with a hirsute nocturnal intruder.

24.) Your continued presence remains the sole Yuletide request of the speaker in question.

25.) Permanent domicile during multiple specific celebratory periods.

26.) Diminutive person regarded as holy or virtuous known by the informal moniker shared by two former Russian tsars.

27.) More than a passing resemblance to an annual winter festival is emerging.

28.) Are you registering the same auditory phenomenon I am currently experiencing?

29.) Overhead at the summit of the suburban residence.

30.) Attractive or otherwise visually pleasing wood pulp product.

31.) Parasitic European shrub accompanied by a plant with prickly green leaves and baccate qualities.

How many did you unravel, fellow puzzlers? Let us know in the comments section below! We’d love to hear from you!

The 2024 GCHQ Christmas Challenge Launches Tomorrow!

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One government agency in England celebrates Christmas a little bit differently than most.

The GCHQ — or Government Communications Headquarters — provides security and intelligence services for the British government. Back when they were known as GC&CS — Government Code and Cypher School — they were responsible for funding Bletchley Park and its successes cracking the German “Enigma” code during World War II.

And now, they provide one of the coolest and puzzliest challenges of the year, designed for solvers aged eleven to eighteen to test their skills, hoping to inspire the next generation of puzzle solvers.

Yes, it’s time once again for the GCHQ Christmas card.

GCHQ card
A look at 2021’s GCHQ Christmas Card.

We provided detailed breakdowns of their Christmas cards in 2016 and 2021, and if you’d like a sample of the GCHQ Christmas Challenge, they have an archive of the last three years ready for you to solve!

The 2024 edition of the GCHQ Christmas Challenge launches tomorrow, Wednesday December 11th for the general public. (Schools were able to register for early access to the puzzles, complete with lesson-planning materials, which is very cool.)

Here’s what the GCHQ has to say about the event:

At GCHQ, we love creating puzzles and breaking codes. That’s why every year we create the GCHQ Christmas Challenge, a series of fiendish brainteasers and puzzles, designed by our very own team of codebreakers. It encourages children aged 11-18 to think laterally and work as a team, as well as showcasing some of the skills they might need to become a spy.

The puzzles are not designed to be solved alone, and each student will bring something different to the challenge. At GCHQ, we believe the right mix of minds enables us to solve seemingly impossible problems.

I’ve always been impressed with what festive puzzly efforts GCHQ brings each year, and I can’t wait to see what the 2024 edition has in store for solvers.

So, fellow puzzlers, do you accept this year’s Christmas Challenge? Let us know in the comments section below!

The Puzzliest Hallmark Holiday Films!

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Unless you’re trapped under a rock, you’ve probably seen at least one of the barrage of Hallmark holiday films unleashed on the viewing public over the years. They release so many, in fact, that many times, they have more new holiday movies than there are days between Thanksgiving and Christmas!

And I’ve watched a LOT of them. This won’t surprise longtime readers, given my extensive reviews of Hallmark’s Crossword Mysteries series in the past.

But you might be surprised by just how many Hallmark movies feature puzzly themes as the hook on which to hang yet another holiday romance.

So today, let’s look at the puzzliest offerings of Hallmark’s holiday season!

The Christmas Quest

Debuting just this week and starring Hallmark movie royalty like Lacey Chabert, Kristoffer Polaha, and Erin Cahill, The Christmas Quest answers the question “What if Indiana Jones, but Christmas?”

They’ve got ripoff music, the map gimmick, and even a giant boulder joke, as Lacey’s treasure hunter recruits her ex-husband (an expert on dead languages) to complete the treasure hunt started by her mother years before.

Okay, so it’s less Indiana Jones than that one episode of MacGyver with the big sapphire, but it’s actually cool to see the mix of Scandinavian lore with standard Hallmark tropes… even if the ending doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Mystery on Mistletoe Lane

A historian and single mom moves into a historic home for her new job, and her children discover a Christmas mystery lurking in the walls of the house.

As our historian butts heads with the former head of the historical society, as well as the douche-hat deputy mayor, she tries to revive the town’s Christmas spirit (in a historical way), drive up interest in the historical society, and unravel the festive mystery she calls her new home.

The scavenger hunt with semi-riddle-y clues is pretty fun (and turns the obnoxious children into more engaging characters as they explore), and unlike many of the “puzzly” Hallmark films, you can enjoy solving along with the characters. Plus you get the big reveals, the perfectly timed snowfalls, and a romance that takes about two weeks to cook. Not bad.

On the 12th Date of Christmas

Two designers of puzzly scavenger hunts — a man who prefers working alone and a woman who needs to find her confidence and voice — are seeking the same promotion, but get thrown together to create a holiday scavenger hunt for a big client.

These might be the two least socially capable people in the universe, so seeing them bumble around Chicago as they come up with twelve festive events to coincide with the 12 days of Christmas is a little bit of a chore.

Honestly, this one is barely a story. She resolves her voice thing in the first twenty minutes, and the requisite 90-minute-mark misunderstanding is so cartoonishly simple to resolve, and yet, they both buffoonishly avoid doing so.

Unlocking Christmas

An injured air force vet returns home and meets a doctor just starting out in town, and sparks definitely do not fly at first glance.

But when they each discover a key and a riddle waiting for them that night, they work together to solve a Christmas mystery that requires them to perform a few acts of kindness for others along the way.

This one is relatively harmless fun, as this romance is clearly being orchestrated for the benefit of both lonely parties. Of course, that doesn’t stop the side characters from being much more likable than our protagonists. I’d rather watch hometown boy’s soon-to-be-father best friend and doctor lady’s new hospital pal solve Christmas mysteries instead.

Christmas in Evergreen: Tidings of Joy

Katie is vacationing in the famously (almost suspiciously) Christmassy small town of Evergreen, only to get roped into writing about the town for a magazine article.

But as she explores the town and gets wrapped up in its many Christmas stories (including a smashed magic snowglobe AND the mystery of a lost time capsule), she finds her cynical views on Evergreen fading and her affections for a particular Evergreen resident growing.

This almost feels like a parody of a Hallmark movie. They set up the out-of-towner, the Christmas mystery, the friends-who-clearly-like-each-other, the loved-one-who-will-miss-Christmas, and more within the first few minutes.

Plus there are so many Hallmark alums (many of them referencing OTHER Hallmark movies) that it feels intentionally wink-at-the-camera-y.

The puzzling here is very minor, but it’s worth watching for two reasons:

  1. the friends-who-clearly-both-want-more-but-don’t-want-to-risk-the-friendship who work together to fix the magic snowglobe
  2. one very funny bit of CGI moment you simply have to experience for yourself.

A Christmas to Treasure

We switch to Lifetime for this one, but most of the Hallmark tropes still fit.

Six childhood friends are reunited at Christmas by a treasure hunt, posthumously created the old woman who used to host their clubhouse.

While one treasure hunter hopes to find the money he needs to buy the property and bring it back to life, another wishes to find seed money for his growing business. And wouldn’t you know it, they used to date but things ended badly. Will one last treasure hunt be the key to everyone’s happily ever after?

Kinda cool to see a non-hetero romance take center stage for once. That being said, this one is incredibly saccharine-sappy, and the most entertaining character is the wacky villainous real estate agent trying to cash in on the property.

As for the puzzly hunt… it’s more of a walk through memory lane for the characters, so not much to solve here.

The 12 Games of Christmas

A film from the Great American Family channel takes up the final spot on our list today, as our protagonists actually get sucked INTO a Christmas board game and have to complete holiday tasks in order to return to the real world in time to enjoy Christmas festivities.

Sounds like a slam dunk, right? Cool concept, great cast, what’s not to love?

Well…

The “lessons” behind each festive task were so ham-fisted and the logic so lacking that I couldn’t even enjoy the campy fun of it all. It was a bummer, because I was sure we had a winner on our hands here.

So, when it comes to Hallmark holiday fare, are the puzzly ones any better than the average festive fare? It’s hard to say.

There are lots of Christmas scavenger hunts (like the one seen in the creatively-named Christmas Scavenger Hunt), but most of them are just lists of things to do, and not the more elaborate puzzly hunt of our first entry.

But I think they do make a nice scaffolding upon which to spend two hours watching attractive people fall in love. Add a smattering of snowfall, and you’ve got a recipe for Yuletide entertainment… or at the very least, fun background noise while you do a jigsaw puzzle or solve a crossword.

Product Review: Reflectron and Egyptian Triglyph

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

Forgive these somewhat shorter reviews, but it’s really hard to talk about brainteasers and puzzle boxes without accidentally spoiling them for users. So you get a two-for-one review today!

The Rubik’s Cube is one of the cornerstones of brain-teaser puzzling, but the twisty puzzles inspired by that classic puzzle continue to amaze with their innovation and cleverness. We’ve seen speed cubes, ghost cubes, 3D-printed monstrosities like the Yottaminx, and even a self-solving cube!

But I don’t know that I’ve seen a twisty puzzle that so neatly and cleanly reinvents the wheel quite like Project Genius’s Reflectron.

Unlike the same-sized cubes of traditional twisty puzzles, Reflectron’s squares are different sizes, meaning that it takes on wildly different and more mind-bending shapes with just a few twists!

As you can see, every twist makes Reflectron blockier, stranger, and more alien. The shiny reflective patterning also makes it feel more like an alien artifact you’re handling than the familiar, colorful twisty cube we’ve all seen before.

Reflectron takes this simple change and brings a whole new feel to this tactile solving experience, and I find myself idly returning to this twisty puzzle again and again. It’s a genuine treat to play with!

[Reflectron is for ages 8 and up, and it’s available from Project Genius and participating websites, starting at $14.99. It can also be found in this year’s Holiday Puzzly Gift Guide!]

While Reflectron offers many paths to a solution, our second brain teaser offers only one… and it’s a doozie.

Say hello to the Egyptian Triglyph, a puzzle that combines tactile puzzle-solving with Tetris-style block pieces, absolutely warping your brain into a pretzel with its deviousness.

A cube inside a 3D triangular frame, Egyptian Triglyph challenges the solver to disassemble the cube into its component pieces and then reassemble the cube inside the frame.

And it’s difficult to describe the vast gulf in difficulty between unraveling this puzzle and putting it back together again.

I found disassembling the puzzle relatively easy, and I enjoyed maneuvering the pieces out of the surprisingly small gaps in the triangular frame.

But even if you pay close attention to the order in which you removed the pieces, you’ll find putting them back to be quite a daunting task. I would rank it as one of the most difficult puzzly experiences I’ve ever had.

You’ll need a steady hand, a keen eye, and loads of patience and skill to put the pieces all together again. But at least it’s less messy than old Humpty Dumpty.

Egyptian Triglyph proves that putting things back the way you found them is harder than it looks.

[Egyptian Triglyph is for ages 8 and up, and it’s available from Project Genius and participating websites, starting at $17.99. It can also be found in this year’s Holiday Puzzly Gift Guide!]

Happy Thanksgiving!

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lego-store-lego-november-turkey

Happy Thanksgiving, fellow puzzlers!

Today is a day for family and friends, for celebrating togetherness, for appreciating good fortune, health, and happiness. And we here at PuzzCulture are so so grateful for each and every reader and solver.

Whether you’re a puzzler or a gamer, a casual solver or a diehard devotee of all things puzzly, you can rest assured you are a welcome member of a very eclectic, charming, and downright likable community of puzzly people. =)

And so, in the spirit of giving thanks, I’ve cooked up a puzzle for my fellow puzzlers on this delightful Turkey Day.

Can you provide the three-letter answers to these clues and fill the grid? Some words will be entered clockwise, some counterclockwise.

If you do it correctly, a word will read clockwise around the edges of the diagram.

And here’s a collection of previous Thanksgiving puzzles we’ve created over the years:

Let us know if you solved the puzzle! Happy Thanksgiving!