Munchkin like you’ve never seen it before!

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You’re probably familiar with the concept of the pop-up store. You know those costume shops that open up around Halloween, or the ornament shops in the mall at Christmastime, or the random spots selling fireworks during the summer? Those are pop-up stores, opened by retailers for short-term runs.

And our friends at Steve Jackson Games are opening a pop-up Munchkin store in New York City for three days next week!

From Friday, February 13 to Sunday, February 15, 353 West 46th Street will be the home of Munchkin World NYC, your one-stop shop for Munchkin games, goodies, exclusives, and events, including autograph signings by creator Steve Jackson, artist John Kovalic, and Munchkin Czar Andrew Hackard.

For the uninitiated, Munchkin is a hilarious send-up of the classic roleplaying scenario: the dungeon romp. Encouraging players to team up to battle monsters (and betray each other as often as possible for the sake of treasure), it’s a marvelous mix of puzzly strategy and luck.

With numerous expansions covering everything from pop culture to the apocalypse, from zombies to Christmas, Munchkin has become one of the standard-bearers for the modern board game and card game industry.

For full details on the three-day event, click here!

And for any Munchkin fans in the audience, a few questions: Are you planning to attend? What’s your favorite edition of Munchkin and why? I’d love to hear from you.

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and be sure to check out the growing library of PuzzleNation apps and games!

Farewell, Bernice.

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Part of writing for PuzzleNation Blog is constantly learning and unearthing new aspects of puzzle history. Whether it’s the history of puzzles themselves, like the 100th anniversary of the crossword in 2013, or significant moments from history that involved puzzles, like the use of crosswords to recruit cryptographers for Bletchley Park’s codecracking efforts during World War II.

And you simply can’t talk about the history of puzzles without mentioning constructor Bernice Gordon, one of the most recognizable names in crosswords for more than half a century.

Bernice’s first crossword was published in The New York Times in 1952, establishing a legacy of elegant, well-constructed puzzles that would span nearly seven decades. A favorite of both The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times, Bernice actually didn’t start creating crosswords until she was 35, a late start for someone with such an expansive track record to come.

She set records for the longest tenure as a crossword constructor and eldest crossword constructor — publishing puzzles at 101 years old! — as well as teaming up with constructor and friend of the blog David Steinberg for largest age gap between collaborators, with 86 years between them!

Will Shortz estimated that Bernice published more than 120 puzzles with the Times, and you can check out the lion’s share of them over on XWordInfo, dating back as far as 1965.

Sadly, Bernice passed away early Thursday morning, having left an indelible mark on the world of crosswords, with many friends and admirers celebrating her marvelous life and decades of sparkling puzzly wordplay.

Many puzzlers and admirers have written wonderful tributes to Bernice, but I have to single out the heartfelt words of David Steinberg, who memorialized his friend and fellow constructor in fine form here.

I only know Bernice through her puzzles, but I always found them to be clever, charming, and constructed with grace and skill. And based on what I’ve read about her over the last few days, many of those admirable qualities are reflections of the woman behind the puzzles.

Thank you, Bernice. You will be missed.

It’s Follow-Up Friday: Word Ladders edition!

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Welcome to Follow-Up Friday!

By this time, you know the drill. Follow-Up Friday is a chance for us to revisit the subjects of previous posts and bring the PuzzleNation audience up to speed on all things puzzly.

And today, I’m posting the answers to last Thursday’s Word Ladder puzzles!

First off, there are the two Word Ladders from Lewis Carroll’s puzzle collection Doublets:

Cain to Abel: CAIN-CHIN-SHIN-SPIN-SPUN-SPUD-SPED-APED-ABED-ABEL

Tears to Smile: TEARS-SEARS-STARS-STARE-STALE-STILE-SMILE

lewis_carroll_quote

And here are the solutions to crossword constructor Joe Krozel’s bonus Word Ladders from his New York Times crossword:

1. Table tennis: For ages, the only joy in my life.

PING-PONG-LONG-LONE-LOVE

2. Unspeaking inspirer will simply have to communicate in taunts.

MUTE-MUSE-MUST-JUST-JEST

3. Upon removing the strap, Mr. Rogers dashed away from his snow vehicle and glided.

FREE-FRED-FLED-SLED-SLID

4. Sell contraband to a flock of Jerry Garcia fans with intensity.

DEAL-DEAD-HEAD-HERD-HARD

5. Audacious poet (with signs of aging) outlaws military conflict.

BOLD-BALD-BARD-BARS-WARS (or BALD-BAWD-BARD-BARS-WARS, although the first answer changes every letter from the starting word)

How did you do, fellow puzzlers? Did you crack them all?

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and be sure to check out the growing library of PuzzleNation apps and games!

Puzzle Day Kickstarter Round-up!

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Happy (Inter)National Puzzle Day, fellow puzzlers and PuzzleNationers!

As I explained on Tuesday, today is a day dedicated to all things puzzly, and lots of puzzlers are joining the celebration!

For instance, our friends at Penny/Dell Puzzles are running a timed Word Seek challenge and encouraging solvers to share pics of themselves doing the challenge on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram using the hashtag #PDPPuzzleDayChallenge!

And, in the spirit of the day, I thought I’d do a crowdfunding round-up of some of the interesting puzzly projects on Kickstarter right now.

First off, I want to talk about Unspeakable Words, a Scrabble-style word-building game with a dash of H.P. Lovecraft.

The game went out of print a while ago, and remaining copies have been in high demand since the game was featured on Wil Wheaton’s board game webseries TableTop. The goal is to print a deluxe version of the game (originally allowing for seven players instead of six, but with several stretch goals reached, they’ve expanded to eight!), with additional stretch goals allowing for better game components.

Now, this is already a Kickstarter success story, because the game funded the first day, so you’re guaranteed to see a finished game before it hits stores.

For a taste of something different, Facets is a wood-and-magnets constructing puzzle toy that allows you to make various shapes based on the Platonic solids. Whether you’re interested in 3-D geometry or just like wooden building toys with a twist, Facets is right up your alley.

Facets has just crossed its funding goal with less than two weeks to go, and it looks like this might be the start of the next generation of Tinker Toys-style constructing toys.

Now, there are a LOT of other campaigns I could mention, like the small 3-D printed puzzle ship (pictured above) or this campaign to make the fake game Cones of Dunshire from NBC’s Parks and Recreation a real Settlers of Catan-style game, but I want to focus on one campaign that’s using puzzles to spread a deeper message.

Alyssa’s Puzzle Project is the brainchild of a young lady named Alyssa who is 12 years old and wants to educate the world — and her fellow students — about the dangers of moral and governmental corruption. So she’s created an awareness-building activity around a jigsaw puzzle, designed for classrooms and students to assemble together. It’s symbolic group problem-solving to raise awareness and spark conversation.

You can read more about Alyssa’s project and her ambitious goals here.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the phenomenal success of Exploding Kittens, a strategy card game that launched with a goal of $10,000 and has raised over 4 MILLION dollars in its first eight days.

It is now the most backed Kickstarter campaign in history, with more than 100,000 backers, and the sky truly appears to be the limit for this card game based on art from The Oatmeal.

I’ve been watching and funding Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns for a few years now, and I (and the rest of the world) have never seen anything like it.

Did I miss any puzzly Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaigns you’ve seen launched recently, fellow puzzlers? Let me know!

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and be sure to check out the growing library of PuzzleNation apps and games!

Thursday is National Puzzle Day! Are you ready?

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I was recently informed that January 29th is National Puzzle Day.

Considering that I am something of a burgeoning puzzle scholar, I was surprised that I didn’t know there was a national puzzle day. I try to stay on top of these things, after all. So I started researching.

As far as I can tell, this isn’t a nationally recognized holiday in an official sense, which is why we don’t get the day off from work. Blasphemy! Everyone should have the day off to celebrate puzzles! (This is also why there seems to be some dispute over whether it’s National Puzzle Day or International Puzzle Day.)

Although more prominent coverage has only appeared over the last five years or so, I found references in school schedules and archived activity calendars stretching back years and years!

Some articles state that (Inter)National Puzzle Day was created in 1995 by a consortium of game companies, but some conflicting sources seem to predate that claim. And it is intriguing that Tetris debuted in the United States as a PC game on January 28, 1988.

But, in any case, Thursday is a day to celebrate all things puzzly, and I’m here to offer some suggestions for how to participate in (Inter)National Puzzle Day fun! (Many of these can be done any day of the year, which is handy for those of us snowed in right now!)

#1: Team-tackle a crossword puzzle

Are you daunted by the puzzles published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The L.A. Times, or even your local paper? Gather everyone in the house and tackle it as a team!

Not only are you pooling a greater wealth of knowledge by including more people, but one suggestion could trigger another, and then another, and suddenly, you’re filling in whole chunks of the grid with flashes of puzzly insight or bits of crowd-sourced trivia!

It’s a great technique for building both familiarity and confidence in crosswords, and a neat way to challenge yourselves as a team! (By the way, the Penny Dell Crosswords App is ideal for such activities, since you can use the alternate clue feature AND pass the phone around with ease!)

[Image courtesy of mykidcraft.com]

#2: Make your own jigsaw puzzle!

If you’ve conquered all of the jigsaw puzzles in your house, you can always make your own! Either flip one over and draw something new on the back of an old puzzle, then separate it and re-solve…

OR

Get a big piece of paper, create your own image, cut it up, and try to solve!

I’ve found that cutting them into triangles, squares, and other common shapes is easier — and surprisingly more challenging — than trying to recreate jigsaw-style pieces.

And, of course, some companies sell blank jigsaws so you can create your own images!

#3: Create a scavenger hunt!

Now, I realize that scavenger hunts can be very time-intensive, but a great one can be simpler than you think! Limit the scope, but make it more personalized.

For instance, do you have a lot of books? Great! Make it a book-focused scavenger hunt! Ask for a book…

–with fire on the cover
–with sky on the cover
–a book that’s a certain color (or your favorite color)
–a book based on a movie
–a book without a person on the cover
–a book where a word in the title starts with the same letter as the author’s name
–the book with the funniest word on a given page

Toys, photos, funny google searches… if you tailor it to your family or household, a terrific scavenger hunt can be both easy to prep and fun to play!

#4: Come up with your own wordy puzzle challenge!

Are you good at anagrams? See how many words you can make with the letters in a given word, like INCREDIBLE.

Are you good at rhyming? Create rhyming phrases and see if people can guess the original!

Put your creative strengths and puzzly skills to the test by creating puzzles for those around you!

Let us know how you’re celebrating (Inter)National Puzzle Day, PuzzleNationers! Our pals at Penny/Dell Puzzles are working on a Word Seek Challenge for Thursday, and I’ll post more details when I have them. But until then, keep on puzzling, and enjoy!

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and be sure to check out the growing library of PuzzleNation apps and games!

Penny Dell Crosswords featured in the App Store!

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Hello there, fellow puzzlers and PuzzleNationers!

Yes, it’s true that we don’t normally post on Mondays, but we’ve got some exciting news to share with you and we just couldn’t wait ’til tomorrow!

Our friends at Apple are featuring the Penny Dell Crosswords App on the App Store for iPad!

The feature is listed for iPad and the app is available for iPad, iPhone, AND iPod touch devices! You can download the app for free by clicking here to get started puzzling!

Please share this post with your friends, family, and fellow puzzle-lovers!

Thank you to Apple for the attention and thank you to all PuzzleNationers everywhere for your support and enthusiasm! We’ll be back tomorrow with your regularly scheduled blog post!