Help Out Game Designer Owen K.C. Stephens!

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I love using this blog as a place to explore puzzly topics, to promote games and creators and share the love of puzzles with the world.

But I also love using this blog to spread the word about worthy causes.

And today I’d like to talk about the GoFundMe campaign for Owen K.C. Stephens’ medical bills.

If you’ve been a roleplaying game fan over the last two decades, you’ve probably played a game that Owen has shaped in some way.

He has been an influential game writer and designer for years, contributing to the Star Wars Roleplaying Game (both the d20 and Saga editions), Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, Starfinder, Everyday Heroes, The Wheel of Time RPG, and so many other games. Wizards of the Coast, Super Genius Games, Rogue Genius Games, Evil Genius Games (sensing a theme?), Paizo, and Green Ronin have all been homes for him over the years.

After an 18-month battle with colon cancer, he is still feeling the effects of his treatment and continuing the long, hard road to better health. And sadly, he is still buried under medical bills for his treatment and convalescence.

You can contribute to the GoFundMe campaign for him here.

And if you’re interested in learning more about Owen and his wonderful work in games, you can check out his website and his Patreon.

Normally, that’s how I would close out a post like this, but in this case, I hope you will indulge me with a personal anecdote.

Back in the year 2000, I discovered tabletop roleplaying.

A friend had just bought the new Star Wars Roleplaying Game (the d20 edition released around the same time as Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition), and knowing I was a huge Star Wars fan, he invited me to play.

After a short adventure he ran for us as Game Master, he asked if I’d be interested in learning to be a Game Master myself. (I later realized he did this not only because he thought I would be good at it, but because HE wanted to play and needed someone to run for him. My friend was and is a diabolical genius.)

I ran that game on and off for nearly seven years. It gave me the confidence to explore other roleplaying games, like the Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG, Dungeons & Dragons, Ninja Burger, and many many more, kickstarting a hobby that now spans more than two decades.

It also gave me confidence as a storyteller, pushing me to take writing more seriously (both fiction and nonfiction).

And all of that started with the d20 Star Wars Roleplaying Game.

Owen contributed to some of my favorite sourcebooks for that game (and several brilliant mini-adventures), helping make the galaxy a bigger and more interesting place for my players to explore. He is part of the fabric that helped shape me as a Game Master / Dungeon Master / Storyteller.

And I hope you’ll take a second to read about his story and help him out.

Best of luck to you, Owen, and happy puzzling, friends.

The ORCAS: The Oscars of the Crossword World!

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Constructors are doing incredible things with crosswords, so it’s fitting that there’s an award show dedicated to the hardworking cruciverbalists of the world and their marvelously devious creations.

Originally called The Oryx Awards or the Oryxes, The ORCAS (an anagram of OSCAR) celebrate crossword excellence. For the 13th edition of the event, the team at Diary of a Crossword Fiend have lined up some seriously impressive puzzles and puzzlers.

Be sure to check out the full list of nominees and cast your votes! Here are the categories:

  • Best Easy Crossword
  • Best Themed Crossword
  • Best Themeless Crossword
  • Best Sunday-Sized Crossword
  • Best Clue
  • Best Tournament Crossword
  • Best Contest Crossword
  • Best Variety Crossword
  • Best Midi Crossword
  • Constructor of the Year

Voting closes at midnight ET on Monday, February 17 (President’s Day).

Image courtesy of the World Wildlife Fund.

I was very pleased to see a few favorite puzzles of mine make the cut (as well as a clue for CHARLIE BUCKET that melted my brain with its cleverness).

I also enjoyed checking out many of the nominees that hadn’t crossed my path. (Here’s a link to the publicly available puzzles nominated.)

Oh, and if you’d like to make sure YOUR favorites get included next year, here’s a link for 2025 nominations for next year’s edition of the ORCAS.

Good luck to all the creative contenders and happy solving to everyone checking out the nominees!

Constructors, What’s Your Salomon Number?

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I’m a nerd.

I know that probably comes as a huge shock to you, fellow puzzler. Positively astonishing that a guy who has spent over twenty years making puzzles — more than ten writing about them here — and even more years running D&D games, LARPs, escape rooms, and murder mystery dinners is a nerd.

But that’s the truth.

And as a nerd, I love watching people quantify things in strange ways. Weird units of measurement like smoots, or how FEMA uses whether local Waffle Houses are open to determine the severity of natural disasters, or the Muta Scale used by wrestling fans to determine how bloody a wrestling bout is.

So when a recent Puzzmo crossword namedropped the Salomon number, I immediately wanted to know more.

Created by crossword constructor and super cool website owner Quiara Vasquez, the Salomon Number is named in honor of Nancy Salomon, a prolific and influential crossword constructor whose generosity, mentorship, and creativity still shapes the world of crosswords today.

Akin to the Bacon Number (how many steps it takes to link someone to Kevin Bacon through shared performances) and the Erdos Number (how many steps it takes to link someone to Paul Erdos through co-authored papers), the Salomon Number represents how many steps it takes to link someone to Nancy Salomon through collaborative puzzling.

Nancy Salomon collaborated with over forty constructors over the years, so there’s a very healthy talent pool to build a Salomon Number through.

You’re welcome to play the game mentally, but if you need a helping hand, Alex Boisvert has created an automated system for generating Salomon Numbers!

A visual graph of the Salomon Number network.

I tested it by searching for several of my very favorite puzzle people.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Los Angeles Times crossword editor and puzzle badass Patti Varol had a Salomon Number of 2, thanks to a collaboration with Matt Skoczen.

Crossword gentleman Doug Peterson had a Salomon Number of 3, linked by Joon Pahk and Brendan Emmett Quigley.

As I explored the database, it quickly became apparent how small a world crosswords can be — despite all the wonderful new voices entering the field over the last few years — so I started to wonder…

What’s the largest Salomon Number in the system?

I started with the celebrity constructors during the 75th anniversary celebration of The New York Times a few years ago.

Weird Al Yankovic’s number was 4. A good start. But this quickly petered out, as many of those celebrities were paired with veteran constructors with strong Salomon Numbers.

I pored over the list for familiar names to see their scores. Gaby Weidling’s number was 5, which was the highest I’d seen so far.

But I was surprised to find some prolific cruciverbalists in the database with no Salomon Number at all. With so many indie crossword outlets, there’s a chance there are collaborations that aren’t included in the current database, so there’s always the possibility of a successful search later.

(I also couldn’t resist doing a little sleuthing myself to see if I could uncover connections that weren’t in the database. Nothing yet, but I definitely can’t resist more digging later.)

But as constructors collaborate and innovate going forward, it’s going to be fascinating to watch this network continue to expand and complicate.

Make sure to check out Quiara’s post, which dives deeper into Salomon Numbers and even ponders Bacon-Erdos-Salomon Numbers!

Happy puzzling, everyone!

A New Medium for Optical Illusions: Quilting?

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Optical illusions are puzzles for the eye, a visual treat that tricks you into seeing things that aren’t there. These inspired bits of perceptual trickery can fool you into thinking near is far, big is small, or two dimensions are really three.

The advent of computers has helped push the boundaries of optical illusions, with eye-catching tessellations and visual effects that confuse the eye into thinking they see moving objects or impossible figures.

This makes it all the more impressive when people can accomplish the same in a purely physical medium.

Like quilting.

People accomplish some amazing designs with quilting, like this labyrinth quilt:

The dimension in this one is fantastic. (Though the puzzle nerd in me must point out that it’s not exactly solvable. Even to a minotaur.)

And then there’s this eye-popping wonder:

I can only imagine the amount of work required to get all of those squares cut and positioned the right way to create that bulging illusion in the middle of the checkerboard pattern. Talk about ambitious!

Quilts like those above are incredible efforts. But they feel doable. They feel natural when you look at them, even as they wow you with their exacting detail.

But nothing has amazed me quite as thoroughly as this glitch quilt pattern designed by Modern Groove Quilts.

The precision and color play required to create this illusion is a mathematical wonder.

It’s literally hard to look at! My eyes keep protectively sliding away from the design just to prevent my brain from struggling with it.

It feels like my computer screen is malfunctioning.

Using a rug as a backdrop is one thing, but in the wild, where nature is crisp and clear and the quilt appears blurry, it’s a baffling visual experience.

The only thing I can liken it to? This tattoo that looks blurred but isn’t:

These artistic, handmade optical illusions really show that, computer-assisted or not, it’s the ever-evolving ingenuity of creators that keeps the world full of wonder and creative achievement.

Now everyone, go stare at something boring and rest your eyes for a while.

(Oh, and check out the other patterns available from Modern Groove Quilts!)

Happy puzzling, everyone!

Book Review: The Gamesmaster by Flint Dille

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Welcome to PuzzCulture Book Reviews!

All of the books discussed and/or reviewed in PCBR articles are either directly or indirectly related to the world of puzzling, and hopefully you’ll find something to tickle your literary fancy in this entry or the entries to come.

Let’s get started!

The subject of today’s book review is The Gamesmaster by Flint Dille.

In the late 70s and early 80s, popular culture exploded as cartoons became vehicles to sell toys and the modern blockbuster continued to rise to prominence in cinemas after the successes of Jaws and Star Wars.

G.I. Joe and Transformers, two of the most iconic franchises from the 1980s, are still influential properties today, but one name that helped craft both franchises (and many others) is probably unfamiliar to you: Flint Dille.

The Gamesmaster chronicles what Dille calls “The Geek ’80s” — aka his animation and pop culture heyday — exploring the birth, growth, and tumultuous developments behind the roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons as well as the animated shows G.I. Joe, Transformers, Inhumanoids, and the Star Wars cartoons Droids and Ewoks.

This almost feels like a nonfiction companion book to the novel Ready Player One, since so much ’80s pop culture is explored in Dille’s stories. He gives us glimpses into the writers’ rooms of various animated shows (both the most influential and the sadly forgotten), providing what feels like an outsider’s view of Hollywood. It’s the equivalent of a fan getting a deep look behind the scenes.

But the game fans in the readership will get the most out of his journey through the offices of TSR, detailing the steady rise of D&D‘s reach and influence, as well as the incredibly turbulent interpersonal struggles amongst the writers and innovators who helped shape it. Dille generously shouts-out the contributions of fellow creators, but also shares the flip side of success, highlighting the bad luck that followed many of his friends on the TSR side of things.

And at a time where D&D itself is questioning Gary Gygax’s role and somewhat problematic legacy in the wake of the game’s 50th anniversary, Dille offers valuable insight into those crucial, formative years.

Although Dille’s not the most focused or artful storyteller — this feels more like a rambly series of conversations than a traditional autobiography — he is an immensely charming and likable narrator, happily sharing credit, admitting missteps, and celebrating the legacies he played an influential role in crafting.

The Gamesmaster offers a key piece in the often patchy, unreliable history of Dungeons & Dragons, whilst still embracing the nerdy energy that brought roleplaying, Transformers, G.I. Joe, and other celebrated franchises to prominence during the 1980s.

Minotaurs Don’t Make Sense?

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When you think of mazes, there’s probably no figure more iconic than the legendary minotaur.

The Bull of Minos — the direct translation of “minotaur” — called an elaborate labyrinth on the island of Crete home. This labyrinth, built by Daedalus, was said to be inescapable.

Even if you’re not a fan of Greek mythology, you probably know the basics of the story. Unsolvable maze. Half-man, half-bull. It’s all pretty simple.

So you can imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon not one, but TWO different videos talking smack about one of my favorite mythical creatures!

The first one discussed the intelligence of the minotaur:

Now, a very simple misconception lay at the heart of this video. The speaker is conflating two different definitions of labyrinth.

The first is the traditional idea of an elaborate maze full of intricate passageways, blind alleys, and torturous complexity.

The second refers to labyrinth gardens, which are designed to be walked slowly, meditatively, and take you on a journey through a series of paths and concentric circles, but one that can be easily navigated or escaped. None of the trickery or challenge of a traditional labyrinth.

So when the above video claims that a minotaur would have to be pretty stupid to fail to escape the labyrinth, they’ve got the wrong labyrinth in mind.

This brings us to the second video of the day, which discusses how minotaurs have been adapted for the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game:

The speaker claims that D&D’s minotaurs don’t make sense, since they “can never get lost in a maze and will always find a way out.”

So, I went to verify what he said.

He referred specifically to the 5th edition version of the minotaur, so I checked both the 5th edition Monster Manual and the Monsters of the Multiverse sourcebook released later.

In the MM, all I find is this: “the minotaur can perfectly recall any path it has traveled.”

So what? There are a LOT of paths in a labyrinth, and remembering which ones you’ve walked doesn’t necessarily make you better at finding your way out.

Plus, how long is a path? How is the start or end of a path defined? Maybe our life is one LONNNNNG path, and he’s gotta recall ALL of it?!

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

This ability is restated in the Monsters of the Multiverse book as “you always know which direction is north”. That’s it. Cool. That’s great for navigation, but also not terribly helpful when it comes to solving mazes.

So I’m not really sure where he’s getting the whole “effortlessly defeats mazes” thing. I mean, the original Minotaur never bested the labyrinth. He was killed by Theseus there.

But, for the sake of thoroughness, I grabbed my 3rd edition Monster Manual off the shelf to see what it had to say about minotaurs.

The book states that minotaurs can’t ever become lost and are “immune to maze spells” (which banish someone to an extradimensional labyrinth).

“Can’t ever become lost” is incredibly open to interpretation. Does it always know the way out of a place? Or does it always know WHERE it is in a vague sense? There’s a big difference between knowing where the exit of a labyrinth is and simply knowing you’re in a labyrinth.

Like, if I know I’m in New York City, does that mean I have any idea where I’m going? Not necessarily.

Image courtesy of Do You Maze.

So, where does this leave us?

Well, in short, it tells me that people don’t necessarily know what a labyrinth is or what it means to have the skills of a minotaur.

After all, do we know if the original Minotaur ever really wanted to leave? He got regular deliveries of food, and was otherwise left to his own devices.

Doesn’t sound so bad, really. Anyone know a labyrinth that’s hiring right now?