5 Questions with Schmovie creator Sara Farber!

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Welcome to another edition of PuzzleNation Blog’s interview feature, 5 Questions!

We’re reaching out to puzzle constructors, video game writers and designers, board game creators, writers, filmmakers, musicians, and puzzle enthusiasts from all walks of life, talking to people who make puzzles and people who enjoy them in the hopes of exploring the puzzle community as a whole.

And I’m overjoyed to have Sara Farber as our latest 5 Questions interviewee!

[Sara, alongside husband and partner Bryan
and their product testing toddler.]

Sara is a writer and content creator who has worked on numerous toys, games, and products for children and adults alike. From fill-in-the-blank story templates to interactive CD-roms and games with educational components, she combines fun content with classic puzzle games to make the most of a child’s playtime.

The debut creation of her company Galactic Sneeze is the movie mashup party game Schmovie, which encourages players to conjure up hilarious movie titles that match different cards drawn at random. (A perfect puzzle-theme generator for crossword fans, to be sure!)

Sara was gracious enough to take some time out to talk to us, so without further ado, let’s get to the interview!

5 Questions for Sara Farber

1.) Many of the products you’ve worked on involve a heavy learning aspect as well as gameplay. What’s the secret to making learning fun, especially for a young audience?

Great question. I aim to create content that engages in a meaningful, enjoyable way. I include silly jokes, rhymes, playful songs, and games. I infuse humor into everything I do… not just for the kids, but for the parents as well. If mom and dad have to hear the same counting song over and over again… it better be a good one!

Sometimes toys will have a character say, “learning is fun” or “I love to learn!” I’d rather have kids discover something is fun on their own, rather than convince them via a Jedi mind trick.

2.) You not only masterminded the creation of Schmovie, but you wrote the questions for Hasbro’s Pointing Fingers Game. What about these sorts of free-form party games appeals to you, instead of more formal board games or other formats?

My favorite projects are ones where I help develop the personality/voice of a brand, especially when it involves a comedic spin. Creating a party game is about packaging fun in a strategic way. It involves devising a clever schtick, coming up with a killer name, creating a simple yet engaging play pattern, and in most cases… infusing it with humor.

I enjoyed working on Pointing Fingers because I was asked to come up with hundreds of wacky scenarios. And Schmovie has been a blast since we’ve essentially provided a platform for players to be creative and funny. The game creates new memories and inside jokes for players, and I love reading the hilarious titles submitted on our Facebook page.

3.) You’ve worked with some pretty well-established characters, including Elmo, Dora the Explorer, and Scooby-Doo. Like many puzzle designers, you have to put a new spin on a recognizable brand. What’s your process for working with established properties while still adding your own touch?

There’s more flexibility with some brands than others. The key is to know the character and the “do’s” and “don’ts” of the property inside and out before diving in. I watch a lot of kids’ TV shows, read episode scripts provided by the licensor, and stay current on what toy and game companies are doing. My goal is to bring a fresh approach to classic play patterns. Rather than including a traditionally sweet preschool-sounding song, I might work with a composer to create a jazzy little number or a funny rap.

Some brands, like Penguins of Madagascar or SpongeBob SquarePants, are awesome to write for since the characters lend themselves to so much humor. Others are less about distinctively funny characters and more about the unique situations they find themselves in. If I’m writing a script for a toy or digital game with a more complex play pattern, I spec out the logic first so I know every single condition I need to write for. Then I go back and write all the character dialogue. And then I’ll go back through and kick it up with humor, sounds, and music to bring it to life.

4.) What’s next for Sara Farber?

My time is split between running Galactic Sneeze, the “fun stuff think tank” I founded with my husband, and taking on consulting/freelance projects for larger toy and game companies. I enjoy the mix. We’re currently working hard to spread the word about Schmovie. It launched in September at select retailers, and recently hit the shelves at Barnes & Noble. (W00T!)

We’re currently focused on inventing rather than publishing, which means we come up with concepts and then pitch them to larger toy and game companies. We have a few new games in the works we’re excited about. We also developed a story for an animated feature film that we’ve been looking for the right home for, as well as a kids’ TV show. The cool thing about running a “fun stuff think tank” is that we’re always working on fun stuff.

5.) If you could give the readers, writers, and puzzle fans in the audience one piece of advice, what would it be?

Always bring a game to a party. Never bring a fruitcake.

Many thanks to Sara for her time. You can check out Sara’s latest projects on her website and the Galactic Sneeze website, and be sure to follow her on Twitter (@SaraFarber) for games, humor, and updates on all her endeavors. I can’t wait to see what she (and Galactic Sneeze) come up with next.

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 Championships Across the World!

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I’ve written plenty about the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in the past, since it’s one of the best known and most prestigious puzzle events in the land.

But, as a proud member of PuzzleNation, a sovereign country in its own right, I know that the ACPT is just one part of a marvelous international puzzle community that spans the globe.

So when the folks at the UK Puzzle Association let me know about some upcoming puzzle championships, it seemed like the perfect thing to share with my fellow PuzzleNationers!

This weekend is the 2014 UK Sudoku Championship. A two-hour contest featuring puzzlers from across the globe, this is a print-and-solve challenge pitting you against numerous sudoku variants. (Here’s a PDF instruction booklet featuring examples of possible puzzles.)

There is also the 2014 UK Puzzle Championship later this month, but no details have yet been posted about it. (Apparently, instruction booklets and details are only released 1 week before the contest.)

Based on the 2013 contest, this is also a print-and-solve challenge, tackling all sorts of pen-and-paper puzzle styles. From deduction and mini-Scrabble games to Minesweeper-style maps and encrypted math puzzles, the 2013 booklet spans an impressive swathe of the puzzling world.

And these contests could be wonderful practice sessions for the 2014 World Puzzle Championship (23rd year!) and World Sudoku Championship (9th year!) this August! (This is the first time the UK has hosted the event.)

Open to members of the World Puzzle Federation — check out the roster of member countries here — each country sends teams to the championship based on qualifying rounds held in participating countries. (As it turns out, the U.S. contact for the World Puzzle Federation is none other than Mr. Will Shortz himself.)

As we get closer to the contest date, I’ll get more details on the specifics of how the tournament is conducted, but sufficed to say, this is a bit more tense than the UK counterparts I mentioned above.

This is pretty much the Olympics of puzzles, according to their website. I’m still holding out hope for synchronized sudoku at the 2016 Summer Olympics, myself.

In any case, it’s cool to get a glimpse of puzzle-solving and competition in other puzzle-loving lands. It really adds a PuzzleInternational feeling to the PuzzleNation community.

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!

Happy Star Wars Day!

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Hello, puzzlers and PuzzleNationers! It’s Star Wars Day, a day to celebrate nearly 40 years of Jedi wisdom, lightsaber-wielding battles, and all the wonders a strange and glorious galaxy have to offer!

And today, PuzzleNation is celebrating all of our social media platforms! We’ve got:

May the Fourth Be With You, fellow puzzlers. Always. =)

It’s Follow-Up Friday: The Future! edition

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Welcome to Follow-Up Friday!

For those new to PuzzleNation Blog, Follow-Up Friday is a chance for us to revisit the subjects of previous posts and update the PuzzleNation audience on how these projects are doing and what these people have been up to in the meantime.

For today’s Follow-Up Friday post, I thought I’d do a bit of Follow-Ahead Friday by alerting my fellow puzzlers to all the joyous shenanigans afoot this weekend.

The Baffledazzle Kickstarter wraps up this weekend, and Rachel has met her goal of $12,000, thanks in part to the marvelous puzzlers in the PuzzleNation readership! Congratulations, Rachel! I can’t wait to see the final tally and the gorgeous puzzles you’ll be producing soon!

Plus, the Kentucky Derby returns today — if you couldn’t tell from our Wordplay Wednesday post — AND this Saturday is Free Comic Book Day! Check out participating comic book shops near you for more details!

As if that wasn’t enough, Sunday is Star Wars Day! (May the Fourth Be With You!) We’ll be doing some Star Wars Day picture posting across our Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Facebook accounts for the occasion, so keep your eyes peeled!

Finally, for the block-happy puzzlers out there, there’s the Sunday night premiere of The Simpsons’ LEGO Spectacular, an episode dedicated to everyone’s favorite building toy!

So much for puzzle lovers to enjoy this weekend!

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!

Let’s crack some Confederate codes!

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[A table for cracking Vigenere ciphers.]

Cryptography is probably the only puzzly skill in history upon which lives have depended. The movements of troops, plans for invasion, locations of key officers, spies, and personnel… all of these vital pieces of information have been encoded numerous times across numerous conflicts, all in the hopes of keeping that data from prying eyes.

It’s not as if anyone has to solve a crossword to prevent a Dennis Hopper-esque madman from wreaking havoc on Los Angeles, or the outcome of a pivotal battle hinged on someone finding all the words in a word seek faster than the enemy.

But cryptography is both a delightful diversion and deadly serious, depending on the context.

Which makes it all the more curious that it took more than a hundred years for a Confederate message from the Civil War to be decoded.

The coded message was first displayed in The Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia in 1896, after being donated by Captain William A. Smith, a member of Walker’s Greyhounds, a division of Texans fighting for the Confederacy.

The actual message was unknown. The rolled-up slip of paper was tied with a linen thread and placed in a small glass vial along with a .36-caliber lead pistol bullet, and stoppered shut. (The bullet was included in order to make the vial heavy enough to be tossed into the river and sink if the scout carrying it was in danger of being captured.)

The mysterious message was meant for General John C. Pemberton, the Confederate general attempting to protect and defend Vicksburg from the army of Union Major General Ulysses S Grant. The same general who would surrender Vicksburg to Grant on July 4, 1863 after 47 days under siege.

But the message never got to Pemberton. Instead, it ended up as part of a Civil War museum, its message undelivered, its code unbroken.

Until 2008, when curiosity among museum staff led to an unveiling a century later than intended. The message was photographed and then returned to the glass vial, which itself was then returned to its display.

And the message intended for General Pemberton?

SEAN WIEUIIZH DTG CNP LBNXGK OZ BJQB FEQT FEQT XZBW JJOA TK FHR TPZWK PBW RYSQ VOWPZXGG OEPF EK UASFKIPW PLVO JKZ HMN NVAEUD XYE DWRJ BOYPA SX MLV FYYRDE LVPL MEYSIN XY FQEO NPK M OBPC FYXJFHOHT AS ETOV B OCAJDSVQU M ZTZV TPJY DAW FQTI WTTJ J DQGOAIA FLWHTXTI QMTR SEA LVLFLXFO.

Unlike many simple coding techniques, this is not a Caesar cipher where each letter is simply another letter of the alphabet in disguise. (Every E is actually an L, every F an M, etc.)

This is a Vigenere cipher, where a key word or phrase is required to unlock the letter substitution involved. For centuries, this cipher was considered unbreakable, though this was no longer the case by the time of the Civil War. (The Union regularly cracked coded Confederate messages.)

By 2008, Vigenere ciphers were easily cracked by amateur and professional cryptographers alike, and the Confederate message was finally revealed to the world:

Gen’l Pemberton, you can expect no help from this side of the river. Let Gen’l Johnston know, if possible, when you can attack the same point on the enemy’s line. Inform me also and I will endeavor to make a diversion. I have sent some caps. I subjoin despatch from Gen. Johnston.

Essentially, the message means that the reinforcements Pemberton was hoping for to shore up Vicksburg’s defenses weren’t coming.

But the message never got to the general, because before the scout arrived with the bad news, Vicksburg had already fallen, and Pemberton had surrendered.

So instead, the scout, having somehow realized from afar that Vicksburg was lost, returned to his camp and handed the unopened message to a Captain Smith, the same man who would later donate the message to the Museum.

And an enduring mystery was born.

[I learned of this story in the book Hidden Treasures: What Museums Can’t or Won’t Show You by Harriet Baskas, which also inspired my post a few weeks ago about the Morris Museum music box.]

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!

PuzzleNation Product Reviews: Collide-O-Cube and Rudenko’s Disk

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The folks at Brainwright specialize in puzzles intended for younger solvers, but with enough challenge and style to keep older solvers busy as well. From curiously cut jigsaws to color-based deduction puzzles, they take classic puzzle concepts and add their own curious spin to create new puzzle experiences.

They offered us the chance to try out two of their puzzles for the younger puzzling set, and we put them to the full PuzzleNation Blog test.

Collide-O-Cube looks simple — after all, it’s just eight identical multicolored blocks — but plenty of great puzzles appear simple, yet offer seemingly endless variation and challenges the more you tinker with them.

You see, the eight Collide-O-Cube blocks aren’t quite identical. Each one contains a unique pattern of magnets inside that offers another level to the solving process as you try to recreate the several dozen cube patterns in the challenge booklet included. This makes for a curious solving experience that combines pattern recognition, deduction, and patience as you play around with blocks until the solution snaps into place.

Although designed for kids ages 8 and up, adults will certainly enjoy fiddling with Collide-O-Cube, and I suspect kids will spend as much time creating their own puzzly patterns and shapes with the blocks as they will solving the various cube puzzles.

Rudenko’s Disk, on the other hand, is more in the vein of a sliding tile game; a marvelous, colorful, self-contained version of the classic Tower of Hanoi puzzle, Rudenko’s Disk challenges the solver to move various colored posts along the track in order to recreate the color pattern along the side of the disk.

Again, this seems simple enough, but Rudenko’s Disk includes a crafty wrinkle to the solving process: each colored post clicks into place when in a spot with a matching color.

So, for instance, the orange post can only go as far to the left, right, or center as the orange circle, and no further. You can’t place the orange post on the yellow, the green, the blues, or the purple. But you can place the dark blue post on any circle between dark blue and red. (Only the purple is off-limits for the dark blue post.) A strategic chain-solving puzzle lurks within the simple sliding mechanic.

Rudenko’s Disk could be a little off-putting or frustrating for the youngest solvers among us — similar to another color-based puzzle of some renown, Rubik’s Cube, but not nearly as daunting.

These are two intriguing examples of color-based puzzles, but they’re very different solving experiences. Collide-O-Cube’s hidden magnets add a delightful bit of unexpected randomness and chaos to what would otherwise be a simple pattern-matching game — making for a puzzle that encourages fiddling around the blocks in open play — while Rudenko’s Disk’s rigid mechanics require solvers to be a bit more tactical.

But both puzzles are immensely satisfying when the solution clicks into place.

I think Brainwright‘s formula of familiar puzzles with new touches and complications is a recipe for continued success and puzzly fun.

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!