If you’re a Wordle fan, it’s not hard to get your daily five-letter fix of deductive goodness, either on your computer or your phone. (Or one of the many, many, many, MANY variations out there.)
But maybe that’s not enough for you.
Maybe you need to take your Wordling up a notch.
Maybe you need to experience Wordle in a whole new way.
Maybe you need an extra dimension of Wordle.
A third dimension.
Oh yes, Wordle is now available for solving in VR, thanks to the Meta Quest 3 Wordle app. (Though users of the Meta Quest 2 and the Meta Quest Pro can both always play.)
However, please forgive me as I ask one simple question…
WHY?
This isn’t like Beat Saber or Five Nights at Freddy’s or Resident Evil VII… there’s nothing about Wordle that particularly lends itself to the 3-dimensional virtual environment.
Letters don’t float around you in the ether to be plucked and tossed into the void to make words. The Wordle hovers in front of you, a little window. A 2-D pop-up. An interactive poster in a virtual room.
Otherwise, it’s just Wordle.
Oh, with one further little caveat…
There’s currently no way to connect your account to the VR play experience. So, if you do the VR version instead of your current method, you’ll lose your streak.
And we know how protective solvers are about their streaks!
Even without that streak-busting hurdle, I don’t see this making a big impact for regular Wordle solvers unless they add some bells and whistles to the VR solving experience.
What sorts of bells and whistles, you ask? Well, I have some suggestions:
— maybe stealing a page from the Octordle (but not as intense) and having multiple windows around you to solve at once — a dancing mechanic where you must earn your next guesses through performance — a dancing mechanic where you immediately display your victory dance to anyone who views your Wordle stats for the day — a dancing mechanic, you know, in the jumpsuit and all, maybe with a wrench — some dancing squirrels encouraging you as you solve — actual bells and whistles, plus a kazoo or vuvuzela — your favorite puzzle constructor or game show host, looking at you disapprovingly with every new guess you make
Just a few ideas, you know. Throwing them out there. Have your people call my people, VR Wordle People.
As for the rest of us Wordlers, I guess I’ll see you on social media. Mom, I got it in three today!
There are a lot of interactive puzzle experiences out there. Scavenger hunts, puzzle hunts, murder mystery dinners, treasure hunts, geocaching… it’s an amazing array of puzzly options.
But I think escape rooms are probably my favorite. There’s something about the combination of the ticking clock and the mechanic of working as a team to defeat the room itself that is so immensely satisfying.
It builds communication skills, it challenges you to use both your logical and associative thinking patterns, and
Ideally, everyone gets a moment to shine in an escape room.
Some people are better seekers, finding items or hints or pieces of a particular puzzle for others to put together.
Some are better connectors, realizing which of those items could combine to crack a problem or a code.
Some are better puzzlers, figuring out how those combinations of found items and context clues leads to a solution.
Some are better organizers, sorting found items, putting aside items already used in solutions to help keep track of what hasn’t been used and still could contribute to a later puzzle.
Some are better leaders, assigning tasks to best utilize everyone’s hands and minds to get the ball rolling.
Some are better realists, accepting when the group is truly stumped and/or needs a hint or a clue, recognizing when an answer isn’t coming and helping move the game along in a timely manner (with the group’s agreement, of course).
At least someone’s having fun in this escape room scene from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend…
Even when my team has failed to escape a room in the allotted time, I’ve never felt like the effort was wasted. I still had a blast, and I learned from it, and I got better for next time.
And one unexpected consequence of frequenting escape rooms has been hearing horror stories from staff members regarding players who took things too far.
So let’s go over some escape room etiquette together as I share some tidbits escape room operators have shared with me over the years.
#1: You don’t have to pull hard.
Now, it’s true that some locks stick. If that’s the case, then grasp the loop in one hand and the body of the lock in the other and pull.
But don’t yank the lock and damage how it’s attached to something. Don’t pull hard on doors. Don’t force things. The VAST majority of doors, hatches, trunks, and other items that open in an escape room do so EASILY. If you have to force it, you’re probably not doing it right.
The very first time I hosted an escape room event at a convention, one of the boxes got broken open by an overexcited teenager. Because the magnetic opener didn’t work the first time they tried it. So they immediately went HULK SMASH on the poor little false book disguising a hidden trove.
I’ve seen escape rooms with warnings about not RIPPING cabinets off the wall by trying to open them, complete with the obvious repair jobs that went along with returning said cabinets to the wall. People need to seriously calm down.
This leads nicely into my second bit of escape room etiquette:
#2: It’s not a rage room.
I saw this written on the whiteboard in capital letters at an escape room once. Because, apparently, someone broke every bit of glassware in the room. It’s not clear if they thought it was part of the game or they just had poor impulse control.
It’s a little sad that they have to include that on a board that otherwise offers fun little advice and tips for first-timers.
I heard about a group of constructor workers that went to an escape room as a team-building exercise, and the staff member running their room overheard them discussing how thick the sheetrock was. They were genuinely considering just GOING THROUGH THE WALL instead of playing the game.
I mean, it’s cool that they were bringing their particular skillset to the experience, but guys, dial it back a notch. They didn’t give you sledgehammers, after all. I don’t want every escape room to need signs that say, “Please don’t smash through this wall.”
So, in short, be nice to the room. Whether it’s the trunks/cabinets or the walls or the many knickknacks and bits of color they put in the room to help with the immersion, just be gentle with it all so other solvers can enjoy the same experience.
And speaking of enjoyment:
#3: Winning isn’t the only goal.
Yes, the goal is to escape the room before the time limit expires. Lots of places post the best escape times, and there are folks that will sacrifice an immersive experience just to beat that particular room’s record escape time.
And, as previously stated, some people take it too far.
One operator told me a guy snuck a Swiss army knife into the room with him, unscrewed the screws holding the final box together, took the key, and opened the door. Out the door within the first first minutes, bypassing the ENTIRE game for everyone involved.
I don’t know if he didn’t want to do the whole room, or he was trying to show off how clever he was by cheating, or what the thought process was. But he spoiled it for everyone.
Communicate with your fellow players. Show them what you find, don’t hoard it for yourself. Encourage discussion and theorizing. It’s way more fun to solve as a group than to solve alone. A close call with a few minutes to spare — but one where everyone got to contribute — is better than a quick escape that only one or two people in the group got to enjoy. And it makes for a better story to retell later.
Do you have any favorite escape room stories? Are you an escape room staffer with a horror story to share? Either way, I’d love to hear from you!
A lot of things are changing around here, big and small.
But the biggest change, the most important change, is that this place will once again be providing fun puzzle- and game-fueled content for anyone interested!
And here’s a quick list of what’s going on.
-Hi, we’re Puzzculture! We hope to once again be a hub of puzzle and game information, news, reviews, analysis, and celebration, just as PN Blog was not too long ago.
-This will be the final post associated with the PuzzleNation brand. If you’re reading this post through a link from the PuzzleNation Facebook or Twitter account, please follow us on Facebook and Twitter at Puzzculture, or follow the blog directly to see our future content!
-Yes, we are Puzzculture now, a completely independent entity. We are so thankful for all the years of great content created under the PuzzleNation umbrella, and we wish them nothing but the best in their future endeavors.
-New logos are incoming, we promise. We’re a bit of a shambles right now, but regular posts will be forthcoming. (Those post-its over the old logo are doing a lot of heavy lifting right now.)
If you’re out there and still reading, please feel free to say hi!
We’re over-the-moon excited to embark upon this new journey with you all. Happy puzzling!
At the intersection of game-show geekery and puzzle nerddom is a group of very happy people: The Genius is back!
If you’re not familiar with The Genius… well, why would you be? The game show has never aired in the United States or in any English-speaking country. It originated in South Korea, where it ran for four seasons — the last of these concluding in 2015. The revived show, which debuted three weeks ago, is airing on a network based in The Netherlands. We freely admit that for most Americans, this show is on the obscure side.
But it is well worth the effort to find the subtitled episodes: The game is unlike anything else. There’s no trivia. There are no feats of physical endurance. There is only a room, and in that room are nine contestants — at least to start. In each episode, the rules of a game are announced. The rules are usually fairly simple to understand: In a recent Dutch episode, players were given cards with numbers from 1 to 3. All they had to do was find an opponent, and lay down the cards one at a time. If you lay down the higher number, you earn a point. The contestant who earns the most points wins.
Simple, right? It’s basically the children’s card game “War!” But the genius of The Genius is how even the simplest of games develop unexpected levels of depth as the contestants — an assortment of smart, successful people from the worlds of business and entertainment — try to finesse a win by thinking outside the box. Alliances are formed, plots hatched, and usually (but not always) the person who comes out on top is the one who has grasped subtleties that the others missed.
The Genius is one of those shows you want to watch with somebody else, or discuss online afterwards, so you can figure out together what on earth happened, and why so-and-so took this action instead of that action — what did that contestant notice that you, sitting at home, did not?? For fans of cerebral television, it’s exhilarating stuff.
The first three subtitled episodes of the Dutch Genius can be found here. The original South Korean episodes are harder to find, but there is a group on Reddit where links come and go — pop in there if you, like others in a small but passionate group of North Americans, fall in love with the show.
It’s important for screenwriters and filmmakers to look like they know what they’re talking about, and so many movies and TV shows hire consultants — medical consultants for the hospital drama, police consultants for the crime show, and so on.
And every so often, a movie or a TV show needs a puzzle. For that, the creative types are likely to turn to Dave Shukan and David Kwong. In real life, Shukan is a copyright and trademark attorney, and Kwong is a professional magician. Both are puzzle experts. David Kwong even infuses his magic with puzzles — his show “The Enigmatist” has had long runs in New York City and Los Angeles (with a pre-show in the lobby featuring puzzles by Dave Shukan).
Before throwing himself into magic full time, Kwong worked for a number of Hollywood studios, including Dreamworks Animation, where he helped look for properties that might make good movies. “But I was sneaking out of the office all the time,” he says, “to work with writers on every magic-related project out there.” There were many of these, and one finally escaped the morass of development and became a movie: 2013’s Now You See Me, for which he is credited as head magic consultant.
A year or so later a new call came in, from a television producer named Martin Gero. He was developing a show called Blindspot, which would feature a protagonist who has no memory but a wide assortment of mysterious tattoos. Gero wanted these tattoos to be puzzling in nature. Kwong at that point had gone full-time with his puzzle/magic hybrid act and seemed like just the guy to help out. By season 2, Kwong brought Shukan on board as well, and together they helped infuse puzzles not only in the show’s tattoos, but also in the episode titles.
The episode titles? Yep. Take this list of Blindspot titles from season 3. There is a very tricky message hidden within them. Can you find it?
BACK TO THE GRIND ENEMY BAG OF TRICKS UPSIDE DOWN CRAFT GUNPLAY RICOCHET THIS PROFOUND LEGACY ADORING SUSPECT FIX MY PRESENT HAVOC CITY FOLKS UNDER WRAPS HOT BURNING FLAMES BALANCE OF NIGHT TECHNOLOGY WIZARDS TWO LEGENDARY CHUMS WARNING SHOT EVERLASTING DEDUCTIONS ARTFUL DODGE MUM’S THE WORD CLAMOROUS NIGHT GALAXY OF MINDS LET IT GO DEFECTION IN MEMORY
Answer at the bottom of this blog post, but here’s a hint: Look for a letter pattern common through all the titles.
Kwong and Shukan have since gone on to lend assistance to other well-known projects, including a sliding-block puzzle that was featured in Ghostbusters: Afterlife. Their most recent project has also been their most puzzle-intensive: Apple TV’s The Afterparty, a murder-mystery series from Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the latter of whom encountered Shukan and Kwong at a puzzle party, and knew they were the right team to help infuse the show he was working on with devilish clues for the home audience to decipher.
This Shukan and Kwong most certainly did. Every episode contains a puzzle — often only shown on screen for a flash of time — that, when solved, eliminates one of the suspects. A Reddit forum was quickly established to take on the challenges, and puzzles that the creative team thought might pass everyone by were in fact solved in an hour or so. Here’s one such puzzle, in the form of a briefly seen T-shirt:
Can you figure out the secret message? Once again, the solution will be at the end of this post.
Hopefully more TV and movie folks will realize that puzzles are a great way to bring fan communities together — Shukan and Kwong stand ready to assist. The pair recently finished creating the puzzles for the second season of The Afterparty. You can help crack the case in 2023.
BLINDSPOT PUZZLE SOLUTION:
Each episode title contains exactly one three-letter string in the form of XYX. For example, in the final title, the word MEMORY starts with the letters MEM. (Sometimes this three-letter string breaks across words — in the first episode, the three letters are TOT, as seen in the words …TO THE…)
If you take the center letter of this trigram, you will spell out the message ONE OF US WILL GIVE OUR LIFE.
THE AFTERPARTY SOLUTION:
You might notice that all of the cities and arenas share their names with US presidents — the first nine US presidents, in fact. Put these presidents in order, keeping the May date next to each one:
14 WASHINGTON 15 ADAMS 20 JEFFERSON 13 MADISON 1 MONROE 4 QUINCY ADAMS 4 JACKSON 15 VAN BUREN 7 HARRISON
Then simply take the letter of alphabet represented by that number — so, 1=A, 2=B, and so on. This spells out the answer to the puzzle, NOT MAD DOG, eliminating from suspicion the character with that nickname.
Boswords, the crossword competition that started in Boston but is now held online four times a year, is back with its Fall Themeless League! If you want a great themeless crossword every week, and furthermore want to see how you stack up against other crossword lovers, jump over to the Boswords site and sign up quick — the first puzzle of the weekly tournament will be released this coming Monday, October 3. (You don’t have to solve the puzzle that very day; just find time to sit with at some point during the week.)
As with previous iterations of the league, when you register, you choose which of three difficulty levels is best for you — Smooth, Choppy, or Stormy. (Boston is a port town.) The answers in the grids are the same for each puzzle, but the clues are not: Smooth means you’ll face a Tuesday level of difficulty, according to the New York Times difficulty scale. Choppy means Friday-level clues. And Stormy is “harder than a Saturday,” so yikes. (If you discover partway through the tournament that you have mis-ranked yourself, you can switch difficulty levels; just ask.)
Furthermore, you don’t have to go it alone: Boswords embraces a trend seen at other independent tournaments — Pairs solving! If you think you’ll need help with those Stormy-level clues, grab your friend, spouse, or significant other and discover the joys of co-solving.
All the puzzles are solved via your computer and timed automatically, and the ongoing scores are updated weekly. In the final week, there is a Championship puzzle, and the winner is thereby crowned. But even if you have no hope of coming out on top, it’s fun to see how far up the ladder you can climb — and then see if you can top that next time.
To emphasize: If this all sounds like fun, there are only a few days left to register before the first puzzle is released, so get moving!
PuzzCulture 