Tag Archives: About Us

It’s Follow-Up Friday: New Puzzle Set 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, we’re talking about our flagship product, the Penny Dell Crosswords App!

This has been a great summer for us and the app! Not only are we offering a free daily puzzle to all of our users, but we’ve added a new collection to our library of puzzles for in-app purchase!

Collection Eight features 150 puzzles, collected in 5 different 30-puzzle sets: Penny Easy, Penny Medium, Penny Hard, Dell Easy, and Dell Medium! This value pack contains all five of those sets and saves you 30% over buying them individually! It’s more puzzle bang for your puzzle buck!

Click here to check out all of the terrific features of the app AND all of our available puzzle sets! You can’t go wrong with PuzzleNation and the Penny Dell Crosswords app! 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!

HUGE App Announcement! (Plus Fred!)

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Hello puzzlers and PuzzleNationers! We’re doing things a little differently today!

You see, we’ve released an exciting new update for the Penny Dell Crosswords App, and I’ve invited PuzzleNation‘s Director of Digital Games Fred Galpern to discuss what the latest version of the app brings to the table.

Fred, welcome to PuzzleNation Blog! Before we get to the big announcement, I’d like our fellow PuzzleNationers to get to know you a bit. What’s your background in puzzles and games?

Thanks, Glenn. I’m excited to share more about the new app update. My background is varied. I studied illustration at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia and have studied digital art & graphic design on my own ever since.

A few years after graduating, a close friend invited me to interview at the video game company where she worked. This was the start of a fun and engaging career mixing technology and art.

Prior to PuzzleNation, I worked on several video games including System Shock 2, Thief, Zoo Tycoon and Scratch: The Ultimate DJ. I also spent some time working on really fun game hardware such as the Drum Rocker and the iCade iOS controller series.

When I joined PuzzleNation, my exposure to traditional print puzzles was limited to the occasional newspaper or magazine. This opportunity to bring those classic print experiences to digital solvers has been a thrilling ride!

And when you’re not leading our crackerjack team of app designers and puzzlers, how do you spend your free time?

I get the “crackerjack” joke but it’s really true! The PuzzleNation team is very small and we’re only successful because each person is an expert in their field. Without this team we’d be nowhere.

Most of my free time is spent with my family. Fortunately, we’re all proud geeks. We enjoy the usual mix of films, TV, and reading but recently, we’ve become deeply engrossed with board games.

Not the usual fare, though — our love is the modern flood of games that mix strategy, skills and just a little luck. Our favorites are Ascension, Star Realms, Legendary, Dice Masters, Machi Koro, Sushi Go!, Splendor, Coup…and so on.

I also love to draw, play guitar & ukulele, and hope to get back to a regular running routine in the near future.

Okay, I think everyone is primed and ready for this big announcement! Let’s talk about what’s new with the Penny Dell Crosswords App!

This update is very exciting. As some of your readers know, the Penny Dell Crosswords app is consistently one of the top apps in the App Store. We receive thousands of reader comments telling us that they love the puzzles but wish there were more free ones.

We struggled with the best way to give our solvers free puzzles, and it wasn’t easy. What your readers may not know is each puzzle is created by the expert puzzle editors at Penny Press & Dell Magazines. Those folks deserve a fair wage, and so the challenge is to find a balance between giving solvers what they want and keeping our team employed.

That’s a long explanation for this announcement…

FREE DAILY CROSSWORD PUZZLES!

That’s right, every day there is a new, free crossword puzzle available in the Penny Dell Crosswords app. To cover editorial costs, each puzzle starts with a short ad. These ads are commonplace in free-to-play apps, especially competing crossword apps.

We think our puzzles and ad-supported free puzzle experience are the best available, and look forward to feedback from our app users.

Is that weekdays or every single day?

Every single day!

Now, can solvers stockpile these free puzzles for a rainy day?

Users can take as long as they like to solve a free daily puzzle. Once a solver completes their current puzzle, they simply tap to get today’s free puzzle! It’s fun and a bit challenging to complete a puzzle every day. If they need more time on a particular puzzle they simply continue solving. The current puzzle will remain on their device until they request a new puzzle.

Also, if solvers dislike the ads before the free puzzles, they can choose from over 1,000 puzzles in our Puzzle Store.

Fred, thanks for taking the time out to share such awesome news with the PuzzleNation audience. I can’t wait to check out these new puzzles! Any parting thoughts for your fellow PuzzleNationers?

Happy solving!

Download the latest version of the Penny Dell Crosswords App by clicking here, and check out all things PuzzleNation by clicking here for our homepage!

And remember! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, and check out all of our puzzly content on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr!

It’s Follow-Up Friday: Sing It 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’d like to return to the subject of hashtag games!

You may be familiar with the board game Schmovie, hashtag games on Twitter, or @midnight’s Hashtag Wars segment on Comedy Central.

Last month, a hashtag game was part of our International TableTop Day festivities. The hook was Penny/Dell Puzzle Movies, and it was great fun.

Well, we’ve decided to make it a monthly game, and this month’s hook was Penny/Dell Puzzle Songs!

Examples might be “Lucy in the Sky with Nine of Diamonds” or “Man in the Mirror Image” or “Dream Weaver Words.”

So, without further ado, check out what the puzzlers at PuzzleNation and Penny/Dell Puzzles came up with!

Penny’s from Heaven

We are Crypto-Families

Piggybacks in the U.S.S.R.

Say Say Say That Again

Do You Want To Know A Secret Word

Jenny From The Block Letters

You’re the First and Last, My Everything

Double Trouble No More

Double Crosswords Trouble

Battleships of Fools

Stoplines (In the Name of Love)

More than Codewords

Hip to be Jigsaw Squares

Hip To Be Anagram Magic Square

Anagram Magic Carpet Ride

Crackerjacks and Diane

Jack & Diagramless

Halftime After Time

Too Much Rhyme Time on My Hands

Rhyme Time and Time Again

Give and Take It to the Limit

Give & Take a Chance on Me

We’re Not Gonna Take It from There

Frame By Framework

Freeze Frameworks

Across and Downbound Train

Lay Across and Down Sally

Flower Power of Love

Where Have All the Flower Powers Gone?

Places, Please Please Me

Friends in Low Places, Please

Letterboxes To Me

Love Letterboxes in the Sand

Thick As A Brick By Brick

Brick by Brick to Heaven

Goodbye Brick by Brick Road

Another Brick by Brick in the Wall

Wish You Were Here & There

Pinball Wizard Words

Zigzag Stardust

Mystery State of Love and Trust

A Hard Rains A-Gonna Quotefall

Take Me Out to the Bowl Game

The Itsy Bitsy Spider’s Web

Bull’s-Eye Spiral of the Tiger

Candle in the Windowboxes

I’ve Been Working on the Railroad Ties

Shadowbox Dancing

Under the Scoreboardwalk

Free Your Mind Tickler

Runaround the Block Sue

Ringmaster of Fire

Old Time Rock and Roll of the Dice

Walk Like an Encryption

A Boy Named Su-Doku

Pencil Pusherman

Girls Just Wanna Have Bible Fun

Text Message in a Bottle

Out on the Missing Tiles

The Bookworms of Love

50 Ways to Leave Your Logic Lover

Guess Who Can It Be Now?

Make the Rainbow Connection

Matching Circles in the Sand

Power of Two for One

What’s Left? Of Center

Add One Is the Loneliest Number

Will the Circle Search Be Unbroken?

Alphabet Soup John B

Triangle Sum Kind of Wonderful

Everybody Wants You Know the Odds

The Shadow Knows

I Put A Spellathon You

A View To A Skill-O-Gram

Trans-Europe Crossword Express

Anagrams-a Got Run Over by a Reindeer

Cryptogram-ma Got Run Over By A Reindeer

One fellow puzzler even went so far as to create new puzzly lyrics for some of these songs!

  • Brand New Keyword – Deanna Carter

I’ve got a brand new pair of Cryptograms, you’ve got a brand new Keyword

  • You Don’t Bring Me Flower Powers – Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand

B: You don’t bring me Flower Powers. You don’t give me Codewords.
N: You hardly talk to me anymore, when you solve on that floor at the end of the day

  • Quotefalls – TLC

Don’t go chasing Quotefalls
Please stick to the Fill-Ins and the Takeouts you’re used to

  • Crossword Traffic – Jimi Hendrix

Ninety words per hour, baby, that’s the speed I solve.

All in all, the game was great fun!

Plus, we received some submissions from solvers on Twitter! Friend of the blog Robin Stears submitted Runaround Sudoku, The Old Rugged Crostic, and Do You Believe in Magic Squares?, while @Francespuzzles submitted a boatload of good ones, like Blowin’ in the Windowboxes; That’s All Right Angles, and Crimson and Lucky Clover!

Have you come up with any Penny/Dell Puzzle Songs of your own? Let us know! We’d love to see them!

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!

#350: A PuzzleNation Blog Milestone

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This is my 350th post on PuzzleNation Blog.

For almost three years now, I’ve endeavored to make PuzzleNation Blog a hub for all things puzzles and games. From historical events and technological advancements to the newest (and oldest!) brain teasers and the latest and greatest in modern puzzling, I have tried to chronicle the incredible diversity, expansiveness, influence, and ever-changing dynamism of the puzzle world.

It was always my goal to make PuzzleNation Blog a destination for puzzlers, a place they could explore to learn about the complex, multifaceted world of puzzles and games available to them. It has widened my puzzle knowledge considerably, introducing me to new mysteries, new puzzles, and new experiences. Every day, I’m granted another opportunity to learn something new, to meet another constructor or puzzler that is contributing in a meaningful way to the online puzzle community. I hope I’ve succeeded.

I’m certainly not the only blogger who talks about puzzles. There are some terrific, insightful websites out there by New York Times crossword constructors and solvers, as well as blogs by topnotch independent constructors, game designers, and puzzle fans. I know this because I try to read as many of them as possible to keep up-to-date on the many MANY aspects of the puzzle world.

And along the way, hopefully, readers and fellow puzzle enthusiasts would click through and check out PuzzleNation itself, home to some of the best puzzle apps on the market today.

That might sound like a cheap plug, but it’s not. I’ve enjoyed serving as the primary voice of PuzzleNation’s social media team since our earliest days, and getting to see firsthand not only the hard work put in by the PuzzleNation Team day in and day out, but watching the fruits of their labor hit the marketplace and thrive…it has been an absolute privilege to work alongside my fellow PuzzleNationers.

Looking back on 350 posts, many of them announcing our latest puzzle apps and updates, I’m immensely proud of the work we’ve done so far. And now, looking forward, I imagine the blog posts to come, announcing new projects and exploring how the puzzle world will change and grow and evolve. And I cannot wait.

Here’s to the next 350 blog posts — to the puzzles yet unsolved, to the outstanding PuzzleNation apps to come, and to more of the best PuzzleNation Team has to offer.

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 App updates for you and yours!

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It’s always exciting to announce an addition to our ever-expanding library of puzzle apps, so you can imagine how stoked I am to present two new puzzle sets for the Penny Dell Crosswords App!

Available for in-app purchase right now, Collection 6 offers 150 puzzles to challenge you! And just in time to honor Mom, our Mother’s Day Deluxe Set offers 35 puzzles sure to test your puzzly mettle!

Not only that, but we’re debuting a new feature for the app itself, as requested by many of our users.

With the Hide Completed Puzzles feature, any magazines you’ve conquered will no longer display in your puzzle library, making it easier to sort and organize your app purchases! (Don’t worry, a single click will unhide them if you wish!)

We’re constantly striving to make our apps better, more engaging, and easier to use, and our latest edition of the Penny Dell Crosswords App is our best yet! Click here to explore our entire library of Crossword content, and as always, details on ALL of our app content can be found on the PuzzleNation homepage!

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, and check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr!

The New and Improved PuzzleNation!

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Today, we celebrate the relaunch of the PuzzleNation website!

There you’ll find all of the details for our current apps, complete with graphics, full rundowns of features, and links for download, as well as news and promos for our upcoming products!

While we’re sad to say goodbye to the original site, the launchpad for so many new ideas and so much puzzle fun over the last few years, we’re also excited to take the next big step forward, to watch the PuzzleNation community continue to expand and prosper.

From Facebook and Twitter to Pinterest and Tumblr, from PuzzleNation Blog to our home base at PuzzleNation.com, our potential and our community have grown together, and we are overjoyed to bring you a new and improved PuzzleNation experience, geared toward bringing the very best in puzzles and games right to your fingertips!

And, as always, we are endlessly grateful for the support, loyalty, and puzzle-loving enthusiasm of the PuzzleNation audience. From everyone here at PuzzleNation to all of our fellow puzzlers, solvers, and friends, thanks for taking this journey with us. We can’t wait to show you what we come up with next.