PuzzleNation on the go!

Hello puzzlers and PuzzleNationers!

One of the most exciting developments for PuzzleNation has been our move into the mobile puzzle-game market with our apps and iBooks. You can take PuzzleNation puzzles with you wherever you go,

First off, we have our marvelous Classic Word Search iBooks! Volume 1, Volume 2, and Volume 3 are all available for the iPad! With an adaptable screen and plenty of puzzles to keep you busy, Classic Word Search is a terrific way to pass the time!

Classic Word Search is also available for Kindle Fire through the Amazon App Store!

And our friends at Penny/Dell Puzzles have a wonderful app for iPhone and iPad! Check out the Penny/Dell Crossword App, featuring smart navigation to move you to partially filled-in entries and an alternate-clue option to help you solve!

(And keep your eyes peeled for the Penny/Dell Jumbo Crosswords App, which launches in early February!

2014 promises to be our best and most accessible year yet, so please revisit this page to explore our latest additions to the PuzzleNation mobile line-up!

Putting the “social” in social media

One cannot overstate how the advent of social media has changed the way we interact with each other on a daily basis.

Stories and reminiscences that had to wait for high school reunions and family get-togethers are now shared over Facebook every day. Fan clubs and monthly newsletters used to be the only source for new info on your favorite bands and celebrities, but these days, they can speak directly to their fans through Twitter.

We can take people on vacation with us on Instagram and share our deepest thoughts on Tumblr. We can document baby’s first steps on YouTube and delve into virtually any subject on various blogs.

And social media has undoubtedly changed the landscape for puzzles and constructors alike.

There are entire blogs dedicated to dissecting the New York Times and Los Angeles Times crosswords each and every day. Amy Reynaldo (Diary of a Crossword Fiend) and our recent 5 Questions interviewee Kathy Matheson (Crossword Kathy) are both terrific examples of engaging crossword bloggers.

Through Twitter and other platforms, constructors are marketing their puzzles directly to solvers, bypassing publishers and sparking a new wave of entrepreneurial creativity in puzzles.

(For more on this, check out our 5 Questions interview with Robin Stears and our subsequent post on digital puzzle distribution.)

Heck, I’ve seen solvers and celebrities alike asking for help with challenging clues by reaching out to their followers on Twitter. Crowdsourcing at its best!

As PuzzleNation’s resident social media helper monkey, I’ve seen firsthand the amazing changes wrought by social media. I play games and interact daily with PuzzleNationers on Facebook, meet fellow puzzlers and innovators through Twitter, and engage in all manner of puzzly topics on Pinterest.

At the end of every blog post, I offer up links to all of our social media platforms, and every time you tweet or comment or reply or re-pin or email, I’m left in awe by how involved and how passionate the PuzzleNation audience is. Interacting with you guys is by far the best part of this gig, and I can’t wait to see what comes next from the marvelous melding of puzzles and social media.

Thanks for visiting the PuzzleNation blog today! You can like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, cruise our boards on Pinterest, check out our Classic Word Search iBook (recently featured by Apple in the Made for iBooks category!), play our games at PuzzleNation.com, or contact us here at the blog!

A hundred pennies for my thoughts…

Today’s blog post marks my one-hundredth post for the PuzzleNation blog. With the one-hundredth anniversary of the Crossword a few months away, I’m proud to add my own little PuzzleNation milestone to the long, proud history of puzzles.

One hundred posts. Boy, posting twice a week adds up fast, doesn’t it? Appropriate, since a jiffy is 1/100th of a second. (Sorry, I’ve got number trivia on the brain.)

If this blog was a TV show, this post would’ve marked it for syndication. (A syndication deal would allow a channel to run one rerun of the show every weekday for 20 weeks.)

The 100th episode is always a big one for a show, and since they nearly always happen in the fifth season of a show, they’ve had time to plan something special. Weddings, showdowns, big doin’s. How I Met Your Mother staged a big musical moment, The Office had the Dunder-Mifflin picnic (and Pam’s pregnancy announcement), and Buffy the Vampire Slayer had Buffy dying (again).

But my one-hundredth post isn’t the only milestone to celebrate. We’re closing in on the blog’s two-hundredth post overall in a few weeks!

While we’ve still got a ways to go before we’re in the same arena as Gunsmoke or The Simpsons (635 and 531 episodes, respectively), 200 is nothing to sneeze at. That’s the average number of seeds in a strawberry, and the average number of lights on a Christmas tree. (Sorry, more number trivia. I can’t help myself.)

I don’t have anything nearly as grandiose as the examples above planned. Instead, I’d like to go the Seinfeld route and look back on some of my favorite posts. Like the 100 tiles in a standard Scrabble set, I’ve chosen carefully. =)

Of course, I have to start with the 5 Questions posts, which have quickly become favorites of mine (especially after getting to chat with Wink Martindale!). Having the opportunity to talk to puzzlers, event organizers, authors, and celebrities about what puzzles mean to them is an incredibly cool experience, and I hope the readers enjoy them as much as I do. (Click here and scroll down to see every installment so far.)

And speaking of puzzles (as I often do), I have to include a pair of clue-centric posts featuring terrifically clever and funny clues (some of which were deemed too tongue-in-cheek for solvers).

This one goes back to last year, but it still makes me laugh. It’s my puzzle resume, detailing all the puzzly experiences that led me to PuzzleNation.

In the same spirit, we have this post about how solving puzzles is actually excellent training for the aspiring James Bond-style spies among us.

And no list of favorite posts would be complete without this lovely bit of puzzle romance.

Last, and certainly not least, I present an introduction to the Diggin’ Words dogs, our friendly anagram-loving pooches.

Thank you, puzzlers, for your enthusiasm and support over these last 100 posts. I’m looking forward to celebrating many similar milestones with you in the future.

Thanks for visiting the PuzzleNation blog today! You can like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, check out our Classic Word Search iBook (recently featured by Apple in the Made for iBooks category!), play our games at PuzzleNation.com, or contact us here at the blog!

Classic Word Search iBook… making a name for itself!

Hello puzzle fans and PuzzleNationers!

Yes, it’s another bonus Friday post, because I simply can’t resist spoiling you just a little bit more. =)

This will be a short one. I just wanted to talk about our Classic Word Search iBook Volume 1, because I’m so immensely proud of it, and it reached a few amazing milestones over the last week.

First off, it was featured by Apple in the Made for iBooks category, which was a wonderful bit of boost and validation.

Not only that, but Classic Word Search Volume 1 was ranked #1 in the Arts and Entertainment category!

And check out the stiff competition!

Lastly, but certainly not leastly, we cracked the Top 200 iBooks, peaking (at last check) at #167!

Thank you so much for your continued support, fellow puzzlers! We love making puzzles here at PuzzleNation, and seeing Classic Word Search hit these highs has been an absolute pleasure.

PuzzleNation Community Contest Winners Chosen Today!

Hello puzzlers and PuzzleNationers!

I hope you had a relaxing Labor Day weekend, chock full of friends, family, and frivolity.

I for one am happy to be back to work, because it’s time to announce the winners of our PuzzleNation Community Contest Giveaway!

In celebration of the one-year anniversary of the PuzzleNation Blog, we wanted to give back to the community that’s been so good to us, so we’ve been keeping track of every like, comment, share, retweet, and gold star from members of the puzzle community for the last two weeks.

All those names were collected and tossed into our ceremonial drawing cup:

(It’s the most ceremonial thing we could find. We’ll figure out something shinier next time.)

And now, it’s time to swirl it around and blindly draw the name of our first winner, who’ll be receiving Volume 1 of our Classic Word Search iBook!

Let’s see who it is!

Oh, nice try, Fred!

(Fred recently signed on as Director of Digital Games here at PuzzleNation, and he’s obviously trying to pull a fast one on us by slipping his name into the proverbial hat. No dice, Fred! You’ll have to be craftier than that to outwit our wily PuzzleNation family!)

Okay, without further ado or attempted chicanery, let’s draw the names of our three Classic Word Search iBook winners!

Congratulations Iveliss, Matt, and Emmy! Keep your eyes peeled for a Facebook message regarding your prize!

And a very heartfelt thank you to everyone who has followed and supported us over the last year. It’s a real treat to create puzzles for you and interact with you. You truly make the puzzle community the best around!

Thanks for visiting the PuzzleNation blog today! You can like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, check out our Classic Word Search iBook (three volumes to choose from!), play our games at PuzzleNation.com, or contact us here at the blog!

PuzzleNation Community Contest/Giveaway Extended!

Hello puzzle fans, puzzle fiends, and PuzzleNationers! Happy Friday!Just a quick note to let you know we’re extending our PuzzleNation Community Contest to give more people a chance to win one of our fabulous Classic Word Search iBooks! (Or another terrific prize if you’re not an iPad user!)

So make sure to like or comment a PuzzleNation post on Facebook, follow or comment @PuzzleNation on Twitter, or follow or comment on the PuzzleNation Blog to put your name in the running for our iBook giveaway!

(And if you refer friends to PuzzleNation, you’re eligible for a special drawing to win all three Classic Word Search iBooks!)

Thank you so much for your enthusiasm and support! As a proud member of the greater puzzle community, we at PuzzleNation most definitely appreciate it!

Thanks for visiting the PuzzleNation blog today! You can like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, check out our Classic Word Search iBook (three volumes to choose from!), play our games at PuzzleNation.com, or contact us here at the blog!