Tag Archives: DIY puzzling

Puzzle Day Kickstarter Round-up!

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Happy (Inter)National Puzzle Day, fellow puzzlers and PuzzleNationers!

As I explained on Tuesday, today is a day dedicated to all things puzzly, and lots of puzzlers are joining the celebration!

For instance, our friends at Penny/Dell Puzzles are running a timed Word Seek challenge and encouraging solvers to share pics of themselves doing the challenge on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram using the hashtag #PDPPuzzleDayChallenge!

And, in the spirit of the day, I thought I’d do a crowdfunding round-up of some of the interesting puzzly projects on Kickstarter right now.

First off, I want to talk about Unspeakable Words, a Scrabble-style word-building game with a dash of H.P. Lovecraft.

The game went out of print a while ago, and remaining copies have been in high demand since the game was featured on Wil Wheaton’s board game webseries TableTop. The goal is to print a deluxe version of the game (originally allowing for seven players instead of six, but with several stretch goals reached, they’ve expanded to eight!), with additional stretch goals allowing for better game components.

Now, this is already a Kickstarter success story, because the game funded the first day, so you’re guaranteed to see a finished game before it hits stores.

For a taste of something different, Facets is a wood-and-magnets constructing puzzle toy that allows you to make various shapes based on the Platonic solids. Whether you’re interested in 3-D geometry or just like wooden building toys with a twist, Facets is right up your alley.

Facets has just crossed its funding goal with less than two weeks to go, and it looks like this might be the start of the next generation of Tinker Toys-style constructing toys.

Now, there are a LOT of other campaigns I could mention, like the small 3-D printed puzzle ship (pictured above) or this campaign to make the fake game Cones of Dunshire from NBC’s Parks and Recreation a real Settlers of Catan-style game, but I want to focus on one campaign that’s using puzzles to spread a deeper message.

Alyssa’s Puzzle Project is the brainchild of a young lady named Alyssa who is 12 years old and wants to educate the world — and her fellow students — about the dangers of moral and governmental corruption. So she’s created an awareness-building activity around a jigsaw puzzle, designed for classrooms and students to assemble together. It’s symbolic group problem-solving to raise awareness and spark conversation.

You can read more about Alyssa’s project and her ambitious goals here.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the phenomenal success of Exploding Kittens, a strategy card game that launched with a goal of $10,000 and has raised over 4 MILLION dollars in its first eight days.

It is now the most backed Kickstarter campaign in history, with more than 100,000 backers, and the sky truly appears to be the limit for this card game based on art from The Oatmeal.

I’ve been watching and funding Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns for a few years now, and I (and the rest of the world) have never seen anything like it.

Did I miss any puzzly Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaigns you’ve seen launched recently, fellow puzzlers? Let me know!

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!

Thursday is National Puzzle Day! Are you ready?

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I was recently informed that January 29th is National Puzzle Day.

Considering that I am something of a burgeoning puzzle scholar, I was surprised that I didn’t know there was a national puzzle day. I try to stay on top of these things, after all. So I started researching.

As far as I can tell, this isn’t a nationally recognized holiday in an official sense, which is why we don’t get the day off from work. Blasphemy! Everyone should have the day off to celebrate puzzles! (This is also why there seems to be some dispute over whether it’s National Puzzle Day or International Puzzle Day.)

Although more prominent coverage has only appeared over the last five years or so, I found references in school schedules and archived activity calendars stretching back years and years!

Some articles state that (Inter)National Puzzle Day was created in 1995 by a consortium of game companies, but some conflicting sources seem to predate that claim. And it is intriguing that Tetris debuted in the United States as a PC game on January 28, 1988.

But, in any case, Thursday is a day to celebrate all things puzzly, and I’m here to offer some suggestions for how to participate in (Inter)National Puzzle Day fun! (Many of these can be done any day of the year, which is handy for those of us snowed in right now!)

#1: Team-tackle a crossword puzzle

Are you daunted by the puzzles published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The L.A. Times, or even your local paper? Gather everyone in the house and tackle it as a team!

Not only are you pooling a greater wealth of knowledge by including more people, but one suggestion could trigger another, and then another, and suddenly, you’re filling in whole chunks of the grid with flashes of puzzly insight or bits of crowd-sourced trivia!

It’s a great technique for building both familiarity and confidence in crosswords, and a neat way to challenge yourselves as a team! (By the way, the Penny Dell Crosswords App is ideal for such activities, since you can use the alternate clue feature AND pass the phone around with ease!)

[Image courtesy of mykidcraft.com]

#2: Make your own jigsaw puzzle!

If you’ve conquered all of the jigsaw puzzles in your house, you can always make your own! Either flip one over and draw something new on the back of an old puzzle, then separate it and re-solve…

OR

Get a big piece of paper, create your own image, cut it up, and try to solve!

I’ve found that cutting them into triangles, squares, and other common shapes is easier — and surprisingly more challenging — than trying to recreate jigsaw-style pieces.

And, of course, some companies sell blank jigsaws so you can create your own images!

#3: Create a scavenger hunt!

Now, I realize that scavenger hunts can be very time-intensive, but a great one can be simpler than you think! Limit the scope, but make it more personalized.

For instance, do you have a lot of books? Great! Make it a book-focused scavenger hunt! Ask for a book…

–with fire on the cover
–with sky on the cover
–a book that’s a certain color (or your favorite color)
–a book based on a movie
–a book without a person on the cover
–a book where a word in the title starts with the same letter as the author’s name
–the book with the funniest word on a given page

Toys, photos, funny google searches… if you tailor it to your family or household, a terrific scavenger hunt can be both easy to prep and fun to play!

#4: Come up with your own wordy puzzle challenge!

Are you good at anagrams? See how many words you can make with the letters in a given word, like INCREDIBLE.

Are you good at rhyming? Create rhyming phrases and see if people can guess the original!

Put your creative strengths and puzzly skills to the test by creating puzzles for those around you!

Let us know how you’re celebrating (Inter)National Puzzle Day, PuzzleNationers! Our pals at Penny/Dell Puzzles are working on a Word Seek Challenge for Thursday, and I’ll post more details when I have them. But until then, keep on puzzling, and 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!

It’s Follow-Up Friday: Rubik Ridiculousness 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 I’d like to return to the subject of twisty puzzles.

17x17x17_rubiks_cube_11

Last week I wrote a post discussing how 3-D printing is changing the way Rubik’s-style puzzles, or twisty puzzles, are being constructed.

One of the puzzles I mentioned was a monstrous 17x17x17 cube known as the “Over the Top” Rubik’s Cube, created by 3-D puzzler Oskar van Deventer. It’s the world’s largest Rubik’s-style puzzle, and a visually staggering artifact.

Well, as it turns out, not long after that post went live on the blog, I discovered a video of a twisty puzzle enthusiast SOLVING the 17x17x17 Over the Top puzzle:

Solved in seven and a half hours over the course of five days, this puzzle whiz (who goes by the YouTube handle “RedKB”) documented the entire process, then did a time lapse to compress the video into six minutes, as you can see in the clip above.

(For the fascinated, he’s also uploaded the entire seven hours of solving so you can see the complexity of the cube in its full, mind-boggling glory.)

It’s one thing to discuss these puzzles, and quite another to watch someone accept the challenge and then conquer it. A truly impressive puzzly effort.

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!

A New Dimension of Puzzles

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[A 3-D printed puzzle from Instructables.com.]

3-D printing is the next big technological leap forward, and although the technology is only a few years old, it’s already responsible for some amazing advances.

You may have seen the story in the news recently that NASA “emailed” a new wrench to the International Space Station. For the first time, plans originating on Earth were sent electronically to the ISS and built in a 3-D printer, giving an astronaut the specific tool he needed while saving literally thousands upon thousands of dollars. That’s mind-blowing.

Every day, new stories are emerging from the medical field about the benefits of 3-D printing. A close friend of mine recently had brain surgery, and they used a 3-D printer to manufacture a new piece of skull specifically for her. That is a phenomenal thing.

And puzzles aren’t immune to the march of progress. Enterprising designers are creating new puzzles with increasing complexity, allowing them to build on existing models and add previously impossible variations and details into their designs.

I’ve previously featured the specialized twenty-sided die created by the folks at 64 Oz. Games, which were made with 3-D printers and feature braille renderings beneath every number.

One of the fastest growing fields in 3-D printed puzzles is known colloquially as the twisty puzzle, the numerous variations, expansions, and extrapolations from the Rubik’s Cube twisting/turning style of puzzles.

Check out this article about George Miller and Oskar van Deventer, who are pushing the envelope of twisty puzzles with some ingenious designs.

Meticulously designed and realized through 3-D printing, these puzzles have set world records — one is a 17x17x17 Rubik’s Cube with over 1,500 parts! — and taken twisty puzzles to unexpected places.

As 3-D printers become more affordable and more puzzlers embrace the technology, there’s no telling where puzzles will go next. But I cannot wait to find out.

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!

It’s Follow-Up Friday: New Years Resolutions 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 previous posts and bring the PuzzleNation audience up to speed on all things puzzly.

And today, with the new year freshly started, it seems all too appropriate to return to the subject of new years resolutions.

Last year, I asked several prominent puzzlers about their resolutions for 2014. It’s one year later, so let’s see how they did!

Constructor Robin Stears resolved “to interact more with puzzle fans…, to attend some crossword tournaments and trivia nights and spend some time getting to know the contestants and finding out what kinds of puzzles they like.” How did that resolution go for her?

Well, I really missed the boat on that resolution. There weren’t any crossword tournaments in my area, and I couldn’t convince my local librarian to host one. But thanks to PuzzleNation, I’ve been able to keep up with what’s new in the puzzle world. The hottest thing this year was the emoji; in fact, emoji were so popular, I made up a bunch of emoji crossword puzzles.

And since I couldn’t attend any tournaments in person, I scoured the Internet for puzzle blogs and puzzle forums, and still managed to interact with puzzle fans in the virtual world. Puzzle fans are the nicest people, and they always have great ideas.

Constructor (and field marshal of The Pre-Shortzian Puzzle Project) David Steinberg resolved to “finish the Pre-Shortzian Puzzle Project’s litzing stage and to construct more Sunday crosswords.” How did that resolution go for him?

The Pre-Shortzian Puzzle Project’s litzing stage is now complete. We’ve litzed all the available puzzles–16,077 of them! We’re missing 148 puzzles, though, most of which weren’t published in New York because of newspaper strikes.

The proofreading stage is well on its way — 24 years of proofread puzzles are now up on XWord Info. A two-month proofreading contest is currently in progress, and we’re almost done proofreading the 1969 puzzles. I’ve also been busy constructing more Sunday crosswords, one of which was recently accepted by the Times.

Puzzle poet Peter Valentine resolved to “get up early and finish the poem before anyone else is awake.” How did that resolution go?

Sadly I did terribly on that resolution and can probably count on one hand the number of times that happened. Nevertheless, still keeping up with them daily when kids are in school! (Holidays are a wash.)

Baffledazzle creator Rachel Happen made several resolutions for 2014. How did she do?

1. Exercise brain as much as body — I’d give myself an 11 out of 10 on this one. The first Baffledazzle Kickstarter campaign was a problem-solving obstacle course that demanded all sorts of brain agility! Now that I’m post-campaign, I’m back in puzzle research/development mode and maxing out my library card again. So yes, mission accomplished there.

2. Make puzzles for friends / family birthday gifts — I’d give myself 7 out of 10! I did make a ton of custom puzzly things for gifts though I missed a few months when I was in the thick of Baffledazzle production. Next year, summer-birthday-friends, there will be puzzles for all!

3. Try a new puzzle / puzzly game each month — Oh man I get a 3 out of 10 for this one, but maybe a 5 out of 10 for intention!! My pile of Springboks [jigsaw puzzles] has only gotten taller… sigh. 😉

4. Make puzzles the new black — Ah, ∞ out of 10. This one’s a life-long mission!! Full speed ahead into another year of puzzling!

What about you, fellow puzzlers? Did you make any resolutions this year, puzzly or not? Let me know! I’d love to hear about 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!

A New Year, A New Puzzle

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Happy New Year, fellow puzzlers and PuzzleNationers!

I hope everyone is at home relaxing, either recovering from last night’s festivities or being productive and putting to use all that new year’s positivity and energy floating about.

In honor of the day, I’ve whipped up a little puzzle for you. Below are six crossword-style clues, and you need to come up with answers for them. The trick is… every answer can only consist of letters found in the phrase NEW YEAR’S DAY. Can you solve all six clues and start the year off right? Let’s find out!

1) One who finds fault with

2) “As I was saying…”

3) Fatigued

4) Expressed boredom

5) Replied

6) Roam

I look forward to seeing your answers! Good luck, fellow puzzlers! And have a marvelous New Year’s Day!

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!