Tag Archives: DIY puzzling

PuzzleWriMo!

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With NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and NoJoMo (November Journaling Month) both in full swing, writing is in the air!

And we here at PuzzleNation would like to encourage the writers and aspiring writers with a little writing exercise/contest!

We’re looking for an opening line or opening paragraph that incorporates puzzles in some way. They can be funny or serious, dramatic or silly, one sentence or several. All we ask is that a puzzle or the spirit of puzzle solving is included in the snippet.

Let us know you’re participating by using the hashtag #PuzzleWriMo (or leave us a comment right here at the blog), and we’ll collect our favorites and feature them in their own PuzzleNation Blog post.

And those we choose will be eligible to win a great puzzly prize!

Put those thinking caps on and put your puzzlers to work! And good luck to all the writers and NaNoWriMo participants out there!

PuzzleNation Book Review: World Peace and Other 4th-Grade Achievements

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Welcome to the sixth installment of PuzzleNation Book Reviews!

All of the books discussed and/or reviewed in PNBR articles are either directly or indirectly related to the world of puzzling, and hopefully you’ll find something to tickle your literary fancy in this entry or the entries to come.

Let’s get started!

Our book review post this time around features John Hunter’s World Peace and Other 4th-Grade Achievements.

What did you do in fourth grade, fellow puzzlers? Did you master long division, or delve into the history of the Civil War, or expand your vocabulary skills? The kids in John Hunter’s fourth-grade class negotiated lucrative trade agreements, solved global warming, and saved the world.

Yeah, I know. I feel like a slacker now too.

I frequently post articles that reinforce my heartfelt belief that puzzles and the skills we develop solving puzzles make the world a better, more interesting place. And the World Peace Game, John Hunter’s marvelous brainchild, takes empty-space learning to a whole new level.

Instead of regimented, test-based education, empty-space learning encourages students to learn and fail by doing, developing social skills, a deeper sense of the world’s complexity, and an appreciation for hard questions.

The World Peace Game is a fantastic example of what empty-space learning can do. A weeks-long interactive experiment wherein students try to solve real-world problems in a complex, multitiered simulation, kids will tackle poverty, war, environmental cataclysm, terrorism, ethical dilemmas, and more as they manage their imaginary nations.

World Peace and Other 4th-Grade Achievements chronicles the lessons Hunter has learned from developing and running the World Peace Game for groups of all ages, offering dozens of examples of problems encountered — and circumvented — by young minds, each with a core lesson and something to celebrate.

This is pure puzzle-solving at work on a massive, cooperative scale, and just reading this book gave me hope for the future. World Peace and Other 4th-Grade Achievements is a warm, funny, utterly optimistic testament to what creativity and innovative problem solving can accomplish.

[For further information on the World Peace Game, as well as World Peace and Other 4th-Grade Achievements, click here.]

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!

Remake history at home! (With puzzles!)

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Crowdsourcing has become an increasingly popular method for scientists and deep thinkers to solve problems that would otherwise be far too staggering a challenge to tackle on their own.

I’ve written in the past about crowdfunding efforts, but this is something different: actually handing over the problem to the public. It’s citizen science!

The National Museums Scotland are trying to reassemble the shattered design on a Scottish relic dated back to the year 800 or so, hoping that reaching out to nonprofessionals will help them to restore the intricate designs that once adorned a sandstone slab centuries past.

Every fragment has been scanned into a 3-D model and catalogued, making each a small piece of a truly monumental puzzle to be solved. (And without the picture on the box to guide you!)

From an NBC News article:

The pieces will be grouped into categories — for example, corner pieces, or parts of the design’s knotwork. That will help users organize the work into manageable subtasks, as if they were working collectively on a huge jigsaw puzzle. Suggested solutions to parts of the puzzle would be judged by fellow users, and then passed on to the professionals.

This mix of science and puzzle-gaming has engendered marvelous successes before. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (or SETI) utilizes dozens of citizen computers for processing power in order to more efficiently scan the skies for signs of intelligent life beyond Earth. The FoldIt program led to the crowdsourced discovery of the structure of a monkey HIV virus in ten days, after a decade of attempts by scientists.

(There are similar puzzle-game attempts being made to map the human brain, explore the potential of DNA, and catalogue animal species. Check out this IO9 link for further details.)

This is yet another amazing example of puzzle solving making a true contribution to our understanding of the world. And it’s always nice to remind ourselves that puzzles can be all fun and games, but they can also be something much much more.

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!

5 Questions with Crossword Pro Kathy Matheson

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

We’re reaching out to puzzle constructors, video game writers and designers, writers, filmmakers, 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 excited to have Kathy Matheson as our latest 5 Questions interviewee!

Better known as Crossword Kathy to puzzle fans, Kathy is an expert puzzle solver whose writeups on each New York Times Crossword are not only an invaluable resource for new puzzlers, but thoroughly entertaining as well. She’s also the editor of the marvelously puzzle-centric Crossword Kathy Daily, where you can find all kinds of puzzle news.

Kathy 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 Kathy Matheson

1.) How did you get started with puzzles?

The short answer is that I’ve been solving crossword puzzles since junior high, when a friend intent on winning the school’s magazine drive gave me a subscription to Games Magazine as a birthday present. (The editor of Games back then? Will Shortz.)

But I should add that I come from a family of puzzlers. My mom and stepdad solve every puzzle the L.A. Times has to offer on any given day – crosswords, cryptograms, Jumbles, sudokus. When I was a kid, my grandpa would write me letters and include some scrambled words at the bottom; I would figure them out and send him back a few as well. And my dad and I would try to solve a daily newspaper crossword together on our weekly trips to a local coffee shop.

One distinct memory from those days: I filled in the word DIRT as the answer for “Seed covering,” only to have my dad gently correct it to ARIL, which he said was a pretty standard entry for that clue. I was baffled. Who on earth would know the word ARIL? So as an adult, when I heard Will Shortz was trying to take the crosswordese out of crosswords, I knew exactly what that meant. And I thought it was great.

2.) Your analyses of each Times crossword are not only thoughtful and accessible, they’re also very funny at times. Is there a balance you try to strike with each puzzle’s breakdown?

I’m so flattered that you think my posts are funny! I’m not a comedian by any stretch, but I hope my blog is lively and entertaining. I guess it’s just not that much fun to publish only a list of answers or a finished grid. Also, I think solvers are more likely to appreciate the craft of crossword construction if you can help them understand a challenging theme, or commiserate with them over an esoteric answer.

Puzzlers, by their nature, like to learn new things, so I try to add interesting links to current events. And frequent readers know I always look for a way to give a shout-out to my adopted hometown of Philly, one of the most underrated cities in the world. Sure, we have our problems -– including a terrible baseball and football team right now -– but it is a tremendously vibrant, beautiful and historic place.

3.) We’re closing in on the one-hundredth anniversary of the crossword. What, in your estimation, gives crosswords such long-lasting appeal? Do you think the crossword’s bicentennial will garner equal interest?

I think crosswords are still around because they’ve evolved. If they were still constructed the way they were back then, I’m not sure how many people would be interested. Themes, rebuses, clever wordplay and complex puzzles-within-puzzles (like the recent grid in Braille!) are what keep me coming back. I certainly hope crosswords will still be around in another hundred years. People still play cards, and those have been around for centuries, right?

4.) What’s next for Kathy Matheson (and Crossword Kathy)?

Well, I’ve been trying my hand at constructing. So far, my aspirations for a NYT crossword byline have been crushed by the very exacting standards of Will Shortz -– though he was extremely nice in his rejections. One puzzle didn’t meet the technical parameters (the word count was too high), and the other had a theme too similar to one that he ran a few years ago. So… I will soldier on. I have a couple of half-finished grids that I just can’t seem to make work. Turns out it takes a lot longer to build a crossword than it does to solve it. Who knew?

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

Keep solving! Just because one puzzle was frustrating doesn’t mean the next one will be. You never know when the subject might involve your area of expertise. Eventually, things will click. Here’s a confession: I still struggle mightily with British (cryptic) crosswords. But I’m able to solve a lot more clues today than I did a couple of years ago.

Many thanks to Kathy Matheson for her time. Check out her marvelous writeups of NYT crosswords on her website, as well as the latest issue of The Crossword Kathy Daily. I can’t wait to see what puzzly goodness she cooks up for us next.

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!

Wanna bet?

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One of my most frequent blog post topics is how puzzles and puzzle skills relate to the modern world. I love seeking out new ways to apply what puzzles teach us to everyday life, and there are few puzzle-centric activities more gratifying than using your puzzly skills to pull a fast one on your friends.

Oh yes, I’m talking about bar bets.

We’ve spotlighted Richard Wiseman’s Quirkology videos twice before, and he’s produced another gem, featuring 10 tricks and brain-teasers with which to baffle and challenge your friends.

(Of course, if you keep bamboozling them out of money, they probably won’t want to hang out with you anymore, so use these tricks sparingly.)

Enjoy this latest batch of crafty cons and puzzly shenanigans.

Going Digital

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Ever since the first crossword puzzle was published on December 21st, 1913, paper and puzzles have been inextricably linked.

Or, at least, they were. But with the advent of the Internet and the evolution of electronic publishing, that link is more tenuous than ever.

“Technology and the opportunities for puzzle creators and solvers to interact with one another will change the ways crosswords are created.” — crossword constructor Robin Stears

Digital puzzle distribution is gaining momentum, and it’s a fascinating time to be part of the puzzle community as individual puzzle constructors and major publishers begin the transition into the electronic market.

Here at PuzzleNation Blog, we’re smack dab in the middle of the revolution. We’re online-only content, representing an online puzzle-game website, and we’ve made recent forays into the mobile market with our Classic Word Search iBook. Digital distribution is literally what PuzzleNation‘s about.

During our 5 Questions interview, Robin Stears had quite a bit to say about the push for downloadable content and digital distribution, and I thought the subject merited its own separate blog post.

Here, Robin champions the move to digital content:

I’m on a mission to change the way crossword puzzles are distributed. Digital collections are easier to share, more affordable for solvers, and most important, they create no physical waste.

While I agree that sometimes there’s nothing more satisfying than finishing the New York Times crossword in ink, and I’ve made a decent living selling puzzles to crossword puzzle books, thanks to Eileen Saunders at Penny Press, I do believe that digital, interactive crosswords are the future.

And she’s hardly alone in that assessment.

Many top-tier constructors are going straight to the fanbase with their puzzles, not only in distributing them, but in crowdfunding their newest puzzle projects through Kickstarter and Indiegogo. (We’ve written several posts about endeavors like these.)

Here, Robin explains the benefits of digital puzzle distribution:

Fans should be able to buy crosswords directly from their favorite constructors at a reasonable price, and be able to share them with their friends even after they’ve solved them — that’s impossible to do with crossword puzzle books, but not with digital puzzles.

From now on, every collection I self-publish will be in digital format, .puz and .pdf files that puzzle fans can solve, share or print as much as they want. Not having them printed and mailed saves me both time and money, so I can publish more puzzles more often for a lower price.

More opportunities to share puzzles will create more crossword puzzle fans, and more puzzle constructors, and that’s good for everyone.

The next few years will no doubt prove critical for the growing digital puzzle market as a whole. It’ll be interesting not only to see how the big print companies adapt, but to watch how individual constructors like Robin Stears lead the charge.

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!