Tag Archives: DIY puzzling

Anagram Answers for Patriotic Puzzlers!

Posted on by
Reply

My apologies for the delay in posting the answers to our Patriotic Anagrams, my fellow puzzle fiends. I hope you enjoyed untangling these little puzzles!

And so, without further ado, here are your answers!

Penny Aced Indeed = Independence Day

Flared Prosy Kiwis = Fireworks display

Horologic Gent Kiln = Cooking on the grill

Legend For Merit = Let freedom ring

Attend Suites = United States

Nice solo = Colonies

It’s Spartan Dress = Stars and Stripes

Phi Alpha Deli = Philadelphia

How many did you get? Let us know in the comments below!

Fourth of July = Joyful Fourth

Posted on by
1

It’s Independence Day, and is there any better way to celebrate the marvelous mixing pot of American culture than some holiday anagrams? I hardly think so!

Unscramble the following phrases to uncover some Fourth of July words and phrases, and enjoy!

Penny Aced Indeed

Flared Prosy Kiwis

Horologic Gent Kiln

Legend For Merit

Attend Suites

Nice Solo

It’s Spartan Dress

Phi Alpha Deli

Answers will be posted on the blog tomorrow afternoon! Enjoy your day!

“I have the solution,” Tom answered.

Posted on by
4

As promised, here are the answers to Friday’s PuzzleNation live game, a.k.a. the Tom Swifties challenge! Thank you to everyone who gave it a shot. I look forward to doing another live puzzle game soon!

TWITTER

1.) “This is all from memory,” Tom… wrote.

2.) “That just doesn’t add up,” said Tom… nonplussed.

3.) “There’s no need for silence,” Tom… allowed.

4.) “Little devils don’t always tell the truth,” Tom… implied.

5.) “You don’t see the point, do you?” asked Tom… stabbing in the dark.

6.) “No test throw,” thought Tom… triflingly.

7.) “The exit is right there,” Tom… pointed out.

FACEBOOK

1.) “I can take photographs if I want to!” Tom… snapped.

2.) “That’s already been taken care of,” Tom… pretended.

3.) “She’s repeating an SOS message,” said Tom… remorsefully.

4.) “I only have diamonds, clubs and spades,” said Tom… heartlessly.

5.) “I’m covering the neighborhood with heavy cotton cloth,” said Tom… canvassing the area.

6.) “I’ve deduced that this is the right way,” said Tom… pathologically.

7.) “I have a split personality,” said Tom… being frank.

And if there’s some kind of live game puzzle challenge you’d like to see, be sure to let us know! You can like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, or contact us here!

Three posts, five rings, endless possibilities…

Posted on by
4

I’ve always been a big fan of DIY puzzling. With seven nieces and nephews to keep engaged and entertained at family gatherings, I often find myself cobbling together new games and puzzles for them from whatever I can find around me.

(For instance, you’d be surprised how many board games are spiced up a bit by the addition of dinosaur figurines.)

So last weekend, I discovered my youngest nieces have three of those ring-stacking toys with the colored rings, the ones I think every kid has played with at some point or another.

And I realized I had all the tools necessary to whip up a challenge for the kids and adults alike… a Tower of Hanoi puzzle.

The Tower of Hanoi puzzle and its many variants look simple, but can be fiendishly puzzling. The rules are simple: move the stack of rings from the first post to the third. You move one ring at a time, and at no point can you place a larger ring atop a smaller ring.

(The standard puzzle is five rings, but variants can go as high as 10.)

I gave the adults first crack at it, and after laughing it off as childishly simple, it took them far longer than expected to solve the puzzle, especially in the later stages as you try to place the largest ring. There was plenty of pointing and strategy and “No, no, not there! THERE!”

The kids, on the other hand, worked together, and managed to solve the puzzle in about fifteen minutes, each taking turns moving colored rings here and there (and for my youngest niece, occasionally biting them, as you do). Their sense of accomplishment was a joy to watch, and each crowed to their parents about their victory.

As a placement puzzle, the Tower of Hanoi is much like a sudoku puzzle, a combination of strategy — where to place a number or a ring — and deduction — determining which moves you can’t make based on the information provided. It’s one of those universal puzzle-solving skills that will serve a puzzle fiend well for decades to come.

(To try the Tower of Hanoi puzzle, check out this online version I found.)

A hallmark of puzzles to come…

Posted on by
2

Cleverness abounds in the puzzle community, both in those who create puzzles and those who solve them. But the advent of the Internet has truly raised the bar in what you can accomplish with a puzzly mindset and some serious ingenuity.

From Easter Eggs concealed in DVD menus (like the blooper reel hidden in the silver box DVD release of the original Star Wars trilogy) to viral marketing campaigns that conceal plot details and exclusive scenes for industrious fans (as Christopher Nolan’s Batman films frequently employed), there are delightful little entertainment nuggets secreted away in all sorts of media these days.

But only a select few of these hidden puzzles reach the level of complexity and elegance embodied by a series of puzzles lurking within the game Portal (which eventually unlocked details regarding the upcoming sequel).

Portal, itself widely regarded as a masterpiece of outside-the-box puzzle-solving wizardry and gameplay, demands a great deal from its players, so any hidden game designed for these players would have to be something special.

Adam Foster did a thorough and fascinating write-up on both the hidden puzzle game itself (known as the Portal ARG) and the process behind creating this dastardly electronic scavenger hunt, and you can read the full details here.

What’s particularly brilliant about this particular multitiered puzzle is that it incorporated rewards for both mid-level gamers — collecting all the radios in the game and locating where they received broadcasts — as well as the stunningly devoted fans who were willing to chase the puzzle farther down the rabbit hole, delving into top-tier decryption and deduction puzzle-solving.

This sort of chain-reaction puzzle-solving is becoming more and more commonplace. For a simpler example, you need go no further than PuzzleNation’s own Guessworks game. You start with a Hangman-style guessing and deduction game, which leads to clues to be solved, which then lead to a quotation to be unraveled.

As you build upon these earlier steps, you not only challenge yourself in new ways, but you develop multiple puzzle-conquering skills at once. Tackling a puzzle as wily as the Portal ARG is some serious mental exercise.

By pushing the boundaries of what form puzzles and games can take, people like Adam Foster are redefining and rejuvenating the puzzle-solving experience for a new generation of savvier solvers.

Puzzle News… comin’ at ya!

Posted on by
Reply

PuzzleNation is just one part of a much greater puzzle community — our Diggin’ Words dog Copernicus up there is always surfing the Internet for puzzle news — so in today’s blog post, I’d like to turn the spotlight toward some of our fellow puzzlers.

First off, let’s give some hale and hearty congratulations to crossword puzzler Matt Gaffney, who recently celebrated his Weekly Crossword Contest’s five-year anniversary! (His metapuzzles are a real treat!)

In other crossword news, there are only three days left to pitch in on Peter Gordon’s kickstarter!

Infamous for the difficulty of his Fireball Crosswords, Gordon is looking to expand into a weekly series called Fireball Newsweekly Crosswords, which he promises will be timely, well-constructed, and challenging (but not demoralizingly so). Here’s hoping he meets his goal!

And finally, a magazine produced by our pals at PennyDellPuzzles made a surprising cameo in a recent Twitter post by comedian Bo Burnham. (Vine videos allow for quick loops of a few seconds, and they’re a recent addition to the arsenal of many celebrities and comedians on Twitter.)

If there’s anything puzzle-noteworthy going on in your neck of the Internet woods, please let us know so we can spread the word!