Tag Archives: hashtag wars

It’s Follow-Up Friday: Holiday Wordplay 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’m posting the results of our #PennyDellHolidayPuzzles hashtag game!

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

For the last few months, we’ve been collaborating on puzzle-themed hashtag games with our pals at Penny Dell Puzzles, and this month’s hook was Penny Dell Holiday Puzzles, mashing up Penny Dell puzzles and anything and everything having to do with winter, Christmas, the holiday season, festive songs, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Festivus, Voodoo Day…whatever you celebrate in December!

Examples include: Oh Little Puzzler of Bethlehem, ChristMasterwords, or HoliDaisy!

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

Come they told me, pa-rum-pa-Home-Runs, the Diamond Rings to see, pa-rum-pa-Home Runs…

Deck the Halls With Bricks and Mortar, fa la la la la…

We’ll frolic and play, the Eskimo Right of Way, Walking in a winter wonderland.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Simon Says

Chess Words Roasting on an Open Fire

Here We Come A-Puzzling

Anagramma Got Run Over By a Reindeer

Do You Hear What I Here and There? / Do You Hear What’s Left?

Places, Please Come Home for Christmas

Ups and Downs on the Housetop / Up on the Housetop to Bottom

All I Want for Christmas Is My Two-for-One Teeth / All I Want for Christmas Is My Two by Two

Take a Letter to Santa / Writing a Letterboxes (or Letter Tiles) to Santa

The Little Drummerman / The Little Puzzler Boy

The Three Wise Men of a Kind / These Three Wise Men

Merry Christmas to All Fours, and to All a Good Night!

God Bless Us Every One and Only!

It’s the Most Wonderful Timed Framework of the Year

We Need A Little Chinese Christmas / Yes, we need a little Pine Cone

So You Say This is Christmas

Try-Angles We Have Heard on High

March of the Wooden Quotefalls

‘Tis the season for Flower Power

Santa Classified Ads is coming to town / Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Spelldown

Away in a Double Occupancy

Good Time Wenceslaus

Baby, It’s Codeword Outside

Two-Step into Xmas

Guest Star of Bethlehem

Guess Whoville

I’ll Have a Blue Christmas Without You Know the Odds

Feliz NavidOdds & Evens

Fairy Heads & Tails of New York

There’ll Be No More Matchmakers to the King

Hark! The Sum Triangles Sing!

Blackout! Friday

Reindeer Word Games

Mannheim Steam Roll of the Dice

Crackerjacks Frost

The First and Last Noel

Shadowboxing Day

We’re on the Island of Four-Fit Toys . . .

The Scoreboard in hand bear I, bedecked with Sunrays and Syllability . . .

Salvation Army Ringers

The Polar Exploraword

Home Alone: Who’s Calling?

Home Alone: Step by Step, Brick by Brick—Battle!

A Christmas Story: Everything’s Relative

You’ll shoot your eye Out of Place!

I dedicate this house to the Griswold Family Christmas: You Know the Odds.

National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation: Loose Tiles and Marbles

And, of course, no one could resist trying to do the Twelve Days of Christmas with puzzles:

On the 12th day of Christmas my true love gave to me…

Twelve Crypto-Riddles
Eleven Logic Problems
Ten Rapid Readers
Nine Picker-Uppers
Eight Build-a-Pyramids
Seven List-a-Crostics
Six Mini-Crosswords
Five Diamond Rings!
Four (Who’s Calling?) Birds
Three Perfect Tens
Two Turnabouts
And a Partners in a Pairs tree!

OR…

FIVE BY FIVE golden rings.
FOUR SCORE calling birds,
TRIPLETS French hens,
TWO FOR ONE turtledoves,
And a partridge IN A BIND tree!

OR…

…and a Partridge in a Picture Pairs Tree!

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

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! Be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date on everything PuzzleNation!

You can also share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and explore the always-expanding library of PuzzleNation apps and games on our website!

It’s Follow-Up Friday: And a One And a Clue 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’m posting the results of our #PennyDellPuzzleBands hashtag game!

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

For the last few months, we’ve been collaborating on puzzle-themed hashtag games with our pals at Penny Dell Puzzles, and this month’s hook was Penny Dell Puzzle Bands, mashing up Penny Dell puzzles and favorite bands or musicians!

Examples might be The Beat-the-Clock-les, Brick by Brick Astley, or Kris Krossword.

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

The Rolling Stepping Stones / Stepping Stones Temple Pilots / Steppin’ Stones Wolf

Fill-In Collins (singing Su-Su-Sudoku) / Fill-In Sync

Spinwheel Doctors

The Who’s Calling? / The Guess Who’s Calling? / The Who’s Who

Radioheadings

Men at Framework

Kenkenny Rogers (or Loggins or G) / KenKen Chesney

Kenny Chess Words

Paul Simon Says / Simon Le Bon Says / Simon Says Garfunkel

Paul Simon and Art Garfield’s Word Seeks

ZZ Top to Bottom / Top to Soggy Bottom Boys

Zigzag Top / Jay Zig Zag / Zigzag Marley

Missing Persons List / Missing Persons Trios

Cryptogram Parsons / Patchwork QuotaGram Parsons

Letterboxes Zeppelin / Letterboxes to Cleo

Led Zeppelin and Around

Tina Turnabout / Tina Turn a Phrase / Tossing and Tina Turner

U2 of a Kind / U2 by Two / U2 for One

Three Doors Down of a Kind / 3 Doors Ups and Downs

Three Doors Across and Down / Across and Three Doors Down

Big Brother and the Three’s Company

Three from Nine Inch Nails

Third Bull’s-Eye Blind

Never Mind the Bull’s-Eye Spiral…Here Come the Sex Pistols!

The Four-Most Tops / The Four Tops to Bottom

Four Square Blondes / Tears Four Square

Gang of Foursomes

The Crackerjackson 5

The Jackson Fancy Fives / Maroon Fancy Five / The Fancy Dave Clark Fives

Black 47-Up

Seven Mary Three’s Company

The Jesus and Mary Chain Words

Alice in Chain Words

Square North of Nines

Thirteenth Floor Escalators

Mix and Matchbox Twenty / Match-Up Twenty

Talking Heads & Tails / Radioheads and Tails (singing Creepto-Families)

Florida Georgia Line ‘Em Up / End of the Florida Georgia Line

Drop-outs Kick Murphys

NickelThrowbacks

Wall Flower Powers / The Flower Power Kings

ColdWordPlay

ColdPlaces, Please / The Black Eyed Places Please

Jefferson Starspellship / Ringo Starrspell

Ringo Starr Words / Mazzy Star Words

Thompson Twin Crosswords

Pairs in LeAnn Rimes

Eric Clapboard

New Kids on the Blockbuilders / New Kids on the Crossblocks

Around the New Kids on the Block / New Kids Around the Block

ABBAcus (singing Take a Letter Chance On Me and Waterloose Tile)

Bobby Vee-Words

The Partridge Family Ties

Missing Fats Dominoes

Morris Day & the Rhyme Time

Right of Waylon Jennings

KC and the Sum-Doku band / K.C. and the Sunrays Band

Sunrays & Cher-A-Letter

Motley Crueptograms

Janis Joplinkwords

Alphaville Soup / Bowling for Alphabet Soup

The Smashing Pumpkin-Patchwords

Junior Walker & the All Stars and Arrows

Stars and Aerosmith

Sudoku & the Banshees

Sudokool & the Gang / Kool and the Changelings

Mirror Imagine Dragons

Kelly Picker-Upper

Blackout Sabbath

They Might Be Puzzler’s Giants

Sweet Honeycomb in the Rock

Busta Rhyme Time

A to Z Maze featuring Frankie Beverly / A to Jay-Z Maze

Beat the Strawberry Alarm Clock

Foreigner ‘n’ Aft

Metallicancelations

Frank Zip It

Patsy Cline ‘Em Up

Golden Earringmaster

Add One Direction

Jethro Full Circle / Jethro Tiles

The Point the Way Sisters

Santanagrams

Marcy Word Playground

Mariah Carey-Overs / Carry-Overs Underwood

The Black Keywords

Neil Diamond Mine / Nine of Neil Diamonds / Neil Diamond Rings

What’s Left Eye Lopes

Face to Faces / The Small Face to Faces

Split and Splice Girls

Word Player

Quotefall Out Boy

Word Mazey Gray

B-U-S METRO STATION

Simply Grand Funk Railroad!

“C” the Spice Girls and “C” the Beastie Boys

Little Mix at a Time

Anagram Magic! Square

The Associations

Fats Domino Theory

The Washington Jigsaw Squares

Linkwords Park

Stevie Ray Vaughn and Double Occupancy

Scoremaster Flash

ABeeGee’s

John Mayall’s Codebreakers

Nat King Collective Crossword

Dave Match-Up’s Band

Jane’s Letter Addition

Counting Cross Sums

Fleetwood Mac & Logic Problems / Flinkwords Mac

Crostics Stills & Nash

Maxi-Score Priest

Drummerman-heim Steamroller / Drummerman-fred Mann

A Trigons Called Quest

Sir Mixmaster-A-Lot

Weird Al Wacky Words Yankovic

Uncle Crackers

The Marshall Mind Tickler Band

Banana Word-A Rama

Ashford & Simpson Says

The CultureWords Club

Earth Wind and Fill-Ins

The Mamas and the Papas Grand Tour

Ringer’s Eleven

Public Double Trouble Enemy

Guns ‘n’ Rows Garden

Those bands would be sure to win plenty of AnaGrammy and QuotaGrammy Awards!

Our fellow puzzlers on Twitter also offered up some terrific entries themselves!

@EmilBurp was “torn between the obvious ‘A-Dell’ or the semi-obvious ‘Anacro-Styx'” — two very clever entries! And @_PaulSurf offered up several choice entries, including “Panic at the DisCodewords,” “ZZ Top Choice Sudoku,” and “CryptoGraham Parker and the Rumour.”

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

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! Be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date on everything PuzzleNation!

You can also share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and explore the always-expanding library of PuzzleNation apps and games on our website!

It’s Follow-Up Friday: Puzzle Book 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’m posting the results of our #PennyDellPuzzleBooks hashtag game!

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

For the last few months, we’re been collaborating on puzzle-themed hashtag games with our pals at Penny/Dell Puzzles, and this month’s hook was Penny/Dell Broadway Puzzles!

Examples might be The Lord of the Diamond Rings or The Da Vinci Codeword or Alphabet Soup for the Soul.

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

Charlotte’s Spider’s Web

Right Angles and Demons

The Grapes of Word Math

The Scarlet Letterboxes / The Scarlet Letter Logic

The Fault in Our Starspell / The Fault in Our Star Words

Harry Potter and the Halftime Prince

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stepping Stones

Brave New Word Seeks / Brave New Word Games

The Lion, the Witch, and the Word Seek

The Wizard Words of Oz

The “Mystery Person” of Edward Drood

To Kill a Missing Word (List)

The Fountainheads & Tails Word Seek

Around the Block in Eighty Days / Around the Bend in 80 Days

A Tale of Two-Step Cities

The Three of a Kind Musketeers

Oh, the Places, Please You’ll Go!

Peyton’s Places, Please

Anagrams Karenina

Anagram of Green Gables

North & South of Eden

The Swiss Family Robinson Ties

Bowl Game of Thrones

Ender’s Bowl Game

Fahrenheit Two for One / Fahrenheit 451 and Only

Sudoku Road

Cryptograms Wake / Fill-Ins Wake / Figgerits Wake

Kakuro Pioneers!

Little Puzzler on the Prairie

First and Last of the Mohicans

The Picture Sleuth of Dorian Gray / The Picture This of Dorian Gray

Watership Spelldown

Buried Treasure Island

The Countdown of Monte Cristo

Take It from There to Eternity

The Sign of Four Corners / The Big Four Corners

The Doomsday Bookworms

Great Crostictations

A Wrinkle in Time Machine

The Perks of Being a WallFlower Power

Catch-22 for One

The Hotel on the Poet’s Corner of Bitter and Sweet

50 Shades of Grey Shadows

The Joy Luck Crosswords Club

Jurassic Park What’s Left

My What’s Left Foot

Only The Shadow Knows

From Alphabet Soup to Nuts

Match Up Made in Heaven

Beat the Clock-work Orange

A Hive for a Honeycomb

Star Words

The Lost Symbol-lic Logic

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ringmaster

The Sylla-rillion

The Hunger Word Games

198-Four Square

The Sum Totals Also Rises

And one overachiever…

The “Lion” (‘Em Up), the “Which” (Way Words), and the “Word”robe by C(ircle) S(ums) Lewis

We also received a terrific one from @_Screenhog, Cross Sums of All Fears!

Have you come up with any Penny/Dell Puzzle Books 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!

It’s Follow-Up Friday: Hashtag Game 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 International TableTop Day!

You may be familiar with the board game Schmovie, hashtag games on Twitter, or @midnight’s Hashtag Wars segment on Comedy Central. Well, I decided to host our own wordplay game in honor of TableTop Day.

Our hook was: Penny/Dell Puzzle Movies!

Examples could be “Starspell Wars” or “Legends of the Quotefalls” or “Live and Let Die-agramless.”

I received over 100 responses from PuzzleNation and Penny/Dell employees, and I simply had to compile a complete list and share it with you! (I’ve included links for as many puzzles as I could find!)

So, without further ado, please enjoy our feature presentation.

Sudo-Cujo

One Flew Over the (Sudo)ku-koo’s Nest

Two for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

The “Ken-Ken”tucky Fried Movie

A Scarlet Letterbox

Last Tangleword in Paris

Tanglewords and Cash

Django Un-Chain Words

What’s Left Pussycat?

Easy Crossword Midnight Express OR Midnight Express Easy Crosswords

The Good – the Bad, and the Ugly – Time Crosswords

Revenge of the Words

When Flower Met Power

The Flower Power and the Glory

Anagram Gables

The Trum-Anagram Show

(Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless) Mind Boggler

The Domino Theory of Everything

Domino (Conspiracy) Theory

Lord of the Ringers

(The Lord of the) Ringers: (The) Two-Step (Towers)

Lord of the Changeling

Lord of the Ring-master

Lord of the Diamond Rings

Diamond Rings are Forever

Nine of Diamonds Are Forever

Diamond Mines are a Girl’s Best Friend – (Starring Maria Monroe)

The Fantastic Four Corners

Four (Children of the) Corners

Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stepping Stones

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secret Words

The Wizard Words of Oz

Desperately Wordseek-ing Susan

Star Trek 3: The Word Search For Spock

The Secret Message of NIMH

Patchword Adams

A Patchwords of Blue

Nightmare on Garfield’s Word Seek

Around the Bend It Like Beckham

Here and There Will be Blood

How to Train Your Zigzag-on

Heads and Tails from the Crypt

Tales from the Crypt-O-Grams

Crypto-Riddles of the Sphinx

(X-Men: First) Classified Ads

(Dead and) Buried Treasure

Split (Second) Personalities

A Framework Orange

Fiddler’s Frame on the Roof

Charlie’s ANGLEWORDS

Trading Places, Please

Places, Please in the Heart

Fill-In Minnesota

To Fill-In a Mockingbird

Rapid (Fire) Reader

Puzzle (Down and) Derby

THE WHOLE TRUTH About Cats & Dogs

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Match-Ups

(One Hour) Photo Finish

(500 Days of) Sum(mer) Triangles

Gold-Figgerits

Dial-a-Grams for Murder

Place Your Murder by Numbers

The LETTER COUNT of Monte Cristo

Mad Maxi-Point

Add One Fine Day

Scramble Across Five Aprils

Piece by Pieces of April

12 Mon-Keywords

SQUARE NINES From Outer Space

Anacrostics Karenina OR Anna Karenina–crostics

Raiders of the Crostics Ark

Raiders of the List-A-Crostic

The Seventh Syllacrostic

Schindler’s List-a-Crostic

Schindler’s Missing List

First and Last Action Hero

Meet Joe BLACK MAGIC

Full Metal JACKPOT

Gone with the Window Boxes

Rear Window Boxes

Doctor DoLotto

The Da Vinci Codeword

An American in Pairs

Double Trouble Indemnity

Face to Face/Off

(The World’s) End of the Line

There were even a few TV shows offered — Dora The Exploraword and ACROSS AND DOWNton Abbey — as well as a theater show: The Bookworms of Mormon.

And now, I open the hashtag game up to you, fellow puzzlers and PuzzleNationers! Can you come up with a Penny/Dell Puzzle Movie we missed? Message us on Facebook or Twitter! 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!

TableTop Day: PuzzleNation Style!

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The third annual International TableTop Day was last Saturday, and according to reports across the Internet, it was the most successful and joyous TableTop Day yet! Games were donated by some of the top companies (our friends at Looney Labs and Steve Jackson Games among them) as well as by the folks at Geek & Sundry, and the puzzle game community came together once again to prove how amazing and warm puzzlers and gamers can be.

For the second year in a row, we at PuzzleNation had our own little TableTop Day event with our friends at Penny/Dell Puzzles, and it was great fun! Games were played, an insane amount of sugary treats were prepared, snacks were consumed, and fellow puzzlers and PuzzleNationers were introduced to some terrific games.

I raided my personal puzzle and game collection to provide some choice offerings for my fellow puzzlers, and readers of the blog will no doubt recognize several items from previous product reviews!

Here’s the full rundown of games we had:

(Sadly, a lot of personal favorites had to be excluded because they would take more than 30 minutes to play, like some of the offerings from Cheapass Games and other great companies, and it was a work day. I promise, this is a fraction of my full puzzle and game collection.)

Timeline proved to be one of the biggest hits of the day, because it’s so simple to play and offers endless replay value. (Especially with seven different editions of the game to choose from!)

I also managed to win my first game of Jenga in what seems like a decade!

There was plenty of switching between games as well. Here, a game of Just Desserts immediately followed a round of Bananagrams Wild Tiles!

But that wasn’t all! To include fellow puzzlers who couldn’t attend the event in person, we had our own Hashtag Game running in-house all day. Inspired by both @midnight hashtag games and our friends at Schmovie, we had a contest to create “Penny/Dell Puzzle Movies.”

I’ll be posting ALL of the entries on Friday, but here are a few favorites:

  • The Scarlet Letterboxes
  • Schindler’s List-A-Crostic
  • Double Trouble Indemnity

All in all, it was an awesome time. Hope everyone enjoyed!

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!

PuzzleNation Product Review: Schmovie

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Galactic Sneeze is a relative newcomer to the puzzle/board game scene — they describe themselves as a “fun stuff think tank,” rather than a company — but if their game Schmovie is any example, they definitely live up to that name.

Schmovie is the brainchild of Galactic Sneeze co-founders Bryan Wilson and Sara Farber. (Check out Sara’s session of 5 Questions here!) Schmovie challenges players to conjure up the funniest movie title for a given scenario, based on a roll of the die (to determine the genre of the film) and a card from each of two decks, the “who” deck and the “what” deck.

[So, in this case, we need a drama about a hypersensitive granny.
Can you come up with a better title than “Irritable Mrs. Howell Syndrome”?
My friend suggests “The Slow and the Furious.”]

Each round, one player is the Schmovie Producer. This person rolls the die and flips over the Who and What cards. Every other player writes down their movie titles on their erasable boards, and then turns them in to the Schmovie Producer face down. The Producer shuffles the boards to keep the players anonymous, then reads each title aloud. The Producer then chooses a favorite, and that player earns a Schquid Trophy.

The first player (or team) to earn 5 Schquids wins the game.

This is a terrific game for puzzlers, because creativity and wordplay are such a key component. (Considering how many crossword puzzle clues are puns or plays on words, a facility with groaners is something most puzzlers already have in their skill sets.)

You can write anything as your film title, whether it’s your own creation or a pun based on an established film — whatever gets a bigger laugh or best shows off your cleverness.

And you can even try out Schmovie from the comfort of your own phone or computer. There are frequent rounds of Schmovie played on Twitter and Facebook by the game’s creators, complete with electronic Schquid trophies!

With plenty of replayability and enough cards to keep your wordplay muscles in fighting trim for a long time to come, Schmovie is punderful fun for all.

[Glenn’s note: For anyone who has noticed the similarity between Schmovie’s play mechanic and the @midnight television show’s game #HashtagWars, it seems to be a happy accident that both emerged on the pop culture scene in late 2013. @midnight debuted in October, weeks after Schmovie started hitting stores.]

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!