Tag Archives: New York Times

It’s Follow-Up Friday: Pluto, Pi, and Puzzles 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 puzzly and otherwise nerdy holidays!

I already mentioned the fast-approaching American Crossword Puzzle Tournament yesterday, but did you know that today is Pluto Planet Day?

Yes, today is a day when all those scarred or upset by Pluto’s demotion from planet to dwarf planet (or plutoid, or Trans-Neptunian Object, or whatever they’re calling it now).

In fact, the residents of the state of New Mexico were so upset by Pluto’s dismissal from the list of planets that they made a law stating Pluto is forever a planet in New Mexico skies. Which is pretty great (and in flagrant defiance of the current scientific literature).

Tomorrow is a holiday as well! It’s Pi Day (March 14th, a.k.a. 3.14)! And, actually, it’s the most mathematically significant Pi Day since 1592!

When you take Saturday’s date — 3/14/15 — you have the first five digits of Pi. When you add a certain time — 3/14/15 at 9:26 — you have the first eight!

(MIT used to email its acceptance letters out at 1:59 on March 14.)

Plus, March 23 is crossword icon Margaret Farrar’s birthday!

Hired as a secretary for The New York World, she soon found herself assisting crossword creator Arthur Wynne with proofreading puzzles, only for her puzzles to surpass his in popularity! She was the first crossword editor for The New York Times, a position she held until 1969 when Will Weng took over the position.

So, fellow puzzlers, will you be celebrating Pi Day or Pluto Planet Day or Farrar’s birthday? Better yet, will you be participating in this year’s ACPT? 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!

Farewell, Bernice.

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Part of writing for PuzzleNation Blog is constantly learning and unearthing new aspects of puzzle history. Whether it’s the history of puzzles themselves, like the 100th anniversary of the crossword in 2013, or significant moments from history that involved puzzles, like the use of crosswords to recruit cryptographers for Bletchley Park’s codecracking efforts during World War II.

And you simply can’t talk about the history of puzzles without mentioning constructor Bernice Gordon, one of the most recognizable names in crosswords for more than half a century.

Bernice’s first crossword was published in The New York Times in 1952, establishing a legacy of elegant, well-constructed puzzles that would span nearly seven decades. A favorite of both The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times, Bernice actually didn’t start creating crosswords until she was 35, a late start for someone with such an expansive track record to come.

She set records for the longest tenure as a crossword constructor and eldest crossword constructor — publishing puzzles at 101 years old! — as well as teaming up with constructor and friend of the blog David Steinberg for largest age gap between collaborators, with 86 years between them!

Will Shortz estimated that Bernice published more than 120 puzzles with the Times, and you can check out the lion’s share of them over on XWordInfo, dating back as far as 1965.

Sadly, Bernice passed away early Thursday morning, having left an indelible mark on the world of crosswords, with many friends and admirers celebrating her marvelous life and decades of sparkling puzzly wordplay.

Many puzzlers and admirers have written wonderful tributes to Bernice, but I have to single out the heartfelt words of David Steinberg, who memorialized his friend and fellow constructor in fine form here.

I only know Bernice through her puzzles, but I always found them to be clever, charming, and constructed with grace and skill. And based on what I’ve read about her over the last few days, many of those admirable qualities are reflections of the woman behind the puzzles.

Thank you, Bernice. You will be missed.

It’s Follow-Up Friday: Word Ladders 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 answers to last Thursday’s Word Ladder puzzles!

First off, there are the two Word Ladders from Lewis Carroll’s puzzle collection Doublets:

Cain to Abel: CAIN-CHIN-SHIN-SPIN-SPUN-SPUD-SPED-APED-ABED-ABEL

Tears to Smile: TEARS-SEARS-STARS-STARE-STALE-STILE-SMILE

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And here are the solutions to crossword constructor Joe Krozel’s bonus Word Ladders from his New York Times crossword:

1. Table tennis: For ages, the only joy in my life.

PING-PONG-LONG-LONE-LOVE

2. Unspeaking inspirer will simply have to communicate in taunts.

MUTE-MUSE-MUST-JUST-JEST

3. Upon removing the strap, Mr. Rogers dashed away from his snow vehicle and glided.

FREE-FRED-FLED-SLED-SLID

4. Sell contraband to a flock of Jerry Garcia fans with intensity.

DEAL-DEAD-HEAD-HERD-HARD

5. Audacious poet (with signs of aging) outlaws military conflict.

BOLD-BALD-BARD-BARS-WARS (or BALD-BAWD-BARD-BARS-WARS, although the first answer changes every letter from the starting word)

How did you do, fellow puzzlers? Did you crack them all?

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!

Scaling a Word Ladder to Success!

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If I challenged you to transform the word ROCKS into the word SPARK, could you do it? By changing one letter at a time, making a new word every time, five changes would complete that chain of words.

ROCKS – SOCKS – SOAKS – SOARS – SPARS – SPARK

Congratulations, you’ve chipped away at those rocks, created a spark, and ignited a puzzly fire! Not only that, but you’ve just built yourself a Word Ladder.

Word Ladders, also known as Changawords, word-links, laddergrams, doublets, word golf, and numerous other names, have been around in their current form for nearly a hundred and forty years. Lewis Carroll is credited with creating them, publishing a series of them in Vanity Fair magazine and a collection of them under the name Doublets.

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For example, in Doublets he challenged solvers to connect CAIN to ABEL. He did it in nine steps. Can you match him, or beat him?

Can you turn TEARS into a SMILE in six steps?

As you can see, there’s often a theme or connection linking the words. Some Word Ladders connect anagrams (like SEAT to SATE) or semordnilaps (like WOLF to FLOW). Others connect two words in a phrase (like TRUE to BLUE) or link two words in the same category (like LION to LAMB if the theme were “Mammals”).

They can vary in word length as well as in number of steps between words. Often (but not always), the fewer steps, the easier the solve.

But, as it turns out, solvers continue to add new variations and wrinkles to the established format.

Image converted using ifftoany

Sunday’s New York Times crossword puzzle featured Word Ladders as themed answers, but these Word Ladders actually formed coherent sentences! 92 Across, for instance, was clued “Boisterous oaf confused the previous set of actors.” And you’d have to be a pretty savvy solver to come up with LOUD-LOUT-LOST-LAST-CAST as the word ladder that fits the clue!

And the constructor, Joe Krozel, kindly offered a few bonus Word Ladders for solvers to unravel. Can you crack them all?

1. Table tennis: For ages, the only joy in my life.

2. Unspeaking inspirer will simply have to communicate in taunts.

3. Upon removing the strap, Mr. Rogers dashed away from his snow vehicle and glided.

4. Sell contraband to a flock of Jerry Garcia fans with intensity.

5. Audacious poet (with signs of aging) outlaws military conflict.

How many successful Word Ladders can you build? Let me know! I’d love to hear from you!

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!

Puzzles in Pop Culture: Two Hollows

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In today’s edition of Puzzles in Pop Culture, we visit two very different New England towns — Stars Hollow, Connecticut, and Sleepy Hollow, New York — in two very different TV shows.

Stars Hollow is the fictional setting of cancelled WB/CW drama Gilmore Girls, which spent seven seasons following the pop culture-fueled banter of mother/daughter team Lorelai and Rory Gilmore as they navigated relationships, family drama, and all the undeniable quirkiness of small-town America.

Sleepy Hollow is a very real town, but hopefully one unafflicted by headless horsemen, demonic plots, and a secret war against evil that’s been waged since the days of the American Revolution. At least that’s what’s going on in the fictional version of Sleepy Hollow in Fox’s eponymous TV show, now in its second season.

And, as it turns out, each has something interesting to say about crossword puzzles.

First, there’s this brief scene from Gilmore Girls, where Lorelai ponders both the challenge of crosswords and the social implications of NOT being a crossword solver:

Clearly Lorelai and Rory are crossword skeptics, or at the very least, indifferent to crosswords. But given that they’re staring at a collection of New York Times crossword puzzles, maybe they’re simply disillusioned after a few hard end-of-the-week puzzles.

The character of Henry Parrish from Sleepy Hollow, on the other hand, has much kinder things to say about crosswords.

He expressed himself quite eloquently in episode 10 of season 1, “The Golem.”

Lt. Abbie Mills: You doing crosswords?

Henry Parrish: As I said, it distracts me from my troubles. A good puzzle misleads you, it sends you in one direction, fools you into thinking you know what’s going on. But once you discover the trick, you see that’s there’s often a hidden meaning.

Now, there’s a man who has solved some quality crosswords in his time. Maybe he could recommend a few choice ones for the Gilmore girls.

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!