Tag Archives: Penny Dell Crosswords App

New Puzzle Bundles for the Penny Dell Crossword App!

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That’s right, it’s a bonus Wednesday post!

I know we covered all the newest puzzle sets available for the Penny Dell Crossword App last week, but guess what? We’ve got so much great content available that we’re offering special deals on puzzle bundles for both our Android and iOS users!

For the prolific puzzlers and savvy solvers among you, we’ve just launched the perfect puzzle bundle. Collection 18 offers 150 easy, medium, and hard puzzles designed to satisfy and challenge any puzzler!

But maybe you need more. Maybe you’d like to grab every monthly deluxe set from 2016 in one convenient package at a very special discounted price. Well, we’ve got you covered with our 2016 Deluxe Complete Set, assembling 420 puzzles for your perusal and puzzly enjoyment!

Now, 420 puzzles is a great, solid number of puzzles. But can we go one better?

You bet we can.

Our Double Deluxe Complete Set offers the best value with 840 puzzles, spanning both our 2015 and 2016 Monthly Deluxe lineups, and ensuring that your 2017 gets off to a fantastic start with the best puzzles at your fingertips at a special low price!

And today is the perfect time to pick up some more puzzle sets, as we’re running a Big Bundle Flash Sale! Be sure to hustle, because the sale ends soon!

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You can’t go wrong with these amazing deals! PuzzleNation is dedicated to bringing you the best puzzle-solving experience available, with topnotch puzzles right in your pocket, ready to go at a moment’s notice! That’s the PuzzleNation guarantee.

Happy solving, everyone!

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!

New Puzzle Sets for the Penny Dell Crosswords App!

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It’s been a little while since we updated you on all of the great new content for the Penny Dell Crossword App, so we decided to dedicate today’s Follow-Up Friday post to sharing all the newest puzzle sets and deals available for both Android and iOS users!

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Let’s start off with our new Deluxe Fun Set! It’s loaded with 35 puzzles — easy, medium, and hard, with 5 bonus themed puzzles!

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And check out other Deluxe Fun Sets for more great puzzles!

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There’s also our January Deluxe Set! You get 30 easy, medium, and hard puzzles, plus 5 January-themed bonus puzzles to keep you on your toes!

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And for a little more bang for your buck, check out the January Deluxe Combo Set, which offers double the puzzles at a special low price! That’s right, 70 puzzles awaiting you, crafty solver!

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(You can also snag our December Deluxe Combo Set while you’re at it, complete with another 70 terrific puzzles!)

And today is the perfect time to pick up some more puzzle sets, as we’re running a Big Bundle Flash Sale! Be sure to hustle, because the sale ends soon!

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With these outstanding puzzle sets to choose from, we proudly continue our efforts to match the lofty standards we’ve set for ourselves in terms of puzzle quality and variety! PuzzleNation means terrific puzzles right in your pocket, and when you nab these puzzle sets, we know you’ll agree!

Happy solving!

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: 2016 Countdown edition!

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It’s the final Follow-Up Friday of the year, so what do you say we revisit all of 2016 with a countdown of my ten favorite blog posts from the past year!

#10 Doomsday Prep

One of the big surprises for me this year was discovering that crosswords and puzzle books were hot-ticket items for doomsday preppers. The idea that crosswords belong next to necessities like food, water, shelter, and knowledge was a revealing one, something that gave me great hope for the future, whether we need those caches or not.

#9 Holiday Puzzly Gift Guide

Every year, one of my favorite activities is putting together our Holiday Puzzly Gift Guide. I get to include the best products sent to me for review by top puzzle and game companies, mix in some of my own favorites, and draw attention to terrific constructors, game designers, and friends of the blog, all in the hopes of introducing solvers (and families of solvers) to quality puzzles and games.

#8 A Puzzly Proposal

Our friends at Penny Dell Puzzles once again pulled off a heck of a puzzly coup when an intrepid fellow puzzler asked them for help proposing to his girlfriend with a special Simon Says puzzle.

I reached out to the lucky fiancé and got his permission to share the story with the PuzzleNation readership, and as I learned more about who was involved and how they’d managed to make it happen, I enjoyed the story more and more. Here’s hoping for many happy puzzly years ahead for the young couple!

#7 Puzzle Fort

For International Puzzle Day, I built a fort out of puzzle books.

It was awesome. Definitely one of my favorite puzzly moments of the year.

#6 The End of Sudoku?

The Sudoku boom may be over, but Sudoku remains one of the most popular puzzles in the world, and I got to thinking… when would we run out? I mean, eventually, statistically speaking, every single Sudoku puzzle permutation would get used at some point, so when would that happen?

So, I crunched the numbers, and it turns out, we’ve got centuries before that happens. Still, it was a fun mental puzzle to unravel.

#5 Murder Mystery

At some point this year, I let slip to my fellow puzzlers that I’d written and staged murder mystery dinners in the past, but it had been a while since I’d done anything like that. Naturally, they volunteered to be participants, urging me to stage something in the office.

Eventually, I accepted their challenge, pitting myself against a half-dozen or so of my fellow puzzlers, allowing some of them to investigate while others played a part in the mystery. It was an enormous undertaking and an absolute blast that lasted three days, and it was definitely a highlight of the year for me.

#4 Puzzle Plagiarism

There was probably no bigger story in crosswords all year than the accusations of plagiarism leveled against Timothy Parker. The editor of puzzles for USA Today and Universal UClick. After numerous examples of very suspicious repetitions between grids were discovered in a crossword database compiled by programmer Saul Pwanson and constructor Ben Tausig, Parker “temporarily stepped back from any editorial role” with their puzzles.

Eventually, Parker was removed from any editorial influence on USA Today’s puzzles, but it remains unknown if he’s still serving in a puzzle-related capacity for Universal Uclick. But the real story here was about integrity in puzzles, as many puzzle and game companies rallied to defend their rights as creators. That’s a cause we can all get behind.

#3 Interviewing the PuzzleNation Team

Our recurring interview feature 5 Questions returned this year, but what made it truly special to me was being able to turn the spotlight on some of my fellow puzzlers here at PuzzleNation as part of celebrating 4 years of PuzzleNation Blog. Introducing readers to our programmer Mike, our Director of Digital Games Fred, and yes, even myself, was a really fun way to celebrate this milestone.

#2 ACPT, CT FIG, and Other Puzzly Events

There are few things better than spending time with fellow puzzlers and gamers, and we got to do a lot of that this year. Whether it was supporting local creators at the Connecticut Festival of Indie Games or cheering on my fellow puzzlers at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, getting out and talking shop with other creators is invigorating and encouraging. It really helps solidify the spirit of community that comes with being puzzly.

#1 Penny Dell Sudoku and Android Expansion

Those were our two biggest app releases this year, and I just couldn’t choose one over the other. This has been a terrific year for us as puzzle creators, because not only did we beef up our library of Android-available puzzle sets to match our terrific iOS library, but we launched our new Penny Dell Sudoku app across both platforms, broadening the scope of what sort of puzzle apps you can expect from PuzzleNation.

It may sound self-serving or schlocky to talk about our flagship products as #1 in the countdown, but it’s something that we’re all extremely proud of, something that we’re constantly working to improve, because we want to make our apps the absolute best they can be for the PuzzleNation audience. That’s what you deserve.

Thanks for spending 2016 with us, through puzzle scandals and proposals, through forts and festivities, through doomsday prepping and daily delights. We’ll see you in 2017.

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!

PuzzleNation Looks Back at 2016!

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The year is quickly coming to a close, and as I look back on an eventful year in the world of puzzles and games, I’m unbelievably proud of the contributions both PuzzleNation Blog and PuzzleNation made to the puzzle community as a whole.

Over the last year, we explored board games and card games, strategy games and trivia games, dice games and tile games, do-it-yourself puzzlers and pen-and-paper classics. We met designers, constructors, authors, artists who work in LEGOs and dominos, and creative types of all kinds.

We unraveled math puzzles and used statistics to play Hangman and Guess Who smarter. We accepted the challenge of diabolical puzzles, optical illusions, Internet memes, and more.

We delved into puzzle history with posts about Bletchley Park, puzzle graffiti from ancient Greece, Viking board games, and modern mysteries like the Kryptos Sculpture and the Voynich Manuscript. We separated fact from fiction when it comes to puzzles and brain health, avoiding highfalutin promises and sticking to solid science.

We spread the word about numerous worthwhile Kickstarters and Indiegogo campaigns, watching as the puzzle/game renaissance continued to amaze and surprise us with innovative new ways to play and solve. We shared amazing projects and worthy causes like Humble Bundles and puzzle/game donation programs for schools that allowed puzzle lovers to help others.

We celebrated International TableTop Day, built a puzzle fort in honor of International Puzzle Day, attended the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament and the Connecticut Festival of Indie Games, and dove deep into puzzle events like the Indie 500, the UK Sudoku Championship, the 2016 UK Puzzle Championship, and Lollapuzzoola. We even celebrated a puzzly wedding proposal, and we were happy to share so many remarkable puzzly landmark moments with you.

It’s been both a pleasure and a privilege to explore the world of puzzles and games with you, my fellow puzzle lovers and PuzzleNationers. We marked four years of PuzzleNation Blog this year, I’m approaching my 650th blog post, and I’m more excited to write for you now than I was when I started.

And honestly, that’s just the blog. PuzzleNation’s good fortune, hard work, and accomplishments in 2016 went well beyond that.

In April, we launched Penny Dell Crosswords Jumbo 3 for iOS users, and in May, we followed that with Penny Dell Crosswords Jumbo for Android. In November, we launched our new Penny Dell Sudoku app on both Android and iOS.

But the standout showpiece of our puzzle app library remains the Penny Dell Crossword App. Every month, we release puzzle sets like our Dell Collection sets or the themed Deluxe sets for both Android and iOS users, and I’m proud to say that every single puzzle represents our high standards of quality puzzle content for solvers and PuzzleNationers.

We even revamped our ongoing Crossword Clue Challenge to feature a clue from each day’s Free Daily Puzzle in the Crossword app, all to ensure that more puzzle lovers than ever have access to the best mobile crossword app on the market today.

And your response has been fantastic! The blog is closing in on 2000 followers, and with our audience on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other platforms continuing to grow, the enthusiasm of the PuzzleNation readership is both humbling and very encouraging.

2016 was our most ambitious, most exciting, and most creatively fulfilling year to date, and the coming year promises to be even brighter.

Thank you for your support, your interest, and your feedback, PuzzleNationers. Have a marvelous New Year. We’ll see you in 2017!

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!

My Favorite Crosswords and Clues for 2016!

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Tomorrow is the anniversary of the crossword — the one hundred and third, to be precise — and I thought I would celebrate the day by sharing some of my favorite crossword puzzles and clues from this year.

I solved more crosswords this year than any other year I can remember. From The New York Times, The LA Times, and The Washington Post to Peter Gordon‘s Fireball Newsflash Crosswords and our own Free Daily Puzzle on the Penny Dell Crosswords app, I tried to sample as many constructors and outlets as I could.

I want to start with Ben Tausig’s “Gender-Fluid” quantum puzzle from The New York Times in September. In a year that saw the Times called out several times for tone-deaf and insensitive cluing, to have a puzzle dedicated to the increasing awareness of other gender options was great.

And it certainly didn’t hurt that Ben’s grid was tightly constructed and each of the variable M or F entries worked well. (You can check out my full post on the puzzle here.)

“Eliminating the Competition” by Barany and Friends was another strong crossword with clever letterplay involved. The puzzle paid tribute to the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament by dropping the letters A, C, P, and T, respectively from the four theme entries in the grid.

Not only that, but there were no As, Cs, Ps, or Ts to be found anywhere else in the puzzle grid, which I thought was not only clever, but impressively challenging as a constructing gimmick. It was one of the most ambitious grids I saw all year. (You can check out my full post on the puzzle here.)

On the flip side — a puzzle that was more about the clues than the grid — there was the cryptic crossword from Neil Patrick Harris’s Choose Your Own Autobiography.

With clues like “Sounds like an assortment of taxis in which you were the MC (7)” (for CABARET) and “Costar a large, fake amount of money? (7)” (for FILLION), this puzzle not only rewarded attentive readers, but it severely taxed my (admittedly less-than-daunting) skills at unraveling cryptic clues. (You can check out my full post on the puzzle here.)

Oh, and on the topic of cryptic clues, I asked some constructors if there were any clues or puzzles that caught their eye this year, and David Kwong mentioned a doozy of a cryptic clue by master constructors Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon that he considered the most diabolical he’d ever seen.

The clue? “Emphatically, the key to making bozos boss? (9)”

The answer? SFORZANDO, which parses as “S for Z and O.”

That’s awesome. Doug Peterson did a variation on that in this year’s Lollapuzzoola tournament, “What Happened?”, which featured words or phrases where the letter H had been replaced with either a T or a Y. He revealed this with the entry “HISTORY” breaking down “H is T or Y.” I really dug this puzzle.

And speaking of Lollapuzzoola, I absolutely loved Francis Heaney‘s “Quote Boxes” puzzle from this year’s tournament. It was an 18×18 grid jam-packed with entries, and he used an interesting mechanic to fill the grid.

There were five 2×2 boxes shaded with different shapes, and each of the four cells in those 2×2 boxes contained a word from a famous four-word movie quote, allowing him to place longer entries in the grid. It was the highlight of Lollapuzzoola for me this year. Great stuff.

But before I get to the final crossword on my list, I’d like to run down some of my favorite crossword clues from this year.

  • “Island country that becomes a geometric solid if you change its last letter to an E” for CUBA (from Patrick Blindauer‘s Piece of Cake Crosswords. A super-long clue, but very fun.)
  • “Struggle with hopelessness?” for LISP (from Brendan Emmett Quigley)
  • “The Sky, Sun, and Stars play in it” for WNBA (from Peter Gordon)
  • “Answers, on ‘Jeopardy!'” for ASKS (I don’t recall where I saw this one. Let me know if you know, so I can correct this!)
  • “Some people do it for kicks” for KARATE (Again, no idea where I saw this one. Let me know if you know, so I can correct this!)
  • “Characters often found to be up in arms?” for YMCA (from Sam Trabucco’s Indie 500 puzzle)

And cluing tied into my final choice for favorite crossword of the year with Erik Agard and Joanne Sullivan’s puzzle “Do I Hear a Waltz?” from the Indie 500 tournament.

In this puzzle, the words ONE, TWO, and THREE were missing from sequential clues, providing a hidden one-two-three count for the puzzle’s titular waltz. For instance, 36-Across clued TRUMP as “Up,” 37-Across clued BIKINI as “Piece, say,” and 38-Across clued TITLES as “Peat makeup.” As you’d expect, those clues make much more sense when you add the hidden one-two-three: One-up = TRUMP; Two-piece, say = BIKINI; Threepeat makeup = TITLES.

Hiding the beat within the cluing was absolutely brilliant, and one of the highlights in crosswords for me this year.

Now I’m sure there were great clues or puzzles that I missed, since I’m hardly a prolific solver. Let me know which puzzles and clues from 2016 were your favorites! I’d love to hear from you!

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 Celebs 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 #PennyDellPuzzleCelebs hashtag game!

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

For over a year now, we’ve been collaborating on puzzle-themed hashtag games with our pals at Penny Dell Puzzles, and this month’s hook was #PennyDellPuzzleCelebs, mashing up Penny Dell puzzles and musicians, athletes, actors, artists, and celebrities galore!

Examples include Sigourney Weaver Words, Bob Rossing and Turning, and Joe Na-Word-Math.

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

Kate All Mixed Upton / Kate Match-Upton

Art Missing Linkletter Score

Evander “The Square Deal” Holyfield

How Many Pacquiao

Willie Word Maze

Andrew Lucky Score

Crackerjack Nicklaus

CrackerJacques Cousteau

Crackerjack Benny

Crackerjack Kerouac

Paul Simon Says

Logic Art Garfunkel

Dr. Fill-In McGraw

Senator Fill-In Gramm

Phil-In Collins

Regis Phil-In

Hulk Hoganagrams

Stanley Sudokubrick / Stanley Kubricks and Mortar

David Boweaver Words

Charlie Chaplinsert-a-Word

Kakurosanne Barr

Marilyn Monroll of the Dice

Word Spiralph Lauren

Missing Fats Dominoes / Fats Domino Theory

Molly Ringerswald

Zigzag Zigler

Alphabet Soupy Sales

Barbie and KenKen

Bingo Crosby

Neil Diamond Mine

Hexagram-ma Moses / Cryptogram-ma Moses

Miss Piggybacks

Keenan Ivory Right of Wayans

Molly Ringmaster

Sher-y-Letter Crow

Simon Cowell Says

Minnie-Crosswords Driver

Two by Two-Pac Shakur

Rich Little Puzzler

Mick-master Jagger

Mary Kay Place Cards / Mary Kay Place Your Number / Mary Kay Places, Please

Kim Kar-“Dash-It”-ian

Caitlyn Jenner-ics

Alicia Keywords

Rows-ie Garden Perez

Kathleen Battleships

Placido Domino

How-ie Many Triangles Mandel / How-ie Man-del Triangles?

Anagram Magic Johnson / Anagram Magic Johnson Squares

William H. Maze-y

Tommy Hil-figgerits

Debra Messing Vowels

Emma Stepping Stones

Sean Penn-cil Pusher

Harrison Ford Square

Guest Ringo Starr / Ringo Starr Sums / Ringo Starr Words

Grand Tori Spelling

KakuRosie O’Donnell

Brick By Bricky Martin

AlphaBetty White Soup

KenKen Jennings

KenKen Watanabe

KenKen Kesey

KenKen Griffey

CarrieFisherOvers

Christo Geography

MaxineWatersPoint

Slide-O-Graham Greene

Plus Forest Whitaker

Bull’s-Eye SpiRalph Nader

Andrew Dice Clay Game

Right of Waylon Jennings / Point the Waylon Jennings

Word-A-Matt Lauer

Ernest Borgnine of Diamonds

Lou Diamond Phillips Rings / Lou Diamond Rings Phillips / Lou Diamond Mine Phillips

AccorDionne Warwick Words

AlphanumeRick Astley

Crypto-LimeRick Springfield

Bette Build-a-PyraMidler

StarspElle Macpherson

Top to BotTom Selleck

ComMonica Seles Bond

DilEmma Watson

Flower Tyrone Power

Quote CalculaTori Amos

KakuRoald Dahl

Group VaLucy Liu

Trevor No-ahcross and Down

Gerard Which Way Words

Wilson Pick-and-Choose It

Star Words Jones

Jack Black-Out

Dash-It Miihok

Tom Mix-Masterwords / Tom Mix-Master

Mixmaster Mike

Eric Clapboard-ton

DJ Logic Problem

Jim Abackus

Diagramnashless

Stevie Ray Vaughn and Diagramless Double Trouble

Lucky Clover Luciano

Grandmasterwords Flash, and his brothers Ringmaster Flash and Scoremaster Flash

Maxi-Headroom-Point

Mirror Imogene Coco

Charlize Take It From Theron

Dave Word Matthews

Mickey Rooney Tunes

John F KenHandy Things

On Your Groucho Marks

Stefanie Flower Powers

There was a submission that deserves its own introduction. One of our intrepid puzzlers went above and beyond with the following pitch:

I nominate Evan Rachel Word Seek.

I hear she’s done great work on the Home Boxes Office show Westwords, in which her character tries to find the Framelinks along her journey to self-discovery, without getting in Double Trouble. She hears a voice in her head, but Who’s Calling? It’s a real Mind Tickler!

She has quite the Dilemma because she needs the Missing Links to use Logic and Deduction while working out the Bits and Pieces Around the Bend towards the Maze until she reaches the End of the Line. What Is It? It’s a Revelation!

Oh god stop me.

And members of the PuzzleNation readership also got in on the fun!

On Facebook, Sandra Halbrook submitted the delightful entries Sela Word Arithmetic, Jude Lawgic Problems, and Marcia Cross Sums, and Brenda L. Reddy brought us the equally fun Ring Around-Rosie-O’Donnell and Bing-Cherry-Crosby.

Have you come up with any Penny Dell Puzzle Celebs entries 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!