Tag Archives: Penny Dell Puzzles

New Puzzle Sets for the Penny Dell Crosswords App!

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Hello puzzlers and PuzzleNationers!

That’s right, it’s a bonus blog post today because we’ve got some exciting news!

We’ve got a new puzzle set available for both the Android AND iOS versions of the Penny Dell Crossword App!

After a cold and windy winter, I think we’re all ready for spring, so to kick off the season right, we’ve got our Spring 2016 Deluxe Set! You get 30 easy, medium, and hard puzzles, plus 5 Spring-themed bonus puzzles!

But wait, there’s so much more!

We’ve got some mind-blowing new puzzle bundles for the iOS edition of the app as well!

Looking to catch up on previous collections? Well, our Mega Pack Volume 5 features Collections 9 and 10 in one handy bundle, and Mega Pack Volume 6 features Collections 11 and 12! Each set offers 300 puzzles to solve!

Or you could opt for our Supreme Volume 4, which brings together Collections 10, 11, and 12 for a 450-puzzle package!

But we’re not done yet! If you pick up Double Supreme Volume 2, you’ll double that, nabbing 900 puzzles in an array that includes Collections 7 through 12!

Still hungry for puzzles? We’ve got you covered with the Ultra Supreme, an 1,800 puzzle bundle so awesome that we needed two impressive adjectives to describe it!

And finally, for a treasure trove of puzzles unlike anything we’ve offered before, check out the aptly-named Big Bundle, which features over 2000 puzzles, including all of the 2015 Deluxe Sets!

It’s a certified puzzle bonanza! How can you go wrong?

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: Crossword Contest Conclusion edition!

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Welcome to Follow-Up Friday!

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 returning to the subject of crossword contests!

Last month, I announced the latest crossword contest from the topnotch puzzlers at Barany and Friends. The contest, titled Eliminating the Competition, wrapped up on February 8, but the answer to the meta puzzle concealed within each grid was only revealed this week!

As it turns out, the crafty cruciverbalists paid tribute to the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament by dropping the letters A, C, P, and T from the 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! Diabolical!

Open division puzzle theme answers:

  • They are left over after division: REMINDERS (“Remainders” with the A eliminated)
  • Lack of affection, say: HILLINESS (“Chilliness” with the C eliminated)
  • A cylindrical utensil used to flatten dough: ROLLING IN (“Rolling pin” with the P eliminated)
  • They’re often found in churches or on campuses: BELL OWERS (“Bell towers” with the T eliminated)

They also hid the reveal, MHU, in the lower right corner. (Fiendishly, MHU is MATCHUP with A, C, P, and T eliminated!)

You can check out the full details of the meta puzzle here, including the theme answers for both the Open Division puzzle and the Master Division puzzle, which was a doozy!

But there’s more! They’ve also announced the prizes for the winners, which include paid registrations to the ACPT, puzzle e-books, crossword subscriptions, autographed puzzle books, and specialized crossword puzzles with the winner’s name built into the grid!

They’ve truly gone all out this year to make the Eliminating the Competition contest something special. Kudos to George Barany, Ralph Bunker, John Child, Michael Hanko, and Roy Leban for creating a terrific challenge and a puzzly feast for solvers.

Did you accept the Barany and Friends challenge this year, fellow puzzlers and PuzzleNationers? Let us know if you did! We’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: West Wing 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 #PennyDellPresidentPuzzles 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 much of 2015, we collaborated on puzzle-themed hashtag games with our pals at Penny Dell Puzzles, and we’re doing the same in 2016 (after a one-month hiatus to recharge our brains)!

We’re starting off with this month’s hook in honor of Presidents’ Day: Penny Dell President Puzzles! We’re mashing up Penny Dell puzzles and anything and everything having to do with the presidents, vice presidents, their campaigns, their accomplishments, whatever you can think of that’s puzzly and presidential!

Examples include: Baracks and Mortar, John Missing Tylers, and Crosswording the Delaware!

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

Herbert Guess Hoover

Fore ‘n’ Taft / William How Many Triangles Taft

Dwight David Eisenhowmanytriangles?

Lucky Clover Cleveland

Millard Fill-Inmore

Franklin Pierce by Pierce / Franklin Piece by Piece

Tricky Dick Tock Word Seek

Ches-ter Games

Abraham Linkwords / Lincolnwords / Frame Lincolns / The Rail Split and Splicer / Honest ABC’s

Cartergories

Woodrow Boxes / Woodrows Garden Wilson

John Quincy Anagrams

Grant Tour

Loose Tyler

All Ford One

George “Dubya” Trouble Bush / George “Dubya” Crosser Bush

Dick Chain Words

Word Spiral Agnew

“Four Square and seven years ago…” / Four-Most and Seven-Up ago . . .

#SimonSaysVote

Mystery State of the Union

Secret Message Service

Feds and Tails / Heads & Tails to the Chief

Little Know Ye Who’s Calling? –or– Little Know Ye Who’s Coming and Going

Secretary of the Mystery State

Secretary of the Treasure Hunt

Quotefall of Berlin Wall

North American Free “Trade-Off” Agreement

Freedom of the (Penny) Press!

Tippecanoe and Tyler Two at a Time / Tippecanoe and Two by Two / Tippecanoe and Tiles, too.

Don’t Trade/Swap Horses in the Middle of the Road

Guess Who’s Calling But Hoover?

A Chicken in Everything’s Relative

Give ‘Em Sudoku, Harry!

In Your Heart, You Know He’s Right of Way!

In Your Guts, You Know the Odds Nuts!

A Leader, for a Change of Scene!

Putting People First and Last!

People Fighting Throwbacks

Oath of Trade-Office

Air Force One & Only

Inaugural Bowl Game

First and Last Lady

Democrat 6’s and 7’s

Presidential Medal of Foursomes

“I am not a Bookworms.”

“The only thing we have to fear is Here & There.”

“Ask not what your Mystery Country can do for You Know the Odds . . .”

Heal. Inspire. Ramble.

“I’m gonna Build-A-Quote and Mexico will pay for it.”

Have you come up with any Penny Dell President 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!

Puzzle Romance!

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Valentine’s Day is only a few days away, and a friend who knows I write a weekly puzzle blog asked if I’d be penning anything in particular for the blog regarding the holiday.

I replied that I was working on a post about puzzly ideas for Valentine’s Day gifts and experiences, similar to the post I did last year. And he laughed at the very idea of puzzle romance, the poor fool.

“Sir, how dare you doubt the power of puzzles to sway the heart of someone special!” I bellowed back, caught up in the moment.

I mean, seriously. Does this guy not realize that we’ve featured several wonderful stories of puzzle romance in this blog alone?

Heck, one of my favorite posts last year was about a puzzly proposal that our friends at Penny Dell Puzzles helped orchestrate.

escalators1

You can get the full story here, but in short, a puzzler in love reached out to PDP for their assistance in hiding his proposal within one of his girlfriend’s favorite puzzles, Escalators. They even did a small print run just for him to camouflage the proposal in a puzzle book!

It was a marvelous team effort, brilliantly executed…oh, and she said yes.

puzzlelove

Plus there’s this terrific story about a friend of mine who composed some cryptic-crossword-style clues as part of a gift for his longtime girlfriend. When she solved all of the clues, they spelled out the message “Truly happy being yours.”

There are all sorts of thoughtful and romantic puzzle ideas out there, from a relationship scavenger hunt like the one from Parks and Recreation to this video of a Rubik’s Cube-themed proposal at a speed-solving event:

With a little ingenuity — and maybe some puzzly friends — you can create a unique and wonderful experience for someone you love. Puzzle romance is real, my friends. Just look at this happy couple, united by their mutual love of puzzles:

daily-morning-awesomeness-35-photos-2342

I wanted to close this post out with a little something for all the puzzlers and PuzzleNationers out there. And with Valentine’s Day coming up, it seemed appropriate to whip up a Matchmaker puzzle for you to solve. Enjoy!

Fill in the missing first letter of each word in the column on the left. Next, look for a related word in the group at the right and put it in the blank in the second column. When the puzzle is completed, read the first letters of both columns in order, from top to bottom, to reveal a romantic song lyric.

matchmaker

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, like our Valentine’s Day-themed puzzle set!

2016_february_anim

Puzzles for Kids?

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Puzzling is a terrific activity for people of all ages. But most puzzles are designed with adults in mind, crafted with challenging vocabulary, misleading or tricky cluing, and devious designs meant to test your puzzly mettle.

Kids are often left behind. Why? Because, quite honestly, it’s hard to make quality puzzles with appropriate vocabulary and difficulty levels. Most kids’ puzzles are mind-numbingly easy, almost to the point of being patronizing. Where can you find quality puzzles designed with kids in mind?

Wonder no more! Puzzle constructor, author, and friend of the blog Eric Berlin has recently launched Puzzle Your Kids, a subscription puzzle series featuring topnotch puzzles for ages 9 and up!

Available in three-month, six-month, and one-year increments, each subscription guarantees two puzzles a week emailed right to you and designed with younger solvers in mind. And we’re not talking just crosswords! Based on the sample puzzles on the website, kids can expect some terrific puzzly variations on familiar shapes and styles to keep them on their toes.

[Check out this spiral grid design from one of the sample
puzzles on the website. Click here to see the full puzzle.]

As the author of the thoroughly enjoyable Winston Breen series of YA puzzle novels, Eric has a terrific sense of how to build puzzles that will challenge young minds without frustrating them.

I suspect Puzzle Your Kids will be the perfect gateway for new solvers, and just the fix young, established solvers need to foster a lifelong love of puzzles.

For more details on Puzzle Your Kids, click here to check out the full website.

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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Hello puzzlers and PuzzleNationers!

That’s right, it’s a bonus blog post today because we’ve got some exciting news!

We’ve got new puzzle sets available for both the Android AND iOS versions of the Penny Dell Crossword App!

For our iPhone and iPad users, we just launched Deluxe Fun Set 1, a collection of 30 easy, medium, and hard puzzles to test your puzzly mettle, plus 5 bonus puzzles you can unlock!

Not only that, but just in time for that most romantic of holidays, we’ve got our Valentine’s Day 2016 Deluxe Set! You get 30 easy, medium, and hard puzzles, plus 5 unlockable bonus puzzles with a Valentine’s theme!

And there’s more!

For our Android users, the Penny Dell Crosswords App now offers THREE full collections of crosswords. Each collection offers easy, medium, and hard puzzles for your enjoyment! And be sure to check out the in-app Puzzle Store for special discount offers!

It’s a veritable puzzle bonanza!

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 everything PuzzleNation on our website!