Tag Archives: Penny Press

500 Blog Posts!

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[Image courtesy of gailperry.com.]

I wrote my first post for PuzzleNation Blog in August of 2012, over three and a half years ago. And I recently posted my five-hundredth blog post on this site.

You might think after three posts a week for years, I’d be burned out. But it’s quite the opposite. I enjoy exploring the world of puzzles, delving into history, cracking the memes and riddles that go viral, interviewing all sorts of puzzle creators and fans, trying out new games and puzzles…and sharing all of that with the PuzzleNation audience.

It’s a privilege, it really is. In many ways, I’ve become the voice of PuzzleNation, and I take that responsibility seriously. I try to both inform and entertain, and I’m constantly hunting for something new and unexpected to offer you.

And speaking of you, the PuzzleNation readership, it kind of blows my mind how many different ways I get to interact with you.

[Image courtesy of Forbes.com.]

I mean, first and foremost, there’s PuzzleNation Blog. Three times a week (and sometimes more), I meander up and down the seemingly endless avenues of the puzzle world and discuss them with you. What a treat.

And then there’s Facebook and Twitter, where I not only discuss all of our projects, but I can play games like the Crossword Clue Challenge every weekday and try to outwit you. (Spoiler alert: I rarely rarely do.) I also have opportunities to answer questions, share posts and information from fellow puzzlers, and really engage people one-on-one, something that feels increasingly elusive these days.

We’ve got the PuzzleNation newsletter! We recently sent out our second edition of the newsletter to subscribers, so keep your eyes peeled. (And if you haven’t signed up yet, you can click this link to get started.)

[Image courtesy of…these guys.]

We also have our monthly hashtag games with our compatriots over at Penny Dell Puzzles, like #PennyDellPresidentPuzzles and our newest one this week, #PennyDellPuzzleDisney. Reading the hilarious and clever puns and bits of wordplay conjured up by friends and fellow PuzzleNationers alike is one of the highlights of the month for me.

And honestly, I want more of that. We have platforms on Tumblr, Pinterest, and Instagram, and I’d love to have some sort of weekly interactive game on each one. (In fact, next week, I’ll be trying out a puzzle game twice a week on Instagram. You heard it here first!)

Plus, I’m hoping to organize some kind of giveaway in the next month or so. I’m not sure of the specifics just yet, so stay tuned for that. (I do have some terrific prizes lined up already, though.)

It’s a little daunting to be celebrating five hundred blog posts with you. I know some of you have been with us since the very beginning, and I’m grateful. I know some of you have only recently started following us, and I’m happy to welcome you. Some of you I know by name, and many of you, I don’t know at all, but I’m hoping to change that in the future.

In any case, thank you for your support, your enthusiasm, your ideas, your comments, your feedback, your shares and likes and clicks and hearts and thumbs up and everything else we’ve shared. I look forward to many many more.

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: 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!

What Crosswords (May) Tell Us About Language

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Several friends of the blog linked me to a post in The New York Times about the ever-evolving use of language in crosswords.

Essentially, the authors analyzed the frequency of foreign word use in NYT crosswords, and then extrapolated what that means about our language and our cultural evolution and development over the course of the crossword century.

And the authors unearthed some interesting patterns when it comes to the use of foreign language entries and clues: they’ve gone down. “Foreign-language clues and answers peaked in the 1960s and now make up less than 4 percent.”

The authors point out that this contrasts with the growing globalization of communication and pop culture, perhaps making a statement about crosswords as a linguistic bulwark against dastardly foreign words — the wordy equivalent of keeping the metric system at bay with feet and miles and other Imperial units.

But to me, that simply reflects the ongoing refinement and evolution of puzzles away from obscurities — both foreign and domestic — in favor of better, more accessible crossings. To be honest, a lot of these foreign references qualify as crosswordese, because you’d rarely, if ever, encounter them in casual conversation, even in this increasingly globalized society.

I often joke that crosswords have improved my knowledge of African animals, European rivers, and Asian mountain ranges, none of which really affect my life in any other way. I can file them away with all the high school science I learned, like the definition of osmosis.

Some of their assertions did make me laugh, though. In their closing paragraph, they state:

But we are more likely to encounter Uma as an actress (117 answers since 1990), and not as a Hindu goddess (five answers, none since 1953).

[Pictured: a Hindu goddess enjoying a milkshake.]

And at no point do they mention that Uma as an actress would likely have been used — quite gratefully — by constructors in the ’40s and ’50s, had there been a prominent (or even remotely famous) Uma in films at the time. Heck, I’ve been begging for someone to discover the next megastar Una or Ona or Oona or Ana to help revitalize my cluing.

There will always be a drive to innovate new entries and keep up with the latest in popular culture. That’s part of what maintains the quality and interest in crosswords: they evolve with us.

Admittedly, it’s fun to imagine someone hundreds or thousands of years from now, trying to reconstruct our society and general knowledge based on crossword entries and cluing. They’d no doubt wonder why poetic terminology and female sheep were so important to us.

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!

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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!