Tag Archives: Penny Press

Word Search Dos and Don’ts!

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Today, in the interest of both public service and better puzzling overall, I thought I’d present a brief list of dos and do-not-dos when it comes to constructing word search (or word seek) puzzles.

Now, full disclosure, I will be talking about PuzzleNation apps a bit here, but only because they’re great examples of well-crafted puzzles, and a little shameless self-promotion never hurt anybody. *smiles*

So, without further ado, let’s talk word searches!

DO:

Offer fun bonuses, like trivia, facts, and bonus entries to hunt down!

These additions can make for a richer, more fulfilling solving experience.

DO NOT DO:

Do NOT create a holiday word search without being very careful to edit out any questionable or inappropriate vocabulary.

For instance, these words do not belong in a kids’ Christmas word search.

DO:

Make sure your puzzle has audience-appropriate vocabulary and a family-friendly theme.

For instance, the Penny Dell Bible Word Search app features entire passages from the Bible, broken up into searchable words and phrases.

DO NOT DO:

Do NOT make a 50 Shades of Grey-themed word search and distribute it to middle school students!

Yes, this actually happened.

DO:

Freshen up the word search formula with interesting and challenging variations.

[An Around the Bend word seek from Penny Press.]

Our friends at Penny/Dell Puzzles have some really clever variant word searches, like Missing Vowels, Missing List, Zigzag, and plenty of others. Whether you’re discovering bonus messages, finding craftily hidden words, or dodging red herrings planted by clever constructors, you’ll find plenty to keep you interested.

DO NOT DO:

Do NOT get a word search grid full of swearing and foul language tattooed on your lower back.

No, I’m not including a link or a picture on this one. Trust me, it exists, and it definitely belongs on the Do-not-do list.

Well, there you have it! Some important dos and do-not-dos of word searches and word seeks. With these few simple rules (and cautionary tales), you can craft high-quality, fun, worthwhile puzzles for friends, family, students, and more.

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: Valentine 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 with one day before the deluge of flowers, candy, teddy bears, and romance, I’d like to return to the subject of Valentine’s Day puzzles!

You might not have heard, but we’ve got two new puzzle sets for the Penny Dell Crosswords app! The newest is Penny Dell Crosswords Collection Four, but we also recently released our Valentine’s Day Deluxe Set!

 

Both are available for purchase within the app and waiting to keep you and your loved ones busy with Valentine’s Day puzzly goodness!

Our friends at Penny/Dell Puzzles are also getting into the spirit of the day! They’re offering a free downloadable Valentine’s puzzle packet, a Valentine’s Framework puzzle, AND some puzzly valentines for kids! (As well as 15% off all month long!)

Not only that, but friend of the blog George Barany pointed me to this puzzle created by fellow constructor Charles Deber for Valentine’s Day!

Check out that lovely and clever heart in the center! You can click here to download and solve the puzzle. (Don’t worry, the grid is bigger and easier to read in the link.)

Have a marvelous Valentine’s Day, friends and fellow PuzzleNationers!

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!

Penny Dell Crosswords featured in the App Store!

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Hello there, fellow puzzlers and PuzzleNationers!

Yes, it’s true that we don’t normally post on Mondays, but we’ve got some exciting news to share with you and we just couldn’t wait ’til tomorrow!

Our friends at Apple are featuring the Penny Dell Crosswords App on the App Store for iPad!

The feature is listed for iPad and the app is available for iPad, iPhone, AND iPod touch devices! You can download the app for free by clicking here to get started puzzling!

Please share this post with your friends, family, and fellow puzzle-lovers!

Thank you to Apple for the attention and thank you to all PuzzleNationers everywhere for your support and enthusiasm! We’ll be back tomorrow with your regularly scheduled blog post!

Scaling a Word Ladder to Success!

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word-ladders-1

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.

lewis_carroll_quote_2

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!

These puzzles deliver!

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Puzzles are all around us. They’re in our newspapers and on our phones, they’re lurking in math problems and board games and children’s toys.

But as it turns out, according to an article forwarded to me by puzzler and friend of the blog Cathy Quinn, they’re also on our stamps.

At least in Macau, that is.

Late last year, Macau Post released the latest stamps in their Science and Technology series. Previous editions have featured the Golden Ratio, Fractals, and Cosmology, but this time around, they selected a topic near and dear to the hearts of many puzzlers:

Magic squares.

For the uninitiated, a magic square is a grid where the numbers within add up to the same total in every row, column, and diagonal.

Our friends at Penny/Dell Puzzles utilize patterns like this in their Anagram Magic Square puzzle, where a word to anagram accompanies each number in the diagram, eventually spelling out a bonus phrase or quotation.

But at its core, a magic square is about cleverly balancing every element until you reach a harmonious arrangement. It’s a curiously meditative sort of puzzle solving, and I can see how it would appeal to the meticulous nature of stamp collectors worldwide.

Here are the six stamps currently available through Macau Post.

There’s a classic 4×4 magic square grid in the upper left and an ancient Latin palindrome in the upper right, as well as part of a 4th-century Chinese palindromic poem in the lower left and a geometric puzzle in the lower right where the pieces in the inner squares can make all of the designs in the outer squares.

Not only that, but three additional stamps will be released this year, making a total of nine themed stamps, and wouldn’t you know it? The stamps themselves can be arranged to form a magic square when assembled, based on the values printed in the corner of each stamp.

Just another sign that puzzle magic is alive and thriving all across the world.

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!