It’s Follow-Up Friday: Schools and Spheres edition!

Posted on January 8, 2016 by gmdirect

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 Kickstarter philanthropy!

[Image credit: for-preneur]

I’ve written about crowdfunding a lot in this blog, because over the last few years, platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo have changed how many puzzles and games are created, funded, and brought to market.

There’s a virtual board game and card game renaissance stemming from these websites, and many puzzle constructors are bypassing traditional publishing formats and taking their puzzle suites and projects straight to the audience this way.

But there’s also the opportunity to give back to your community in meaningful ways.

I recently stumbled across the Kickstarter campaign for StrataSphere, a strategy puzzle game from Family Games America that really caught my eye.

Like a next-level version of Connect Four and KerPlunk, StrataSphere challenges you to place your sliding tabs in various slots around the cube, then use them to drop your spheres to the bottom layer first.

But what most intrigued me about the project wasn’t the puzzle itself, but one of the crowdfunding options being offered. Instead of just pledging for a copy of the game for yourself, you could pledge a little more money and donate a copy of the game in your name to a school of your choosing. Puzzle philanthropy.

I reached out to the team at FGA to find out more about the project, and had the opportunity to chat with Paulette Hall, communications director for FGA.

Where did the idea for StrataSphere come from?

The game was originally envisioned and developed by German designer Claudia Herz, who originally named it BallCube. Claudia remembers that after spending time sketching and offering the idea to other game publishers she finally made a handmade sample of acrylic glass and presented it at a trade-show not too far from her home.

The reaction and feedback was overwhelming. People wanted to know everything about the game and know where it can be purchased. This is what encouraged her to pursue the project. With a combination of inspiration from Claudia and outer-space, we renamed the game StrataSphere 2.0.

For people unfamiliar with FGA, what sort of puzzles and puzzle-games are your bread and butter? Is StrataSphere a traditional FGA-style puzzle, or is it a new direction for you?

FGA’s tag-line, Learning Through Laughter, has been been incorporated into all of our gift, game, and puzzle products since being established in 1987. StrataSphere 2.0 is not so much a puzzle but a strategy tabletop game that is a more contemporary modern addition to our line of products.

Our more popular items include eco-friendly wooden games and puzzles like Cathedral, Don’t Break The Bottle, and our wood and wire puzzles. While this strategy game is new to FGA, FGA is not new to strategy games.

The option for supporters to donate an additional copy to a school of their choosing is one I’ve never seen before, and I’m surprised more Kickstarter campaigns haven’t utilized it. Is this the first product that has incorporated this sort of program? Is this a long-term goal for FGA going forward?

FGA helped raise funds for actor Ted Danson’s American Oceans Campaign in the late ’80s and early ’90s with their environmental games and puzzles such as Endangered and Colorful Kingdom. A percentage of sales was also given to the ASPCA.

Donations of FGA products go out yearly to schools and organizations. A big part of FGA is our ability to give back, and we wanted to start 2016 with a campaign that will help us continue to do that. Our students are our future, and the state of our school systems has geared our focus of this campaign to get valuable learning material back into our schools and into their hands.

I think this is not only a really exciting puzzle game, but a worthwhile cause as well. You can check out all the details on the StrataSphere Kickstarter page. They’re more than halfway to their funding goal, and I sincerely hope they make it there and beyond.

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PuzzleNation Product Review: Scrimish

Posted on January 7, 2016 by gmdirect

The best card games are simple. People love War and Poker and Hearts and Go Fish because, at their core, they’re games you can learn quickly and play endlessly. There are no long tutorials or play-throughs, so you can learn all the complexities and rules with ease.

It’s difficult to find puzzly card games that are as accessible and replayable. Scrimish, a card game created by Danny Zondervan and recently funded through Kickstarter, fits the bill nicely. The rules are simple, but the strategy in the actual game is what gives Scrimish major replay value.

[On a very festive battlefield, I’ve finished setting up my cards
(bottom of the frame), while my opponent is still working on hers.]

Scrimish is an elegant mix of War, Chess, and Memory.

Each player gets a set of 25 cards, arranging them into five piles of five cards each, face down. The goal? Find your opponent’s crown card before they find yours.

Then you take turns drawing a card from the top of one of your piles and attacking the top card of one of your opponent’s piles in a one-on-one battle. Here’s where the War aspects begin. You see, each card has a number value, and the higher number wins. The losing card is discarded, and the winning card goes back to whatever pile it came from.

So in every encounter, both players learn something, because even if you lost that attack, you’ve learned the value of one of the cards on top of one of your opponent’s piles.

That’s where the Memory aspect comes in, because you have to remember what cards of your opponent’s you’ve seen. (You can check your top cards or your piles as often as you and your opponent see fit.) Then you can plan other moves and try to uncover their crown card.

You’ve got shield cards to defend with, archer cards to attack with, numbered weapon cards to battle with, and one crown card to defend. So, essentially, you’re playing a miniature game of chess with your opponent, except your pieces are hidden from them.

And that’s what makes for such a satisfying playing experience. You’ve got all sorts of strategy going on, plus chances for misdirection in both your attacks and your placement of cards at the beginning of the game. Do you go out heavy with high numbered cards early, or do you test their defenses with low cards? Do you arrange attack stacks and defensive stacks, or do your spread your resources out across all five stacks?

Plus, every card you attack with is one less you have in your stacks. So you’ve got a resource management aspect as well. All of this gameplay and puzzly potential, with fewer cards than your standard poker deck.

It takes only a few minutes to learn, but all the thought that goes into it makes every game of Scrimish feel fresh and new.

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Puppy Puzzling!

Posted on January 5, 2016 by gmdirect

Most of the time when I write about puzzles, I write about humans solving them, because we are, by a long shot, the biggest consumers of puzzles and games in the world.

But, from time to time, I learn about other species that also have a knack for solving puzzles, and I welcome them to the puzzle-solving community. In the past, we’ve talked about crows, cockatoos, and octopuses solving various mechanical puzzles.

And then a friend of the blog brought another puzzle-solving species to my attention: dogs!

I shouldn’t have been surprised by this. After all, one of my dogs has a knack for getting his tennis ball stuck in the strangest corners and beneath furniture that shouldn’t allow a tennis ball at all!

So I did a little research, and it turns out, there’s an entire puzzle-solving industry devoted entirely to dogs. They’re almost exclusively mechanical puzzles with food rewards, just like the puzzles we’ve seen birds and octopuses solve, but they involve the same sort of step-by-step chain puzzle-solving. And some of it gets pretty complicated!

There are one-step devices, like the Trixie Dog Activity Poker Box, which involves four boxes that open in different ways.

There are two-step devices, like the Jigsaw Glider, which requires the dog to open pieces on either side and then shift the center piece back and forth in order to nab every treat inside.

In a similar vein, there’s the Doggy Brain Train 2-in-1, a food-centric version of a sliding tile puzzle, where the dog must deduce that there’s food beneath each disk, and slide the disks aside to acquire the treats beneath.

And the puzzles only grow more complex from there. In the Dog Activity Gambling Tower, the dog has to pull away three floor pieces in order to make the treats drop, like a snacky version of Ker-Plunk.

Various companies produce each of these products. But the queen of puppy puzzles is clearly Nina Ottosson, who has a fleet of food-puzzle products to put your puppy to the test.

Check out this one, the MixMax Puzzle B:

It’s the second difficulty level in a series of toys, where the dog has to rotate the center piece, push out one of the cones (with treats inside), rotate the piece again, and finally free the cone and the treats. That is a LOT of work for a few treats.

She also has ones where the dog has to remove one element to unlock a little drawer containing a treat. In this video, a dog named Amos solves the Dog Casino, a Nina Ottosson food-puzzle toy that uses this puzzle style:

We can officially add dogs to the elite puzzle-solving ranks of crows, cockatoos, octopuses, and humans, though I must admit, it’s a little embarrassing to realize that those other four species are all smart enough to do their own puzzle-solving for treats. No one ever gives me a treat for solving a puzzle.

Hmmm. Maybe they’re even smarter than we thought.

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The Year Ahead

Posted on January 1, 2016 by gmdirect

Normally today I would be doing a Follow-Up Friday post, but since it’s the first day of 2016, instead of looking back, I thought I would look forward and talk a little bit about what’s to come in 2016!

On the PuzzleNation Blog side of things, I’ve got some great stuff planned for the new year.

For instance, game and puzzle reviews. Good lord, I have the fruits of so many Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns to show you, plus 2016 is promising to be a great year for both puzzles and games, so I have no doubt there are many surprises and terrific solving experiences awaiting the PuzzleNation audience next year.

I’m also bringing back our interview segment 5 Questions. In the past, we’ve had musicians, comedians, puzzle constructors, and even a game-show host appear for 5 Questions, and I’ve already lined up a few interviews that should really interest the readership.

Also, after the positive response to the interview we did with Fred when we announced the addition of a free daily puzzle to the Penny Dell Crosswords App, I’m hoping to interview the rest of the PuzzleNation Team in 2016 and give our fellow PuzzleNationers a glimpse behind the curtain!

On the app side, Fred and the PuzzleNation Team are keeping mum when it comes to new apps and features, but that’s simply because they know I’d immediately run to you guys with any news I heard. *laughs*

But our 2015 Deluxe Combo puzzle set AND the new Penny Dell Crosswords App for Android devices should tide you over until I can pry a few juicy secrets from Fred and the team.

And, of course, I’d love to hear from you! What sorts of posts would you like to see from PuzzleNation Blog in 2016? Let me know!

Thank you for all your support in 2015. On behalf of PuzzleNation, I can promise you that 2016 will be our best, most ambitious year yet!

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PuzzleNation Looks Back at 2015!

Posted on December 29, 2015 by gmdirect

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 immensely proud of the contributions both PuzzleNation Blog and PuzzleNation made to the puzzle community as a whole.

Over the last year, we explored dice games and tile games, apps and pen-and-paper puzzles. We met designers, constructors, and creative types of all kinds. We cracked brain teasers and tackled mind-bending riddles.

We explored the history of puzzles, broadened our understanding of how puzzles and games contribute to brain health, and celebrated the lives of puzzle greats Bernice Gordon, Henry Hook, Merl Reagle, and Leslie Billig, who were taken from us too soon.

We spread the word about numerous worthwhile Kickstarters and Indiegogo campaigns, watching with glee as a puzzle/game renaissance continued to amaze and surprise us with innovative new ways to play and puzzle.

We celebrated International TableTop Day, the debut of The Indie 500 crossword tournament, a new Star Wars movie, the 80th anniversary of Monopoly, new world records set by Rubik’s Cube solvers, and a puzzly wedding proposal, and we were happy to share so many remarkable puzzly landmark moments with you. Heck, we even solved the mystery of The Dress!

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. I recently posted my 450th blog post, and I’m even more excited to write for you now than I was when I started.

And that’s just the blog. PuzzleNation’s good fortune and accomplishments in 2015 went well beyond that.

In January, we launched the Penny Dell Bible Word Search for iPad, and in March we started our monthly hashtag games. In May, we added Penny Dell Jumbo Crosswords 2 for iOS devices, and July saw the debut of our Crossword Clue Challenge every weekday on Twitter and Facebook.

But the standout showpiece of our puzzle app library has been the Penny Dell Crossword App. With our Dell Collection puzzle sets, our monthly Deluxe puzzle sets, and the 2015 Deluxe Combo (not to mention our various value packs and supreme bundles), we maintained a steady stream of quality puzzle content for solvers and PuzzleNationers.

We added a free daily puzzle feature for all users, and just before Christmas, we launched the Penny Dell Crossword App for Android devices, ensuring that more puzzle lovers than ever have access to the best mobile crossword app on the market today.

[Fred, our Director of Digital Games, shows off the Penny Dell Crossword App
at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in March.]

And your response has been terrific! We amassed over 1500 followers for the blog and we’re closing in on 1700 followers of the PuzzleNation Facebook page, numbers that are both humbling and very encouraging.

2015 was our most productive, most exciting, and most creatively fulfilling year to date, and 2016 promises to be even brighter.

Thank you for your enthusiasm, your support, and your feedback, PuzzleNationers. Have a fantastic New Year. We’ll see you in 2016!

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It’s Follow-Up Friday: December Wordplay edition!

Posted on December 25, 2015 by gmdirect

Welcome to Follow-Up Friday! And Merry Christmas!

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, we’re returning to the twin subjects of puns and wordplay!

As everyone on our PuzzleNation Facebook page knows, we post memes and puns twice a day every Wednesday in a celebration of linguistic playfulness we call Wordplay Wednesday.

On Wednesday, I shared a few holiday-themed images. But I had so many left over that I thought I’d share them with you today! Please enjoy!