Tag Archives: Pop culture

PuzzleNation Product Review: Pink Hijinks, Chrononauts, and Fluxx: The Board Game

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Looney Labs is a game company with a creative model everyone can get behind: high replay value through wildly interactive, adaptable game play. Perhaps best known for their card game Fluxx, Looney Labs games are designed for portability, packing a lot of punch into smaller, more efficient packaging.

They offered us the opportunity to try out three of their games for the Holiday Puzzly Gift Guide, each with its own unique flavor and playing style, and we put them to the full PuzzleNation Blog test.

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The set-up for Pink Hijinks seems simple enough. Three stacks of pink pyramids (small on top of medium on top of large, like a little tree) occupy the middle row of a 3×3 grid.

Based on the roll of the die, you and your opponent maneuver your pieces with one of two goals in mind: either trying to either fill your home row with all three pyramids of a given size, or pushing all nine pyramids into your opponent’s row.

It’s a miniature chess game, allowing for offensive and defensive strategies. After a few rounds, we started improvising new rules and different gameplay styles, and discovered how much fun you could have with nine little pink pyramids. Pretty good for a game that fits in your pocket.

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Pink Hijinks is part of Looney Labs’ multi-colored Looney Pyramids series, an ever-expanding line of puzzle games built around their signature pyramid game pieces. Not only can you buy individual games, but the company is constantly releasing new variations on their games through their website, allowing players to combine pieces from multiple Looney Pyramids products and play brand-new games. (They’ve even compiled a listing of fan-designed games using Looney Pyramids!)

As far as I can tell, the Looney Pyramids series has the loftiest of goals: to offer as many unique playing experiences as a deck of cards, arguably the most adaptable tool in a gamester’s arsenal. And based on their lineup thus far, Looney Labs is well on their way toward reaching that goal.

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Time travel isn’t easy. If it was, everyone would do it. And Looney Labs takes that idea to the next level with Chrononauts, a card game where multiple time travelers are manipulating history, capturing artifacts, and racing to return to their own time with their missions complete.

Chrononauts is all about the cards. You’ve got mission cards, ID cards, timeline cards that make up the playing space, artifact cards, cards that change history (and others that change it back), as well as cards that can help or hinder your fellow time travelers.

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The history-changing aspect is the most puzzly part of the game, as you determine what moments to change (and which to protect from your opponents) in order for your timeline to come to pass, but ensuring you don’t accidentally end the game by creating too many temporal paradoxes. The designers did an impressive job figuring out how major points in history were interconnecting, and watching the effect ripple down through the cards after making a bold history-altering move is arguably the best part of the game.

My one caveat regarding Chrononauts is that the game goes far too quickly with only two players. It’s a game designed around consequences, and the more consequences that are out of your hands, the more engaging and challenging the game becomes. I’d recommend you always recruit as many players as possible to make the gameplay last.

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There are certain things you take for granted when playing a board game. You pick your game piece, and that’s yours for the duration of the game. You draw a given number of cards per turn. The board itself is static, so you can strategize.

But in Fluxx: The Board Game (titled to distinguish it from Fluxx: The Card Game), all of these givens are up for grabs, making for easily the most gleefully chaotic board game experience I’ve ever had. The board is made up of nine individual tiles, which can be shifted or rotated by your fellow players. The rules can be changed, affecting the number of spaces you move per round, how many cards you can hold, and even how many goals you must achieve before the game is over.

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[A simple punch card helps players keep track of the ever-shifting rules.]

It’s mind-melting fun, a game that demands constant awareness and a strong ability to think on your feet, since the rules can change in an instant. (One game, a card was played that made the players switch game pieces, so I went from little blue men to little green circles, and the swerve threw me off for at least two rounds.)

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Fluxx is the perfect example of the Looney Labs creative model: high replay value through wildly interactive, adaptable game play. Every game of Fluxx is different, not only because the rules are so malleable, but because with multiple games under your belt, you and your opponents become craftier, more adeptly manipulating the board and the rules to your advantage. It’s a great time.

I think puzzle fans and board game fans alike will find quite a bit to enjoy with the games from Looney Labs. So if you’ve got some Christmas cash burning a hole in your pocket, check them out!

Thanks for visiting the PuzzleNation blog today! You can like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, cruise our boards on Pinterest, check out our Tumblr, download our Classic Word Search iBook (recently featured by Apple in the Made for iBooks category!), play our games at PuzzleNation.com, or contact us here at the blog!

100th Anniversary Roundup!

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It’s been nearly a week since the 100th Anniversary of the Crossword, and so many newspapers, websites, and bloggers wrote about it that I’m just now sitting down to compile some of them for your viewing pleasure.

Now, I’d be remiss if I didn’t start with the interactive Google Doodle that had everyone wishing me a happy hundredth anniversary a day early. *laughs*

But, as it turns out, that wasn’t the first puzzle created for Google’s signature doodle! Check out this story from the Washington Post about Merl Reagle’s eleventh-hour constructing wizardry that saved the day! (And based on Google’s ubiquitous nature, what will probably end up as the most-solved crossword of all-time.)

[Here’s a picture from constructor and magician David Kwong’s Instagram, showing the whole family getting in on solving Google’s anniversary doodle.]

Our friends at Penny/Dell Puzzles posted a terrific video of Will Shortz discussing the future of puzzles, and added their own tribute by creating a marvelous book commemorating the 100th anniversary. (They’ve also got a pretty nifty crossword app you can check out here.)

Letters of Note had perhaps my favorite post in honor of the anniversary: a letter from Frank Sinatra to then-New York Times Crossword editor Eugene T. Maleska.

The Wall Street Journal offered an interesting look into how Arthur Wynne’s “word-cross” became known as the crossword.

There were numerous puzzles created to honor the anniversary. The Orange County Register published David Steinberg’s contribution, and NPR’s Ask Me Another posted a curious puzzle of their own!

These are just a few of the links that caught my eye, but if you’re still hungry for more 100th Anniversary goodness, check out this impressive collection of links compiled by the folks at Puzzazz.

And, of course, you can always click the previous button and check out PuzzleNation’s 100th Anniversary post, where I talk about not only Arthur Wynne’s puzzle, but my own anniversary as a puzzler.

As we step into a second century of Crossword history, I’m sure we have plenty of marvelous wordplay surprises coming our way.

Thanks for visiting the PuzzleNation blog today! You can like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, cruise our boards on Pinterest, check out our Tumblr, download our Classic Word Search iBook (recently featured by Apple in the Made for iBooks category!), play our games at PuzzleNation.com, or contact us here at the blog!

The greatest gift exchange there never was…

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It’s Christmas Eve, so hopefully you’ve perused our Holiday Puzzly Gift Guide and completed all your shopping in a timely and not-at-stress-inducing, hair-tearing-out manner.

But if not, fear not! Some of the puzzliest and cleverest people in the artistic, board game, and puzzle communities may have just come up with the perfect last-minute solution for you.

You’re probably familiar with the concept of the White Elephant gift exchange, wherein everyone supplies a gift, and then a game of keeping or swapping takes over, allowing people to take turns, develop friendly little rivalries, and generally enjoy a bit of holiday frivolity.

But have you ever heard of a White Heffalump exchange?

This year, numerous game designers, artists, and puzzlers were recruited to participate in a White Elephant gift exchange. But this exchange had a marvelous twist: every gift was imaginary.

So everyone involved — including such names as James Ernest (head of Cheapass Games, publishers of Veritas), John Kovalic (artist for Munchkin and creator of ROFL!) and puzzler constructions Eric Berlin and Brendan Emmett Quigley — created an imaginary gift for the exchange.

And then they all played the game on Twitter, so fans and friends could enjoy the madcap holiday cheer.

Here are a few of the “gifts” created for the White Heffalump gift exchange:

It’s easy to imagine a trip with The Doctor would be a highly sought-after prize.

What’s more heartwarming than retroactively sharing a friendship since first grade? (And possibly an iron-clad alibi, should you need one…)

It’s like one of those grab-the-money booths from an old game show, but with SWEETS!

A formidable steed and a delicious meal all in one. You can’t lose!

And the wily Matt Forbeck offered up the ideal machine for generating presents for next year’s White Heffalump exchange.

From “time to play with toys” and a dapper platypus to a 29-word crossword and a wish-granting pocket pet, the gifts were hilarious, innovative, and absolutely ridiculous, and the gameplay back and forth as people traded and stole gifts was just as entertaining.

[For more details on the exchange, check out Matt Forbeck’s write-up here.]

So, if you’re still struggling with gift ideas, you can always go the White Heffalump route. It’s creative, low-budget, and loads of fun. Enjoy!

Thanks for visiting the PuzzleNation blog today! You can like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, cruise our boards on Pinterest, check out our Tumblr, download our Classic Word Search iBook (recently featured by Apple in the Made for iBooks category!), play our games at PuzzleNation.com, or contact us here at the blog!

Happy Anniversary, Crosswords!

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Today is the 100th anniversary of the crossword. (Not yesterday, as Google’s marvelous Merl Reagle-penned crossword doodle might’ve had you believe.) One hundred years ago today, Arthur Wynne’s “word-cross” puzzle debuted in The New York World, kickstarting a phenomenon that has gone well past pencil-and-paper, more relevant and influential today than ever before.

Let’s take a look at that very first puzzle, shall we?

[For the solution and a slightly larger grid image, click here.]

In modern crossword terms, this diamond shape is known as an open puzzle or a cut puzzle, since it’s not the standard crossword square. I’m a fan of cut puzzles, because their shapes draw the eye. H-shaped, Z-shaped, and diamond-shaped puzzles aren’t uncommon among cut puzzles, and it’s always a treat to see one when flipping through a book of crosswords.

And it’s sort of fascinating to see all the differences between this puzzle and the modern crossword, despite its utter familiarity.

There’s the set word, the singlet letters at the puzzle’s four corners that don’t get crossed, and those enormous numbers that leave no writing space for the actual letter. There’s also that very curious cluing order, which took me a second to decode: the acrosses along the left side of the diamond grid, then the acrosses along the right side of the diamond grid, then the downs from furthest left to furthest right. Figuring that out was something of a puzzle in itself!

It’s not hard to see the appeal of the crossword from the very beginning. The grid is open, not daunting at all, and that casual spirit no doubt attracted plenty of intrigued first-time solvers. The mechanics of the puzzle are solid, and the synonym-heavy cluing style is an easy introduction to cluing.

Some of those clues, like 23-30’s [A river in Russia] for NEVA wouldn’t be out of place in a grid today. Though hopefully you wouldn’t come across a clue like 10-18’s [The fibre of the gomuti palm] for DOH too often. Wow, that is a seriously tough one. (Plus, I suspect modern solvers would get it much faster if clued as [Homer’s exclamation].)

Still, there’s a sense of humor to the construction. Look at clue 18-19 [What this puzzle is]. HARD. Well, no kidding, Mr. Wynne, when you expect us to know the fibre of the gomuti palm. *laughs*

What about clue 6-22? [What we all should be] MORAL. Wynne’s puzzle has a message. =)

Solving the puzzle was a curious experience, both as a solver and constructor. On the construction side, the word DOVE appears twice, a serious no-no in the modern puzzle community.

It would need editing to make the cut these days, but Wynne’s word-cross remains a worthwhile and laudable start for a long, proud legacy of wordplay and puzzling.

That legacy is quite personal for me, since this year also marks my ten-year anniversary working in the puzzle business. (That anniversary came less than a week before today’s centennial celebrations.)

I make a living thanks to Arthur Wynne’s wildly-successful creation, and I am grateful every day that I get to work on puzzles, or come here and write about them, all the while contributing to a community with a century-long tradition of humor, playfulness, intelligence, and style.

Thank you, Arthur.

Thanks for visiting the PuzzleNation blog today! You can like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, cruise our boards on Pinterest, check out our Tumblr, download our Classic Word Search iBook (recently featured by Apple in the Made for iBooks category!), play our games at PuzzleNation.com, or contact us here at the blog!

How to Make a Crossword: Title and Cleanup Advice

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You might consider the title an afterthought, but titles are important because they have to give you a hint regarding the puzzle’s theme or wordplay, but without giving away that theme or game entirely.

Crossword guru Eileen Saunders mentioned that title ideas can come from anywhere, citing the time that “a golf-themed puzzle’s title came from seeing a billboard that said ‘Sunday Driver’.”

Whether you’re making the puzzle as a gift or planning to submit it for publication, always make time to look it over.

Constructor Robin Stears’s closing ritual: “The last thing I do before I submit the puzzle is to double-check it one more time, ensuring that I haven’t used one of the words in the grid as a clue for another word, e.g., [Era] for EPOCH, and vice versa. I also read every clue to make sure it makes sense to me -— if the answer is a foreign word/phrase, I make sure the clue reflects that (e.g., [Detector of les odeurs] for NEZ).

“There’s nothing more frustrating than spending hours constructing a puzzle only to have it rejected because of a silly mistake, like misspelling Arnold Schwarzenegger’s name (true story).”

PuzzleNation Product Reviews: The Stars Are Right and Castellan

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Steve Jackson Games is a recognized and well-regarded name in both the roleplaying and board game communities. With a tradition of creating games that offer engaging and curious twists on well-worn puzzle and game templates, you never quite know what you’re getting yourself into when you pick up one of their products.

They offered us the opportunity to try out two of their games for the Holiday Puzzly Gift Guide, each with its own unique flavor and playing style, and we put them to the full PuzzleNation Blog test.

The Stars Are Right is a multiplayer card game where you rearrange the stars in the sky in order to summon minions and gather enough power to summon an elder god and destroy the world. It’s perfect for Christmas! =)

Seriously, though, this game is an effective fusion of several types of strategy and puzzle games. You have a simplified Magic: The Gathering-style card game with the different minions you can summon, as well as a wonderfully illustrated variant on a sliding tile puzzle in the 5×5 sky tiles laid out between the players.

Each card grants you a different opportunity to manipulate the sky (by flipping tiles over, swapping them, or shifting an entire row) and create new constellations. The more complicated the constellation, the more powerful the creature you summon, and the more points you get.

This sort of chain-solving and forward thinking becomes both more challenging and more enjoyable as you compete with other players and race toward your 10-point goal and victory. It’s as exciting to see someone change the sky to your advantage as it is frustrating to see your hard work foiled by an opportunistic move.

The artistic style of The Stars Are Right is thoroughly weird, channeling the works of H.P. Lovecraft and offering up all sorts of gross and bizarre creatures, which is juxtaposed nicely by the effective (and quite lovely) style of the sky tiles. It creates a curious separation between down-and-dirty (the card game aspect) vs. high-and-lofty (the elegant tile-puzzle aspect) that’s quite enjoyable.

All in all, The Stars Are Right is not only a strong introduction into more complicated card games, but a thoroughly fun puzzle game.

Which brings us to today’s second product review!

Castellan is a two-player puzzle-game where players both compete and collaborate to build an elaborate castle.

Every time a player completes a courtyard — walling it off completely from the rest of the game board — that courtyard is claimed, and the player is awarded points based on the number of towers framing the courtyard. The players have two small decks of cards that determine what pieces — towers, short walls, and long walls — they can play on their next turn, and once the cards are exhausted and every piece has been played, the player with the higher number of points wins, claiming the castle.

One of the most intuitive puzzle-games I’ve played in a long time, Castellan requires only a quick skim of the simple instructions before playing, making it a great introductory puzzle game for first-timers. And the molded plastic pieces add a wonderful tactile dimension to the playing experience. What kid, young or old, doesn’t want to build a castle?

But since the level of strategy and complexity is dictated by the players, this is hardly a game for kids alone. Puzzlers will find their spacial reasoning challenged as they assemble courtyards in their heads and try to determine which cards to play. Tactics and forward planning play a huge role in the gameplay, as you try to seize opportunities left by your opponent, claim courtyards, and use up your remaining pieces in ways that help you but won’t leave openings for your opponent to take advantage of.

And, quite honestly, it’s just fun to watch the board sprawl out as more and more pieces are added.

Castellan is appropriate for practically all ages (while The Stars Are Right’s monster art and general sensibilities could prove offputting to younger players or more traditional puzzle-gamers), but both bring something new to the table in terms of strategy, interactive gameplay, and puzzly challenges.

Thanks for visiting the PuzzleNation blog today! You can like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, cruise our boards on Pinterest, check out our Classic Word Search iBook (recently featured by Apple in the Made for iBooks category!), play our games at PuzzleNation.com, or contact us here at the blog!