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Movie Review: Mystery Island

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Hallmark mystery movies have employed a lot of puzzly tropes over the years.

We’ve seen locked room mysteries, and crossword mysteries, and murder mystery dinners-turned-murder mysteries, but I don’t know if we’ve seen an escape-room-style-puzzle-fueled-murder-mystery-turned-murder-mystery before.

Mystery Island combines some classic murder mystery elements — isolated place, limited number of suspects, unexpected murder — and throws them in a blender with some riddles. It makes a mystery-in-a-mystery. We’re almost to “riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma” level here.

But how does it hold up in the pantheon of Hallmark mystery movies? Let’s find out.

First, though, a heads-up: I’ll recap the story below, and then give my thoughts on the whole endeavor. If you’d like to read my conclusions but skip the full recap, scroll down to the bottom of the post.

Ready? Okay, let’s dig in!

FILM RECAP

The film opens on the big climactic reveal of a murder mystery. We have British accents, a man with an eyepatch and a white tuxedo, and elaborate hifalutin names. The Baroness Alcott believes she knows who the murderer is, but she got it wrong.

Again.

Drat.

Later, she complains on the phone to her friend, Dr. Emilia Priestly, and leans on Emilia to help her solve the mystery, but Emilia has an actual suspected killer to talk to. During an intense back-and-forth, the inmate threatens her and her family’s safety, and she walks out, rattled.

During a cup of tea with the Baroness, who has flown straight back from her murder mystery to check on Emilia, they discuss the dangers of her consulting work. They both agree she needs to take a step back… after wrapping up her work for the next few weeks, that is.

Naturally, this perfectly lines up with the next murder mystery event the Baroness will be attending on MYSTERY ISLAND, and the Baroness offers to treat Emilia to the expensive adventure.

BAM, it’s three weeks later, and our intrepid duo is on the dock, ready to take a boat to MYSTERY ISLAND. But not before literally bumping into an American man who is rather abrupt with them. I’m sure we’ll never see the brooding handsome fellow again.

Cue a big swooping drone shot over the speedboat as it races to MYSTERY ISLAND.

Emilia and the Baroness arrive, greeted by the well-appointed staff of the household and our white-tuxedoed eyepatch-toting host, Fredericks. He welcomes them with champagne and escorts them inside.

This place is BONKERS. There’s a water feature, complete with planks to walk across, like an indoor pond, as well as a conservatory, where plants abound, augmenting the sharp-angled decor.

There’s a library for research (loaded with first editions of mysteries written by the organizer’s famous mother), a dining room with floor-to-ceiling windows, and a game room. (We get our first Clue reference here.)

It’s also backstory time, as we learn about the first mystery hosted on MYSTERY ISLAND five years ago, the reclusive organizer John Murtaugh (who lives in Montana and hasn’t been back since the first event), and the fact that this weekend’s event is meant to attract investors. (Based on the champagne, the numerous members of staff, and the house itself, I’m not surprised!)

We also meet some of the other solvers for this weekend’s event:

  • Carlos del Fuego (a hedge fund manager and potential investor who knows John) and his wife Morgan
  • Phoenix Green (a rude workout maven and potential investor)
  • Sarge (former military, potential investor, and the only four-time winner of MYSTERY ISLAND events)
  • Riley Peel (a reporter who works for a travel website, non-investor)

An awkward toast follows the awkward introductions, and then Fredericks arrives to collect their phones (to avoid cheating, although there’s no signal on the island) and inform them their rooms are ready.

In Emilia and the Baroness’s room, the Baroness shows off the murder board where they can begin solving the mystery, and explains the rules. Emilia finds an invitation to dinner from John Mariner, and the Baroness begins theorizing if he’s the murder victim or a misdirect. We find out each mystery is specifically tailored to the guests, thanks to profiles provided by the players.

A gong sounds, and dinner time has arrived.

The men are in summery suits and the ladies are totally glammed out. Fredericks plays a recording from Mr. Mariner for the guests, and everyone grabs their pens, ready to take notes. THE GAME IS AFOOT.

As the message plays, we get a glimpse of a member of the staff with the fakest beard you or I or anyone else has ever seen.

The recording namedrops Sheridan le Fanu (a mystery and horror writer), as well as the nursery rhyme Hickory Dickory Dock. The recording is clearly loaded with references that will mean more later. The record itself is then burned in the fireplace by fake beard man.

Everyone settles in for dinner and wonders about when the mystery will begin.

Cut to the game room after dinner, where Emilia sits down with a drink, and all the players scatter to different rooms, growing impatient. No corpse has dropped yet, so they head off to bed. There’s a momentary glance between Riley and a member of staff named Lucia.

Emilia and the Baroness sit outside and discuss the clues from the recording. We get a “the butler did it” joke, and they discuss the etymology of “Mariner,” the host’s name. Emilia connects it to Murtaugh thanks to the Oxford-English Dictionary in the library. The Baroness hopes this means the mysterious creator will be attending this year’s event.

When Emilia returns the dictionary to the shelf, there’s a click, and the entire bookcase swings open, revealing a hidden passage. Giddy, they grab a handy lantern and head into the passageway and up the stairs, finding a door with no knob. A locked room, indeed.

They recall the riddle and knock three times, opening the door to a secret study. The Baroness screams when she sees a body on the balcony, and when they investigate, it’s our friend with the eyepatch and white tuxedo, Fredericks.

But he’s not alone. Our poorly-bearded server is there as well, with a dart in his neck.

Fredericks stirs, revealing he’s alive, and the Baroness is disappointed. Emilia is horrified when she discovers that the other man is genuinely dead, not just part of the game. She also spots the fake beard and nose on the corpse, removing them to reveal the dead man as – GASP – the reclusive John Murtaugh.

COMMERCIAL BREAK!

Police Chief Gloria Espinoza steps down onto the boat of the American man Emilia bumped into before, and it turns out he’s Jason Trent, a detective who crossed paths with Murtaugh years ago.

They have a murder to investigate. On MYSTERY ISLAND.

Cue more overhead boat footage.

After a tense reintroduction with Fredericks, Jason and Gloria meet up with the Baroness and Emilia.

Jason examines with the scene with his crime tech and meets Lucia. Murtaugh was killed with a poisoned dart, but could have died anywhere between several minutes and half an hour after being darted. They also find a remote control for a drone, but no sign of said drone.

Fredericks mentions previous tensions between Murtaugh and Sarge, as Sarge wished to collaborate on mysteries for MYSTERY ISLAND, but was rebuffed by Murtaugh.

Fredericks then shares details on the mystery with Jason, explaining that he was meant to be the victim for this weekend’s events, and that he didn’t know what would follow next. The plan for the rest of the weekend’s mystery is locked in the safe. (Murtaugh ordered him not to look until after Fredericks’ “corpse” was discovered.)

When the safe is opened — kudos to the sound designer, the clicks of the safe are very satisfying — GASP. The safe is empty.

COMMERCIAL BREAK!

Fredericks is aghast at the empty safe, explaining that only he and Murtaugh knew the combination. He and Jason then notice that his computer is absolutely smashed to bits on the floor. How they entered the room without noticing a wrecked computer tower RIGHT THERE is beyond me.

Not only is that the sole source of internet access for the island, but Fredericks then reveals there is no surveillance anywhere on the island, because guests who pay TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS A NIGHT expect privacy.

The chief goes back to the mainland with the body and profiles on all the guests, since there’s no internet on the island now to verify the profiles. (I don’t know why the chief doesn’t just bring another computer with her the next day. It’s not like that computer was the only one in the world that could access the internet.)

Jason goes to see where everyone was before the secret passageway was discovered, and Emilia hits him with a detailed account of everyone’s movements. Jason is impressed.

Everyone is sent to bed, and the Baroness immediately starts matchmaking Emilia and Jason, trying to catch up to all the Hallmark viewers who were already doing so. (I mean, look at that photo. Can’t really blame her.)

The next morning, all of the guests and staff are gathered in the dining room, with several guests demanding to leave, only to be cowed into staying by Jason. The police take fingerprints and DNA from everyone.

The Baroness immediately wants to go look for clues, and Emilia reluctantly follows.

Gloria and Jason interview Sarge while Phoenix tells Carlos she’s going to lie to the detectives and say she heard Emilia talking about committing “the perfect murder.” Phoenix even suggests taking a dart gun from her room and planting it in Emilia’s room to frame her, casually claiming that if she’s actually innocent, the trial will prove it.

Phoenix is a monster. (Also Carlos is weirdly casual about Phoenix mentioning a dart gun in her room. I would have asked more questions. I’m just saying.)

Riley spots Emilia eavesdropping and blows up her spot before walking in and greeting Phoenix and Carlos. Emilia then sees Riley find a note in his pocket, read it, and throw it into the fire before he talks a walk outside. So many shenanigans so quickly!

Carlos is interviewed next, as Sarge stumbles upon the Baroness trying to pick the lock to his room. He’s fine with it and gives her the key to his room so she can search his things.

Emilia follows Riley out of the house while Phoenix offers the detective a fake break-up note from Murtaugh to Emilia, claiming it fell out of Emilia’s purse the night before. When Jason puts the spotlight back on her, she immediately claims Morgan was having an affair with Murtaugh.

Phoenix is a monster.

The Baroness finds nothing in Sarge’s room, but still suspects him. However, they agree to work together to solve the murder. (Sarge and the Baroness deserve their own movie. Make it happen, Hallmark!)

Emilia follows Riley along a wooded path and sees him arguing with Lucia.

Back with the police, Morgan claims there was no affair, and deduces that Phoenix pointed the detectives in her direction. She then says that she and Phoenix used to be friends, back when Phoenix and Murtaugh dated. (Man, for a mysterious recluse, Murtaugh really gets around.)

Emilia tells Jason about Riley burning the note, his meet-up with Lucia, and about what Phoenix said. He shows her the note, and she denies ever meeting Murtaugh before walking off. But she doesn’t go far, and she overhears the chief tell Jason that Phoenix’s fingerprint was found on the dart gun that killed Murtaugh.

(See, Carlos, you should’ve asked more questions.)

COMMERCIAL BREAK!

Sarge and the Baroness find Emilia, who immediately wants to join their unofficial investigation after Phoenix’s attempted frame-up. They compare notes and the trio sneak up to listen in on the conversation between Phoenix and the cops.

She claims she didn’t notice the dart gun was missing, but also claims she touched several of the guns on display in her room the day before. Jason confronts her about the note and lying about not seeing Murtaugh, but she again pushes attention to Morgan.

The trio hides a few feet away like Scooby-Doo characters before sneaking up to Morgan’s door to overhear Jason and Morgan talking. (Boy, $10,000 a day for secrecy, and these doors and walls do NOTHING to muffle conversation. What a ripoff!)

Phoenix bursts in, followed by the trio, and gets put in handcuffs while trying ONCE AGAIN to convince them that Emilia and Murtaugh were a thing.

Phoenix is a monster.

Emilia walks down to the beach for a quiet moment, and on her way back, she spots Carlos running into the woods. He starts burning some papers at a small firepit.

COMMERCIAL BREAK!

Emilia yells “Police!” and Carlos scampers off. She then grabs the smoldering papers and runs back toward the house, pursued by Carlos, who apparently didn’t scamper that far. Lackluster scampering, sir.

Thankfully, he trips on that one arch-shaped tree root that’s always there to snag someone’s foot and he wipes out.

She makes it back to the mansion before Carlos and hands over the papers to Jason. They’re love letters from Murtaugh to Morgan. Emilia officially offers to help Jason with the case. (And the Baroness and Sarge wish to listen in… the way they have been through doors the whole time anyway.)

Morgan confirms the love letters are real but claims it was one-sided and she had no interest in Murtaugh. It turns out the letters Carlos was trying to burn were John’s copies of the letters, hidden in a fake Don Quixote novel on the bookshelf that Carlos picked up, as it’s his favorite book.

Given that the secret passageway was also triggered by a book, and this is MYSTERY ISLAND, the crew starts searching every book on the island for another clue. Emilia finds another fake book in the library, and this one has a recording inside.

Lucia marches down to the beach to meet someone, and we get a classic point-of-view “Oh, it’s you” shot before the camera cuts away.

The crew listens to the record, which is another copy of the recording everyone heard at dinner. The Baroness stops it quickly, explaining who Sheridan le Fanu is, in case we’d all forgotten. (We hadn’t, Baroness. We’re all huge le Fanu stans, obviously.)

Fredericks then tells everyone that dinner is at 6 and he has a tux for Jason to wear. Jason balks at the idea of formal wear, but everyone acts like he’s weird for not wanting to dress up for dinner. It’s not weird for MYSTERY ISLAND.

Later, Carlos claims Morgan isn’t feeling well, and Emilia goes to check on her. Jason arrives in his tux (from outside? Did he change outside for some reason?) and he joins Emilia.

Morgan claims she has a summer cold, and Emilia spots a fake nail missing from one of Morgan’s fingers. They leave, both convinced Morgan is lying.

The chief arrives in a fabulous black formal outfit. I’m just saying, no one acknowledges it, and that’s rude. Chief looks fab.

Anyway, she reveals that Riley doesn’t work for the travel magazine after all. Oh, and Lucia is missing.

COMMERCIAL BREAK!

Jason and Emilia have a nice moment talking about her work with the police before going to check on Riley about all that liar’s lying lies he lied about.

They confront him about the magazine job, and he claims he’s working on an expose about Murtaugh. The island is hemorrhaging money and costs ten times what it earns. He’s near bankruptcy and all of his investors would lose out if MYSTERY ISLAND failed. It’s a solid motive for the murder for all the investors. (Also we learn that Murtaugh redecorates every bedroom in the mansion twice a year. MONEY, SIR.)

Emilia and Jason share a drink outside and Emilia reveals her policeman father died at his desk a year ago. We also learn how Jason ended up policing the island. (His mentor was killed on the mainland nearby and his murder remains unsolved.)

They bail on dinner and stroll along the beach. We get more backstory on each of them: Emilia was engaged once, and Jason met Murtaugh six years ago when he had a fight with Fredericks over Fredericks being better at fencing than Murtaugh OH AND THAT’S WHY FREDERICKS HAS THE EYEPATCH. HOLY CRAP DID MURTAUGH STAB FREDERICKS WITH AN EPEE LIKE A PROPER SWASHPUZZLER?!

Ignoring all the unasked questions about One-Eyed Fredericks, Emilia uses her awesome power of finding dead people and spots Lucia’s body in the surf.

COMMERCIAL BREAK!

Riley walks in as Emilia, Fredericks, Carlos, Sarge, and the Baroness discuss Lucia’s murder. Riley breaks down.

Jason and Gloria appear to be investigating the staff dormitory — for a place with an event ten weekends a year? Do they live there all year round? Seriously, hemorrhaging money, this place — where they smell chloroform. Emilia then arrives with Riley.

It turns out Riley and Lucia were dating, and she was his confidential source about Murtaugh’s finances. He then claims that Lucia was planning to blackmail one of the guests for money, but he doesn’t know which one.

The crime tech shows up to take Lucia’s body, and reveals that Murtaugh was killed by cyanide, but he was already dying from cancer.

Based on the time of Lucia’s death, everyone searching the library is cleared for her murder (the Baroness, Sarge, Emilia, and that monster Phoenix). They check everyone else’s alibis for the time around Lucia’s death.

COMMERCIAL BREAK!

The Baroness and Sarge are listening to the record again. They ask Fredericks if Lucia heard the message, and he claims she listened to it days before the event started.

Emilia, just as convinced of the Baroness’s brilliance as we are.

The Baroness believes Lucia decoded the message from the record and confronted the killer. (This is a very confusing deduction. Does the Baroness think that decoding the message for the FAKE murder of Fredericks led Lucia to the REAL killer of Murtaugh? No wonder the Baroness never solves these things. Yeesh.)

The coroner’s report indicates that Lucia fought with her killer, and probably injured them. It also reveals that she drowned in fresh water. So she drowned in the river. (Which is apparently not near the beach. The geography here is a bit confusing.) They go searching the riverbank for clues.

Three seconds later, they find a broken bottle that smells like chloroform and a rock with blood on it. Emilia also spots a fake nail at the scene.

They confront Morgan, who has scratch marks on her arm from Lucia. She claims that Lucia found the bottle of chloroform in Carlos and Morgan’s room, but that it wasn’t theirs. Lucia didn’t care, however, and was going to blackmail them anyway. They fought, and Morgan claims that during the scuffle, Lucia tripped and hit her head on the rock before tumbling into the river.

Emilia and Jason talk to Carlos, who reveals he was secretly funding MYSTERY ISLAND and bailed Murtaugh out of debt. But when Murtaugh found out he was the angel investor and wanted MYSTERY ISLAND to actually be profitable, he was furious and said he would destroy Carlos. He then started sending love letters to Morgan to ruin Carlos’s marriage.

They search Carlos and Morgan’s room again and discover a hidden drawer in the desk, containing darts and a vial of something. Carlos and Morgan again claim ignorance regarding a suspicious item found in their room.

Jason answers a phone call and the drone has been found! (Holy crap, remember the drone remote? That was like 80 minutes ago and hasn’t been mentioned since.) The drone had crashed into the ocean, but the remote helped them track down its location. Somehow. Whatever. MOVING ON.

Emilia and Jason discuss Carlos as a suspect and agree he doesn’t make sense as the killer. They also discuss the inconsistencies in Murtaugh’s relationships with Phoenix and Morgan. Why would he write old-fashioned love letters to Morgan but fly all the way to New York to break up with Phoenix in person? (Apparently being a weird fake-beard-wearing recluse isn’t a good enough reason for them.)

We get a montage of them rearranging their murder board and making phone calls. As Emilia and Jason declare they’ve solved the case, the Baroness and Sarge burst in. They’ve also solved the case!

FINAL COMMERCIAL BREAK!

The Baroness and Sarge want to do a big reveal scene, and they gather everyone to explain whodunit.

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They go back to the recording, where they’ve uncovered a hidden number code (based on the original Scottish meaning of Hickory Dickory Dock) AND a hidden message skip-coded in the text of the recording: My killer is among us. A free man fire.

They believe this points to Carlos, as Carlos means “free man” and Fuego means “fire.” They believe he killed Murtaugh out of revenge for the whole writing-love-letters-to-his-wife thing.

Everyone is somewhere between amused and bemused by the explanation, like they’ve just had to listen to some flat-earther explain how the government replaced all birds with spy robots.

Jason and Emilia break the awkwardness by revealing the actual identity of the killer…

John Murtaugh.

Say it with me now: GASP.

While fake-bearded amongst them the first night, he:

  • stole the plans from the safe (only he and Fredericks knew the combination)
  • hid the darts and vial in the desk in Carlos’s room (all that redecorating meant he knew the secret compartment was in the desk)
  • chloroformed Fredericks (which, I mean, come on, you already took the guy’s eye, hasn’t Fredericks suffered enough?)
  • used the drone to shoot himself from a slight distance with the dart (which seems like it should be much harder than it looks. Did he miss a few times and have to pick up all the darts?)
  • dropped the gun to the ground below
  • flew the drone out to sea to crash it
  • died

He’d cooked up the devious riddle in the recording AND the elaborate fake murder all to destroy Carlos. (Sadly, the remote he left behind was his undoing.)

So, what do you think? Do you think the Baroness still counts this as a successful solve? I bet she does. (It’s not, Baroness. It’s not.)

Everyone prepares to leave MYSTERY ISLAND, but Carlos grabs Jason and Emilia, offering them a lot of money to create new mysteries for the island so he can make it profitable.

They consider the offer… and that Carlos’s offer means they’d get to see each other again.

In the background, Frederick gives us a little nod before the movie ends.

CONCLUSION

This one is so goofy that it circles back around to charming. I really enjoyed the setup, and I especially enjoyed the double reveal of the overly elaborate mystery “cracked” by Sarge and the Baroness, and then the actual, simpler crime solved by Emilia and Jason.

It’s a great takedown of crime novel tropes and locked room mysteries, and with all the Scooby-Doo wackiness, a pretty fun watch. (Though I’m astonished there are no repercussions for Phoenix’s constant lies, interference with the investigation, AND manufacturing evidence against Emilia. Phoenix is a monster.)

There were several seeds for additional mysteries to follow (not just the ending teaser, but Jason’s murdered mentor as well), so I wasn’t surprised when they announced a follow-up movie this year.

We’ll see if it can maintain the same manic energy and escape room-esque riddles and twists that the original had.

Did you enjoy your visit to MYSTERY ISLAND, fellow puzzlers? Let me know in the comments section below!

Crossword / Puzzle News Roundup!

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It’s a good week to be a puzzle enthusiast. The Boswords Spring Themeless League kicked off on Monday, the same day one of my favorite puzzly people got her first puzzle published in The New York Times.

And we’ve got news on a crossword convention, upcoming tournaments, a worthwhile puzzle-fueled charity endeavor, and a new Hallmark puzzly mystery debuting tonight.

So, without further ado, let’s get to the puzzle news roundup!

Crossword Con

April 4th marks the second annual Crossword Con, presented by the puzzle app Puzzmo.

Crossword Con is all about bringing together crossword fans and constructors to discuss crosswords as a cultural touchstone and an art form.

For their second outing, the organizers are casting their eyes to the future, asking “what’s on the horizon for crosswords, and what changes are already bubbling just beneath the surface?”

Although it’s only a half-day event, it is certainly jam-packed with notable names with plenty to offer on the subject of crosswords! Speakers and guests include Kate Hawkins, Will Nediger, Ada Nicolle, Brendan Emmett Quigley, Laura Braunstein, Rob Dubbin, Natan Last, Adrienne Raphel, and Brooke Husic.

With Crossword Con in New York and the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament starting the same day in Stamford, April 4th is certainly an eventful day for crossword fans all over (and particularly those in New England).

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Crossword Tournaments

And speaking of crossword tournaments, if you’re a competitive crossword fan, the gears are already in motion for puzzly challenges all year long.

Registration for June’s Westwords Crossword Tournament is open right now.

The registration for October’s Midwest Crossword Tournament opens on April 2nd, just a few days before this year’s American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (April 4th through the 6th) will be held.

Of course, physical tickets for the ACPT sold out a while ago, but you’re still welcome to register for the virtual tournament to participate!

And the activities alongside this year’s tournament are a doozy. There’s an event celebrating the 20th anniversary of the “Wordplay” documentary, a magical puzzly performance from David Kwong, and an acrostics event on Friday night!

Lots of competitive puzzle fun coming up!

These Puzzles Fund Abortion 5

There’s a long history of activism and advocacy through puzzles. Women of Letters, Grids for Good, Queer Qrosswords… these are just a few prominent examples of constructors and creators donating their time and puzzly efforts to benefit the world at large.

And for the fifth year in a row, cruciverbalists and editors have united to help fund safe and affordable abortion care.

These Puzzles Fund Abortion 5 contains 23 puzzles “centered around social and reproductive justice themes,” all for a minimum donation of $25.

If you donate $50 or more, you will also receive the puzzle packs for the previous four years of TPFA.

It’s a very worthy cause and I hope you find it in your heart to contribute to the health and safety of others.

Mystery Island: Winner Takes All

To close out today’s puzzle news roundup, I’m happy to spread the word about a new Hallmark original mystery movie.

Mystery Island: Winner Takes All returns to the setting of last year’s Mystery Island.

In the original, a luxury private island murder mystery experience turns real when a dead body is found during the event. It falls to psychologist Dr. Emilia Priestly and detective Jason Trent to unravel riddles, deceit, and shadowy motives to solve the murder.

In tonight’s sequel, we return to the island for another murder mystery game, this time created by our crime-solving duo of Emilia and Jason. With a cash prize on the line, tensions are already high, but things take a dark turn when an employee turns up dead during the game.

Anyone who enjoyed my recaps and reviews of Hallmark’s Crossword Mysteries will be happy to hear that I will be reviewing not only the new Mystery Island sequel, but the original as well!

Mystery Island: Winner Takes All debuts tonight at 8 PM Eastern on Hallmark Mystery.

Phew! So much puzzly goodness going on. Will you be attending any crossword events this year? Let us know in the comments below.

Happy puzzling, everyone!

Nominees Announced for the World Video Game Hall of Fame!

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Rochester, New York is the home of The Strong National Museum of Play, and they have a very important mission: to chronicle the history and importance of play.

Child development, social interaction, imagination… all of these key features in a healthy individual are facilitated by play, and the staff at The Strong help us not only understand that process, but celebrates it by hosting both the National Toy Hall of Fame and the World Video Game Hall of Fame under its brightly-colored umbrella.

As you might have guessed, puzzles and games play a significant role in The Strong’s work, and they’re represented in both Halls of Fame. Clue, Chess, Scrabble, the Rubik’s Cube, and Dungeons & Dragons are all inductees in the National Toy Hall of Fame, while Myst, Tetris, The Oregon Trail, and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? are among the puzzlier inductees on the video game side of things.

And The Strong have recently announced the nominees for this year’s class of video games to be inducted in the World Video Game Hall of Fame.

This year’s finalists for the 2025 class run the gamut from 8-bit classes, modern phenomenon, and games that took play to surprising new places, and they represent different genres, play styles, and aspects of gaming across decades.

The 2025 finalists are: Age of Empires, Angry Birds, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Defender, Frogger, Golden Eye, Golden Tee, Harvest Moon, Mattel Football, Quake, NBA 2K and Tamagotchi.

What a field! Everywhere from arcades (Frogger) to pocket games (Tamagotchi) are on display here, as well as social gaming both in person (Golden Eye) and online (Quake).

The nominees were chosen from thousands of nominations online. The field was then narrowed by staff members at The Strong based on “longevity, geographical reach, and influence on game design and pop culture.” Only a small handful of these finalists will be selected by an international committee of experts as this year’s inductees.

Everyone has an award show that they geek out over, and you’re probably not surprised to discover that these Halls of Fame are two of my favorite awards given out each year. I love seeing deserving games and puzzles get the spotlight they deserve for helping change how we play and interact with each other.

You can check out the full list of National Toy Hall of Fame inductees and World Video Game Hall of Fame inductees at these links. Do yourself a favor and take a stroll through not only your childhood, but the childhoods of generations past. It’s a real treat.

What toys and games would you like to see inducted in the future? Let us know in the comments below!

Fictional Games That Became Real!

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Many TV shows, films, and novels help add character to their narrative universes by mentioning the games played by the characters.

Shows and franchises as wildly disparate as Battlestar Galactica, New Girl, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, The Witcher, and Pretty Little Liars have fictional games that enrich their worlds.

But sometimes, either through clever marketing or the affection of fans, these games go from fictional recreational activities to real ones, crawling fully formed from the imagination to be enjoyed across tabletops worldwide.

Today, I’d like to introduce you to a few of them. Let’s play, shall we?

Tri-Dimensional Chess

Star Trek has been a source of many fictional games and sports over the years. Dom-jot, Chula, Dabo, Parrises Squares, and Stratagema are some of the more famous ones, but the granddaddy of Star Trek games is Tri-Dimensional Chess.

First appearing in the original series back in 1966, Tri-Dimensional Chess follows the normal rules of chess, but spread across different vertical levels. So a knight could move in its usual L-shaped format, but on its own board OR the boards above and below.

Over the years — and across different Star Trek series — we’ve heard stories about key maneuvers like the Aldabren Exchange and the Kriskov Gambit in games of Tri-Dimensional Chess, helping flesh out how influential the game is for several characters. (Heck, in one episode, Spock beats the Enterprise computer at the game, saving Kirk from a court martial!)

The Franklin Mint has released limited edition versions of the game on two occasions, and I’ve seen homemade games of Tri-Dimensional Chess at gaming and pop culture conventions over the years.

Chess remains incredibly popular — as do many variants of Chess — so it’s no surprise this fictional game made the leap to the real world. (I suspect the complicated three-person Chess game developed by Sheldon in The Big Bang Theory is less likely to make a similar leap. Especially since there are already three-person Chess games on the market today.)

Cones of Dunshire

Ben Wyatt of Parks and Recreation enjoyed many nerdy pastimes, but Cones of Dunshire was his masterpiece.

Initially treated as a mistake, a nonsensical result of his boredom and frustrations, the game becomes a running gag in the show after Ben leaves a copy as a gift for the accounting firm that he has been hired by (and walked away from) several times during the show’s run.

Later, we find out the game has been commercially produced, and Ben stumbles across it when dealing with a dotcom company. He mentions that he invented it, but his claims are dismissed. He then proves not only his gaming skill but his authorship of the game when he beats the dotcom bosses in a tense playthrough.

It’s mentioned once that a gaming magazine called Cones of Dunshire “punishingly intricate,” a point that makes Ben proud.

Part of the fun of Cones of Dunshire (other than the parody of Settlers of Catan) is that the viewer never really understands what’s going on, so supposedly dramatic moments can be played for laughs. (I also appreciate that the name of the game is basically a fancy way of saying “dunce hat.”)

And, in the sort of cyclical storytelling that could only happen in a nerdly pursuit like board games, the company that made Settlers of Catan — Mayfair Games — produced a giant version of the game as part of a charity event at GenCon.

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Both the silliest and most ambitious game to cross from fictional to real, Cones of Dunshire is a nerdy highlight of a now classic sitcom.

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Tak: A Beautiful Game

Originally introduced in Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicles novels as a tavern game, Tak made the leap to the real world as a stretch goal in a Kickstarter campaign for another game.

Game designer James Ernest accepted the challenge of bringing the game to life, and his collaboration with Rothfuss created one of my all-time favorite board games.

Tak has a very simple concept: two players each attempt to build a road connecting opposite sides of the game board. The first player to successfully complete their road wins.

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To do so, you place game pieces called stones, one at a time, on various spaces on the board. The stones can either be played flat (meaning they’re part of your road) or standing on edge (meaning they’re a wall, blocking any road’s passage through that space).

It’s a rare thing when a new game feels like something that could’ve been played in taverns centuries ago. For me, this is the gold standard when it comes to adapting fictional games to the real world.

Image courtesy of Glowforge.com

Pai Sho

A key storytelling device in the much-beloved show Avatar: The Last Airbender, Pai Sho was a tactical tile-based game that reinforced important themes in the show.

The game had many variants (often played differently depending on the faction or nation featured) but each had the feeling of an ancient game passed down across generations.

In the most popular variant, Skud Pai Sho, the goal is to form a harmony ring around the center point of the board. Players create harmonies by placing two harmonious tiles on the same line without other tiles or obstacles. There are gates, gardens, and lines that help dictate play, as well as multiple flower tiles for players to place that accomplish different things when placed properly.

There are entire forums and websites dedicated to the rules of Pai Sho and its many variants, and the thriving fan community that continues to nurture these games well after the show’s conclusion make this one of the most heartfelt and successful transitions from fictional to real life that I can think of.

Image courtesy of starwars.com.

Sabacc

In The Empire Strikes Back, we learn about the friendly rivalry between Lando Calrissian and Han Solo, and how a wager led to the Millennium Falcon changing hands.

But exactly how it happened was only revealed later in supplementary material like the Star Wars Visual Encyclopedia and the novel Lando Calrissian and the Mindharp of Sharu.

The second draft of the script for The Empire Strikes Back mentioned that Lando won Cloud City in a “sabacca” game, but by the time additional stories fleshed out the relationship between Lando and Han, the game had been shortened to Sabacc.

It’s sort of a combination of poker and Blackjack. You want the value of the cards in your hand to be as close to 23 or -23 as possible. Sounds simple, right?

Well, imagine a game of poker where the cards in your hand changed periodically unless you publicly locked them in by placing them on the table, where they stayed until the hand was over. That’s the basic idea behind Sabacc.

There were numerous fan versions of the game over the years, but now you can get Sabacc decks at Disney theme parks (alongside many, many, MANY other items).

Do you have a favorite fictional game that made the leap to the real world? Did we miss any major ones? Let us know in the comments below!

RPG Actual Play News Roundup!

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A lot of cool things are happening in the actual play RPG scene these days.

For the uninitiated, actual play games (also known as liveplay games) are when a party of roleplaying game enthusiasts share their gameplay for viewers.

Some of them simply record a regular session around the table, while others create sets, graphics, and expend a fair bit of coin on their production values to enhance the viewing experience.

There are LOADS of podcasts and video series in the actual play RPG arena, and over the last few weeks, several of the heavy hitters in the genre have announced big projects.

So let’s do a roundup of actual play RPG news!

Dimension 20 + WWE

The comedy streaming service Dropout is the home of Dimension 20, one of the premiere liveplay games running today. Fresh off of selling 20,000 tickets for a show at Madison Square Garden, Dimension 20 recently announced a new campaign featuring their flagship Dungeonmaster Brennan Lee Mulligan. And his four players at the table are all WWE superstars!

Xavier Woods, Kofi Kingston, Bayley, and Chelsea Green will be tackling a gladiatorial arena in the time of ancient Greece in Titan Takedown, starting April 2nd!

It’s interesting that they’re using D&D rules instead of any pro wrestling RPG systems, but otherwise, I’m excited to see this campaign play out!

Critical Role 10th Anniversary

The top dogs in the RPG actual play scene are undoubtedly Critical Role, a self-proclaimed group of “nerdy-ass voice actors who sit around and play Dungeons & Dragons.”

They have a hit show on Amazon Prime, The Legend of Vox Machina, which is based on their original RPG campaign.

They just wrapped up their third multiyear campaign with a huge crossover event featuring the characters from all three campaigns. (The final episode lasted a whopping EIGHT AND A HALF HOURS.

They’re currently running a short follow-up game, Divergence.

Not only that, but there are big expectations for the announcement for their fourth campaign, which could feature their in-house RPG system, Daggerheart.

Ten years after their debut on Geek & Sundry, Critical Role is still shaping the actual play landscape.

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And speaking of Geek & Sundry, they recently announced a tabletop charity event featuring several top names in the actual play community.

Alongside Geek & Sundry’s own Felicia Day, Matt Mercer of Critical Role is returning to Geek & Sundry for this special one-shot event, and he is joined by Daredevil star (and RPG influencer) Deborah Ann Woll, Superman portrayer Brandon Routh, and comedian Reggie Watts. The game is being DMed by Bill Rehor of Beadle & Grimm’s, which not only produces topnotch specialty RPG products, but also created the D&D/improv comedy show Faster, Purple Worm! Kill! Kill!

This Pathfinder one-shot game, entitled Lost Odyssey: Godfall, will raise money for the Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals and their Extra Life program.

And it’s also advertising a unique opportunity for viewers to experience the game “firsthand” by using VR headsets to virtually sit at the table alongside the players!

I have no idea if the technology will back up the interactive promises made, but at the very least, this should be a very entertaining round of roleplaying for a very worthy cause!

Baldur’s Gate Liveplays at Conventions

One of the biggest success stories in RPG-inspired video games over the last few years was the 2023 release of Baldur’s Gate 3. Set in the Forgotten Realms D&D setting, the video game brought many new eyes to the world of Dungeons & Dragons, giving them a sampling of the worldbuilding and storytelling potential of traditional tabletop gaming.

But an unexpected and delightful spinoff of the game’s success has been the series of actual play games inspired by Baldur’s Gate 3 at major fan conventions.

The voice actors for some of the game’s most popular characters have been playing D&D for live audiences, and seeing the voice actors learn to love the game that inspired their video game roles has been a wonderful treat.

Astarion, Karlach, Lae’zel, and Wyll have all come to life for gamers and D&D fans alike as the actors themselves roll dice and take control of the story.

Did any of these projects grab your attention, fellow puzzler? What’s your favorite actual play group or campaign? Let us know in the comments below!

A Boggle Grid Big Enough For Every Word?

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Puzzly minds are often analytical minds, so I’m no stranger to wild attempts at puzzle-inspired calculation.

Puzzle people have previously calculated the human limit for solving a Rubik’s Cube, as well as the fastest known mechanical solve of a Rubik’s Cube. Years ago, I myself tried to figure out how many years it would take to use every unique Sudoku grid possible.

But optimization is something altogether different, and it’s a intriguing way to look at the potential of puzzles.

A Redditor by the name of AntiqueRevolution5 posed the following question a few days ago, and it absolutely fits the bill of both puzzly calculation and optimization:

What would a Boggle grid look like that contained every word in the English language?

Well, there are somewhere between 1 million and 1.5 million words in the English language, so I imagine it would be pretty big.

The redditor is an artist, and their goal is to make a sculpture composed of Boggle dice. And their concept is fascinating:

The idea for the piece is that it’s a linguistic Rorschach that conveys someone could find whatever they want in it. But it would be even cooler if it literally contained any word someone might reasonable want to say or write.

So, where do you start with something like this? Our artist has a suggestion:

To simplify, we could scope it to the 3000 most important words according to Oxford. True to the nature of Boggle, a cluster of letters could contain multiple words. For instance, a 2 x 2 grid of letter dice T-R-A-E could spell the words EAT, ATE, TEA, RATE, TEAR, ART, EAR, ARE, RAT, TAR, ERA. Depending on the location, adding an H would expand this to HEART, EARTH, HATE, HEAT, and THE...

What would be the process for figuring out the smallest configuration of Boggle dice that would let you spell those 3k words linked above? What if the grid doesn’t have to be a square but could be a rectangle of any size?

Naturally, creative minds accepted the challenge.

One user claimed that an online Boggle website called Squaredle has two 10×10 boards with just under 900 words of 4 or more letters.

Another user, a programmer, was able to create an 18×18 grid with approximately 450 words in under 10 minutes.

As you might expect, I was unable to resist diving into this one. But I’m not a programmer, so let’s do some meatball mathematics to get a sense of the scope of the puzzly conundrum before us.

We can extrapolate that if we get 450 words in an 18×18 grid, we’d need seven 18×18 grids connected to approach 3,000 words, assuming there’s some consistency in letter efficiency.

If we stick to the rectangular suggestion of the original post, a 63×36 rectangle (six 18×18 grids in a 2×3 arrangement, plus a 9×36 grid attached at the bottom) should allow for those 3,000 words.

Now, I can’t verify that. But 63×36 means 2,268 letters in the grid. Which, with a 3,000 word goal (including two- and three-letter words) kinda feels possible.

Of course, this is just to cover that 3,000 word list. Remember that the English language is estimated to contain between 1 million and 1.5 million words total.

That’s 333-and-a-third times more, if we use a million words. It’s 500 times more words if we assume 1.5 million words.

So, that’s 2,268 letters in our 3,000 word grid. Multiply that by 500 and you get 1,134,000 letters in the grid.

That means we’d need a grid that’s 1,065 x 1,065 to cover the entire English language.

So what does that mean in Boggle terms?

A standard six-sided die is 16 millimeters. That’s 17,040 millimeters, or 17.04 meters. That’s 67.09 inches. We’re talking about a Boggle game that’s FIVE AND A HALF FEET ACROSS.

That’s one heck of a Boggle grid.

Now, of course, these numbers are all estimates, and dubious ones at that. But I couldn’t resist TRYING to find an answer, even if it’s just a ballpark number.

You see, fellow puzzlers, this brand of puzzle efficiency tickles something in my brain, as there are several Penny Press puzzles I quite enjoy that employ a similar idea.

Starspell (pictured above) involves finding words in a star-shaped grid, except unlike Boggle, you can reuse letters. So you could bounce back and forth from A to N and spell BANANA, for instance.

Word Maze involves a small grid with many words hidden inside Boggle-style (though it’s actually a themed word list, meaning it’s not optimized to just cram as many words inside as possible).

Letter Perfect is a reversal of the idea, seeing if the solver can arrange letters in a mostly-empty 4×4 grid to fit every word in a given wordlist. It’s excellent training for a challenge like this, since you learn about efficiency of letter placement and how many words can spell out with neighboring letters if you’re clever.

I don’t know if any programmers will figure out how to build a language-spanning Boggle grid, but I look forward to seeing them try!

Happy puzzling, everyone.