Tag Archives: Will Shortz

The American Crossword Puzzle Tournament is coming!

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The American Crossword Puzzle Tournament is just over two weeks away — Friday March 27 through Sunday March 29! — and this year is promising to be something special.

After seven years in Brooklyn, New York, the tournament is returning to Stamford, Connecticut, the tournament’s previous home for many years.

Every year, constructors and crossword fans alike test their puzzly mettle (and pencil points) against time and nerves as they solve topnotch puzzles as quickly and accurately as possible.

Last year, Dan Feyer won his fifth consecutive tournament, tying the record set by fellow competitor Tyler Hinman. Will he go six for six this year and move one step closer to meeting Jon Delfin’s remarkable record of seven tournament wins?

But there’s more going on than just the tournament! It’s a weekend dedicated to puzzle goodness of all kinds.

In the past, there have been talent shows, puzzle challenges, displays of live puzzle creation, team solving games, scavenger hunts, crossword songs, film viewings (including the Wordplay documentary), and performances of puzzle magic by David Kwong.

This is my first year attending the tournament, and I’m excited not only to witness the event firsthand, but to meet many of the names in puzzles I’ve interviewed and gotten to know over the last few years.

And I won’t be the only member of the PuzzleNation Crew at ACPT this year, as Fred, our Director of Game Development, will be there to show off the Penny Dell Crosswords App and talk shop with fellow puzzlers!

Plus, several friends of the blog will be in attendance, like Penny Press variety editor Keith Yarbrough, crossword gentleman Doug Peterson, and Uptown Puzzle Club editor Patti Varol.

For more information or to sign up and test your puzzle skills, click here! (You can participate online or by mail!)

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!

Farewell, Bernice.

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Part of writing for PuzzleNation Blog is constantly learning and unearthing new aspects of puzzle history. Whether it’s the history of puzzles themselves, like the 100th anniversary of the crossword in 2013, or significant moments from history that involved puzzles, like the use of crosswords to recruit cryptographers for Bletchley Park’s codecracking efforts during World War II.

And you simply can’t talk about the history of puzzles without mentioning constructor Bernice Gordon, one of the most recognizable names in crosswords for more than half a century.

Bernice’s first crossword was published in The New York Times in 1952, establishing a legacy of elegant, well-constructed puzzles that would span nearly seven decades. A favorite of both The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times, Bernice actually didn’t start creating crosswords until she was 35, a late start for someone with such an expansive track record to come.

She set records for the longest tenure as a crossword constructor and eldest crossword constructor — publishing puzzles at 101 years old! — as well as teaming up with constructor and friend of the blog David Steinberg for largest age gap between collaborators, with 86 years between them!

Will Shortz estimated that Bernice published more than 120 puzzles with the Times, and you can check out the lion’s share of them over on XWordInfo, dating back as far as 1965.

Sadly, Bernice passed away early Thursday morning, having left an indelible mark on the world of crosswords, with many friends and admirers celebrating her marvelous life and decades of sparkling puzzly wordplay.

Many puzzlers and admirers have written wonderful tributes to Bernice, but I have to single out the heartfelt words of David Steinberg, who memorialized his friend and fellow constructor in fine form here.

I only know Bernice through her puzzles, but I always found them to be clever, charming, and constructed with grace and skill. And based on what I’ve read about her over the last few days, many of those admirable qualities are reflections of the woman behind the puzzles.

Thank you, Bernice. You will be missed.

A Quantum Leap Forward in Crosswords!

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It’s fair to say that the 1996 Election Day crossword, pictured above, is one of the most famous puzzles in crossword history. The puzzle “predicted” the outcome of the election quite cleverly by allowing for either CLINTON ELECTED or BOB DOLE ELECTED to read out, depending on how the solver answered seven down clues.

(You can click the image to see a larger version of the grid and clues.)

Reportedly, Will Shortz called it the most amazing puzzle he’d ever seen.

Well, that puzzle may have been topped.

But first, a bit of backstory.

These rare crosswords are called Quantum puzzles or Schrodinger puzzles. These names reference the famous thought experiment involving a very unlucky cat in a box that could be alive or dead, and an observer wouldn’t know which until he opened the box. Meaning that both answers are correct at the same time; the cat is both alive and dead.

[This great t-shirt melds the Schrodinger’s Cat concept with a classic joke.]

Similarly, these puzzles have more than one answer, and each answer is equally correct.

And on Thursday, December 4, constructors Kacey Walker and David Quarfoot combined some considerable Scrabble skills and a dynamite crossword grid to create the most impressive Schrodinger puzzle to date.

You see, clues 26-Across, 36-Across, and 44-Across all feature seven letters, like a rack in Scrabble. And it’s up to the solver to find the anagram of each rack that fits the grid.

For example, 26-Across reads “Play in 7-Across with the rack DEIORRW”. (The answer to 7-Across is SCRABBLE, giving the solver a strong idea of where to go next.)

Quite amazingly, Walker and Quarfoot have designed the puzzle so that each of those clues has three possible correct answers — for 26-Across: ROWDIER, WORDIER, and WORRIED all fit the down clues — meaning there are a staggering 27 possible correct solutions!

This is just one of those 27 solutions:

[You can check out all of the possible solutions, as well as the clues, on XWordInfo here.]

This is David Quarfoot’s 41st NYT published puzzle and Kacey Walker’s first! Talk about setting the bar as high as you can.

This is also one of the flat-out coolest puzzle constructions I’ve ever seen. My thanks to Deb Amlen for doing such a great write-up on the puzzle and for pointing it my way.

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!

Puzzles in Pop Culture: Bones

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In today’s edition of Puzzles in Pop Culture, we join the forensic team at the Jeffersonian Institute to uncover what happened to a prominent puzzler. It’s Bones, episode 8 of season 10, “The Puzzler in the Pit.”

The episode opens, appropriately enough, with Special Agent Seeley Booth solving a crossword. (Given the looser grid construction, it’s either a British-style crossword or a cryptic crossword. Either way, points to Agent Booth.)

Both he and forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance Brennan (Bones, to some) are called into work after a body is found in a fracking pit. The harsh chemicals in the pit are causing the body to deteriorate faster than normal, but some clever chemistry saves the day. Although a blood sample the team collects is too degraded for a positive match, they manage to identify the body from a rare surgery performed a few years before.

The body belongs to Lawrence Brooks, reclusive syndicated crossword constructor, considered by some to be a master in his field. His wife quickly points the fickle finger of blame squarely at his ambitious assistant, Alexis Sherman. Apparently, Brooks promised to use Alexis’s puzzles and dangled the possibility of a promotion to co-editor, but delivered on neither.

An analysis of a cast Brooks had on when he died reveals crossword clues written on it, but in two different handwriting styles. Some of the clues are straight-forward and simple synonym-style clues, hardly the work of a master constructor like Brooks.

“Despise,” 4 letters. Hate
“Blood feud,” 8 letters. Vendetta.

Other key words on the cast include punish, attack, payback, and justice. The team suspects the other clues are a message from his killer.

When Booth and Special Agent James Aubrey interview Alexis, she plays a nasty phone message from an unidentified man, claiming that a stranger has been hanging around lately. Alexis agrees to help a forensic artist sketch the mystery man.

Sadly, this is the last appearance of a visible puzzle in the episode, leaving solvers with Brooks’s murder to solve instead of a crossword grid.

The team swiftly gathers several suspects:

  • Emory Stewart (the man who matched the forensic artist’s drawing) claims to be writing a book about Brooks, and denies having left the phone message. He suggests another suspect:
  • Donald McKeon, Brooks’s old college roommate and a fellow crossword constructor, who admits to leaving the angry phone message. When the team finds one of Brooks’s puzzles in McKeon’s possession, they accuse him of theft and murder, only for McKeon to claim Brooks had stolen the puzzle from him. (He says his copy of the puzzle is from a old publishing trick, mailing something to yourself to provide a verified date for the contents, like a poor man’s patent.)

[Not an image from the episode, just one of James Addison’s puzzly envelopes.]

Meanwhile, the team discovers that Brooks’s bones had been weakening for months before his death, implying illness or injury. As it turns out, Brooks might have been seeking treatment for early onset Alzheimer’s, triggered by a head injury in a boating accident years before.

The Alzheimer’s treatment explains the condition of his bones, and the illness itself explains both the different handwriting (a dementia symptom) and the conflict with McKeon. (Brooks may have stolen McKeon’s puzzle unknowingly.)

This points back to Mrs. Brooks. It turns out she was publishing puzzles Brooks had previously created but deemed unusable. She had accidentally published McKeon’s puzzle. She mentions being broke, and not knowing what happened to hundreds of thousands of dollars that should’ve been in their bank accounts.

[This is your brain. This is your brain on Internet gambling…]

It appears that Brooks gambled his money away in online gambling. But when Booth and Aubrey lure out the bookie who broke Brooks’s fingers, the bookie says that Brooks was bankrolling a woman: his assistant, Alexis.

The assistant confesses to stealing from Brooks, but claims she would’ve paid him back. She is booked for theft, since they can’t yet prove she committed the murder.

The team discovers Brooks’s neck was broken, and doubts that the assistant could’ve done it.

Oddly enough, the solution appears while the team rallies around a pregnant coworker, Daisy, who solves the case during her pre-delivery contractions. She supposes that the blood sample they found with Brooks wasn’t his. It has to be that of a blood relative.

Brooks had a son. Which brings us back to Emory Stewart, who turns out to be Brooks’s son from a previous relationship. Emory talked to Brooks, but when they met in person later that day, Brooks claimed to have no idea who he was. Angry, and unaware that Alzheimer’s was behind Brooks’s faulty memory, Emory shoved Brooks down a hill, unintentionally killing him.

This episode goes against the standard crossword mystery convention of having a puzzle at the center of the murder. There’s no puzzle left behind by the killer, no cryptic clue scribbled onto a grid by the victim, no need for a detective with a knack for crosswords to crack the case. There’s simply a murder mystery and a bit of fun clue-fueled wordplay.

Sadly, we never return to the curiously unpleasant list of clues and words on Brooks’s cast, which was one of the most interesting plot points to me. Oh well. (There’s also the whole “wife knows husband has Alzheimer’s, but doesn’t report him missing” plot hole. But, hey, puzzles, not plot holes, right?)

[Mr. Shortz, looking none too amused by the plot of this episode.]

This episode does raise an intriguing idea, though. Imagine a murder mystery dinner set at next year’s American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, where something dastardly had happened to Will Shortz. (Thankfully, we can lose the fracking pit and its acidic unpleasantness with this scenario.)

Who would YOU suspect had done the heinous deed? His equally ambitious and capable assistant? A wronged fellow constructor? Perhaps a jealous ping-pong rival? There’s a lot of possibility there.

Of course, considering how Puzzle #5 decimated the competition last year, perhaps Brendan Emmett Quigley would be a more likely target.

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!

The Wide World of Sudoku

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hypersudokufromsudokusolverdotnet

[A classic Sudoku grid with a colorful twist, where the 3×3 blue squares also have all 9 numbers inside them. One of many MANY Sudoku variants. Grid from Sudoku-Solver.net]

For more than a century now, crosswords have been the premier pencil-and-paper (or pen-and-paper, if you’re confident) puzzle, but a close second would have to be Sudoku, which has exploded in popularity over the last decade or so.

The simple concept behind Sudoku — a 9×9 grid arranged so that the numbers 1 through 9 only appear once in each row, column, and 3×3 square — is easily modified for any difficulty level, from beginners to topnotch solvers.

The classic form of Sudoku, originally known as Number Place or To the Nines, is instantly recognizable.

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[A Sudoku grid from PuzzleNation’s own free Classic Sudoku app for iPad.]

But virtually any set of nine different symbols, characters, numbers, or letters can be used as clues for a Sudoku-style solve. That gives us variations like Picture Sudoku or Color Sudoku, where the same deduction is involved, but the solution is a bit more vibrant.

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[A color Sudoku from Aleph.se.]

Word Sudoku follows the same concept, replacing the numbers 1 through 9 with letters, allowing for the added bonus of a 9-letter word reading out along one of the rows. I’ve seen Word Sudoku variations in all sorts of languages, which is neat, because you can still solve the puzzle even if you don’t know the language; you’re simply choosing different symbols.

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[A Word Sudoku from Magic Word Square on Blogspot.]

Using letters instead of numbers often factors into larger Sudoku puzzles. While Penny/Dell’s Mega Sudoku is a 16×16 grid using the numbers 1 through 16, other large-scale Sudoku puzzles use letters instead of numbers above 10, while others go so far as to remove the numbers altogether, giving you the option of puzzles that span nearly the entire alphabet!

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[A 25×25 monster Sudoku grid using letters, courtesy of colinj.co.uk]

And since we’re already discussing bigger Sudoku puzzles, it’s worth mentioning smaller Sudoku puzzles. Often called Mini-Sudoku or Sub-Doku, these puzzles start at 4×4 grids (using only the numbers 1 through 4) and increase in size all the way up to the standard 9×9 grid.

Those are just the puzzles that use standard Sudoku rules. There are numerous types of Sudoku that add new rules or curious wrinkles to the standard solve.

Perhaps the most famous variant is known as Extreme Sudoku, Diagonal Sudoku, or X-Sudoku, and there’s one crucial difference: the numbers 1 through 9 also appear only once along each diagonal. This additional rule helps with solving, but Extreme Sudoku puzzles often have fewer set numbers in order to keep the difficulty level interesting.

extremesudoku

Another popular variation is known as Jigsaw Sudoku or Geometric Sudoku. These puzzles abandon the standard 3×3 boxes, instead using various Tetris-like shapes within the 9×9 grid. Each of these pieces contains each number 1 through 9, and the standard rule of no repeats within a row or a column remains.

These puzzles can either have random shapes or shapes with the same diagonal symmetry that rules both crossword grids and the placement of set numbers in classic Sudoku grids.

jigsawsudokufromanypuzzledotcom

[A Jigsaw Sudoku grid from AnyPuzzle.com]

Some variations involve more deduction as well, like Neighbor Order Sudoku or Greater Than Sudoku. These puzzles feature small arrows that indicate whether the number in a given square is larger or smaller than its neighbor.

That’s just the start of math-based Sudoku variants that exist. Sum-Doku or Killer Sudoku uses the standard one-per-row, column, and 3×3 box Sudoku rule, but also adds numerous smaller Tetris shapes and boxes, each with a total. The numbers within that smaller box add up to that total.

Those totals are a crucial aid for solving, since Sum-doku puzzles often feature many fewer starting numbers. (The shapes of the smaller boxes often follow the diagonal symmetry of the set numbers.)

sumdokufromcrossworddotnalenchdotcom

[A Sum-Doku grid from Crossword.Nalench.com]

Another popular variant involves overlapping Sudoku grids. You could have two 9×9 grids that share one 3×3 box, or two 9×9 grids sharing four 3×3 boxes, or you could have more grids overlapping in all sorts of ways.

overlappingquadruplesudokufromformsofenjoysudokudotcom

[A quadruple overlapping Sudoku grid, courtesy of the forums of enjoysudoku.com]

The best known overlapping Sudoku puzzle is probably Samurai Sudoku, which features five 9×9 grids, one at the center and one at each corner, so the 4 corner 3×3 boxes of the center grid link the puzzle together.

Check out this masterpiece I discovered on mathpuzzle.com:

5-way-hybridsudokufrommathpuzzledotcom

Not only is it a Samurai Sudoku with diagonal symmetry for all the set numbers, but each of the four corner grids operates under a different set of variant rules.

The upper left grid uses Extreme Sudoku (or Diagonal Sudoku) rules, the upper right grid is an asymmetric Jigsaw Sudoku (or Geometric Sudoku), the lower left grid has shaded the location of every even-numbered number to aid your solving, and the bottom right has two shaded ribbons weaving throughout the grid, each of which also includes each number from 1 through 9 once.

As you might expect, there are plenty of variations of Samurai Sudoku. My personal favorite is known as Shogun Sudoku; it’s two linked Samurai Sudoku grids — meaning there are ELEVEN linked 9×9 grids — and there are even larger variations out there for the solver who simply can’t get enough of overlapping Sudoku puzzles.

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[Upper left: Tight Fit Sudoku, Upper Right: Thermo Sudoku,
Lower Left: Arrow Sudoku, Lower Right: Consecutive Sudoku.]

Our friends at Penny/Dell Puzzles have several titles that offer a variety of different Sudoku puzzles. The four grids above all appear in various issues of Will Shortz’s WordPlay, all courtesy of Sudoku constructor Thomas Snyder.

You should also check out the Sudoku Spectacular title (featured in our Holiday Puzzly Gift Guide!) as well as their upcoming Will Shortz’s Sudoku title.

I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention the mathier cousins of Sudoku.

2000px-kakuro_black_box-svg

Kakuro, also known as Cross Sums, follows the same no-repeats rule of classic Sudoku, but the grids are much closer to Crosswords. The numbers along the top and left-side are the total for each row or column, and they are the primary clues for solving the puzzle. Kakuro rarely features set numbers the way Sudoku does, instead opting for a single filled-in row or column to get the solver started.

kenkenfromthemathmagazineonblogspot

[A 6×6 KenKen grid, courtesy of The Math Magazine on Blogspot]

KenKen takes the addition from Sum-Doku and adds subtraction, multiplication, and division to the mix. Each box has a number and a mathematical symbol. The number is the total, and the symbol is how the missing numbers interact to reach that total. For instance, in the upper right corner of the grid, there’s 24X. That means the two missing numbers from that box, when multiplied, equal 24.

And since this is a 6×6 grid, following the same one-per-row and column rules of Sudoku, you know that 4 and 6 are the missing numbers in that box, but you don’t necessarily know where to place them yet.

When it comes to Sudoku, the variations on shapes and layouts are seemingly endless. I’ve seen diamonds and snowflakes, cubes and five-pointed stars, in all sorts of sizes. You can get Samurai Sudoku with 6×6 grids, Jigsaw Sudoku in miniature, and Word Sudoku with Egyptian hieroglyphics.

While researching this post, I encountered this marvelous Sudoku variant, which the constructor calls Star Sudoku.

starsudoku1

The numbers 1 through 9 appear once in each triangle, and there are no repeats along any row or slanted column. This puzzle is not only clever, it’s flat-out neat.

So, fellow puzzlers, what’s your favorite variation of Sudoku? Or do you prefer to stick with the classic version? 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!

Crosswords, Cryptics, Constructors, and… Setters?

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One of the privileges of writing two or three posts a week for this blog is that it pushes me to expand my own horizons when it comes to puzzles. I reach out to puzzlers, game designers, and pop culture personalities of all sorts; I try out new games and puzzles; I obsessively scour the Internet for new projects, new products, and new stories that involve puzzles.

Oftentimes, that continuous search takes me beyond the borders of the United States, allowing me to explore what puzzles mean to other countries and cultures. And I am forever intrigued by the differences in crossword puzzles between America and the UK.

The world of cryptic crosswords (or British-style crosswords, as some call them) is a bit different from the world of American crosswords. Instead of constructors, they have compilers or setters, and while constructor bylines and attributions were a long time coming on this side of the Atlantic, setters in the UK have been drawing loyal followings for decades, thanks to their unique and evocative pseudonyms.

While Will Shortz, Merl Reagle, Patrick Blindauer, Brendan Emmett Quigley, Patrick Berry, Trip Payne, Matt Gaffney, and Bernice Gordon represent some of the top puzzlers to grace the pages of the New York Times Crossword, names such as Araucaria, Qaos, Arachne, Crucible, Otterden, Tramp, Morph, Gordius, Shed, Enigmatist, and Paul are their word-twisting counterparts featured in The Guardian and other UK outlets.

In fact, beloved setter Araucaria will soon be the subject of a documentary. For more than 50 years, he challenged and delighted cryptic crossword fans, amassing a loyal following. In January of 2013, he even shared his cancer diagnosis with the audience through a puzzle in The Guardian.

While the Wordplay documentary, as well as interviews on PuzzleNation Blog and other sites, have given solvers some insight into the minds and lives of constructors and setters, it’s wonderful to know that the life of a fellow puzzler will be chronicled in so intimate a format.

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 our library of PuzzleNation apps and games!