Tag Archives: Wordplay

A Writing Prompt with a Puzzle/Game Twist!

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I’m always on the hunt for different ways that puzzles have found their way into pop culture and society in general, and it never ceases to amaze me how ubiquitous puzzles can be.

I recently stumbled across a puzzly reference in a list of writing prompts intended to spark some creative scribbling:

A long while back, the world came to an end, and with it your favourite newspaper. For years you’ve been filling the idle hours between scrounging and scavenging by solving crosswords puzzles. You’ve got 50 years worth of backlogs, but now you’ve completed every single one.

Every single one except the most recent one. The final one, that is. The crossword puzzle that never got released because the world ended.

So now you’re on a journey through the post-apocalyptic wasteland to find the last puzzle, and finally complete your collection.

A dystopian tale with a puzzly hook? Sounds like a can’t-miss YA book to me!

It’s an intriguing pitch — for a story or a roleplaying campaign — and one that reminds me of David Steinberg and the Pre-Shortzian Puzzle Project, as they’re still on the hunt for 142 missing New York Times crosswords that weren’t published in New York.

And, naturally, since my mind has wandered to puzzle-and-game-fueled scribblings, I simply must include this board game-inspired take on the classic Abbott and Costello routine “Who’s on First?” that a friend of mine penned. Enjoy!

Customer: Excuse me, do you sell this particular board game whose name I’ve forgotten, it’s like Parcheesi, only smaller and has a Pop-O-Matic dice rolling bubble in the middle.

Clerk: Are you looking for Trouble?

Customer: What? No! Sorry.

Clerk: Ah, we do have that. But without the dice popper.

Customer: What?

Clerk: Sorry.

Customer: No, it’s fine. I just want your opinion of the other game you have, if it’s no trouble.

Clerk: Well, it kind of is. According to some people.

Customer: Sorry?

Clerk: Yes.

Customer: You are fast becoming a source of aggravation.

Clerk: Oh, we have that one, too!

Customer: Argh! What. Game. Were you talking about before, and what’s your opinion?

Clerk: Sorry, and it’s no Trouble, if you ask me.

Customer: Well, great.

Clerk: So do you want that?

Customer: Huh?

Clerk: Or would you prefer Aggravation?

Customer: I’d rather you gave me a clue!

Clerk: Well that game’s nothing like Parcheesi.

Customer: Then why bring it up?

Clerk: I didn’t, you did!

Customer: Look, just… go.

Clerk: We don’t have that, but what about Othello?

Customer: ARGH!

As always, puzzles and games make everything better.

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The Diabolical Art of Bar Bets

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We discuss all sorts of time-honored puzzles and brain teasers here on the blog, but it’s not often that those discussions wander into the arena known as bar bets.

Simply put, bar bets are contests between two parties wherein money or free drinks are wagered on one’s ability to accomplish a given task. Sometimes, that task is answering a bit of trivia, or engaging in a feat of strength.

But more often than not, bar bets are brain teasers designed to separate a fool from his money.

And if you approach them like brain teasers, you have a better chance of holding onto your hard-earned dough.

You see, many of these bar bets are designed more like carnival games than fair wagers; there’s usually a trick involved, and your opponent is wagering on you playing by the rules, rather than out-thinking the game itself.

Example: the wager seems simple. There is a drink placed completely beneath a hat. You must drink the drink without touching the hat.

It seems impossible, but that’s where you must get creative. You can crouch down near the hat and make a slurping noise, and then declare that you’ve succeeded in drinking the drink. Your curious opponent is forced to lift the hat to check, and at that moment, grab the drink, down it, and you’ve won.

You adhered to the letter of the wager, but not the spirit. But that’s the name of the game.

Be careful, because some bar bets are based solely on wordplay.

Example: Tell your opponent to get a coin out of their pocket and set it under a drink coaster, ensuring that you don’t see it. The wager? That you’ll be able to tell them the date.

As you wave your hand over the coaster, as if doing a magic trick, simply announce today’s date. After all, you weren’t specific. You just said you’d tell them the date, not necessarily the date on the coin.

A similar one involves wagering that you can stay underwater for any particular length of time. Once you make the wager, simply hold a glass of water over your head for that amount of time.

A little cheap? Sure. But hey, a bar bet is a bet. And the devil is in the details.

Some bar bets, though, come down to technique. You present a seemingly impossible task, and then accomplish it in a clever way.

For example, my favorite bar bet: You have a glass (a wine glass, a shot glass, whatever), with a coaster (or business card) on top of it. Atop the coaster is a cigarette, standing on end. And atop the cigarette is a coin.

The wager? Put the coin into the glass without touching the glass, coaster, cigarette, or coin.

There’s no wordplay, no trickery, and no deceit here. This one is all about gravity.

You see, the coaster and the cigarette are light, while the coin is not. If you crouch down below the glass and blow upward, you’ll be able to push aside the coaster and cigarette, leaving the coin to fall straight down into the now-open glass.

Easy. Once you know how it’s done, that is.

What’s your favorite puzzly wager, fellow puzzlers and PuzzleNationers? Do you have a favorite bar bet, trick, or crafty challenge up your sleeve that leaves others befuddled?

Let us know in the comments below! We’d love to hear from you.

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This New Puzzle Set for the Penny Dell Crosswords App Is Making Me Hungry!

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Hello puzzlers and PuzzleNationers! Yes, we’ve got a second bonus blog post for you today, because there’s simply too much great stuff to announce today!

We’re excited to announce a new puzzle set for the Penny Dell Crosswords App…

It’s the Breakfast Deluxe Puzzle Set!

Start your mornings right with a hearty breakfast and some terrific crossword puzzles, courtesy of your friendly neighborhood constructors at PuzzleNation!

Offering 30 easy, medium, and hard puzzles, plus 5 breakfast-themed bonus puzzles to sate your puzzly appetite, no matter what your skill level, the Breakfast Deluxe puzzle set is part of a well-balanced day of solving!

Plus it’s available for both iOS and Android users!

Happy puzzling, everybody!

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! Be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date on everything PuzzleNation!

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The October PN/Escape 101 Promotion Starts Today!

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A few weeks ago, we featured local escape room company Escape 101 in our latest edition of Citizen Shoutout!

And the crew at Escape 101 offered an awesome deal to all PuzzleNation users!

For the entire month of October, if you make a reservation for a room at Escape 101 and you have one of the PuzzleNation puzzle apps on your phone, you can show it to them at the door and they’ll give you a 10% discount on the entire booking!

That’s right, whether it’s Daily POP Crosswords, Penny Dell Crosswords, Penny Dell Sudoku, or Penny Dell Crosswords Jumbo 1, 2, or 3, being a PuzzleNation solver will give you a discount on a terrific solving experience.

You can call or email Escape 101 to reserve a room, or book a room through their website. (It’s always best to do so at least a few days out from your desired date and time, just to give them the best chance to meet your expectations.)

You can check out more of the Escape 101 experience in our Citizen Shoutout post or on the Escape 101 website.

They’ve got something for all skill levels. If you’ve never done an escape room before, the Ice Cream Truck room is the perfect introduction. And if you’re looking for a serious challenge, the Doomsday room will test your puzzly mettle.

With those and two other rooms to choose from, you’re guaranteed to find the right fit for you and your fellow solvers!

Enjoy! And let us know when you do! We’d love to hear from you!

Heck, we might even see you there!

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The Curious World of Ancient Board Games

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A few weeks ago, we delved into the surprisingly deep history behind games still commonly played today, like Go, chess, and various dice games. But we barely scratched the surface when it comes to ancient gaming. There are numerous games that fell out of favor centuries ago, only to be resurrected in the modern day by game enthusiasts and historians.

In today’s blog post, I’d like to dust off a few of these ancient games and briefly discuss what we know about them. It’s game history time!

[Image courtesy of Wikipedia.]

A popular Viking game whose heyday was between the fourth and twelfth centuries, Hnefatafl was a popular game throughout Scandinavia. This mouthful of a game — sometimes called Viking chess by modern game fans — was so ubiquitous back then that it was mentioned in several of the Norse Sagas.

Amazingly, although game pieces and fragments of game boards have been recovered, no one is entirely sure how the game is played, so rules have been reconstructed based on a similar game called Tablut.

Translated as “board game of the fist,” Hnefatafl is part of a family of games called Tafl games, all of which take place on a checkerboard-style play space with an uneven number of game pieces.

[Image courtesy of Wikipedia.]

Unlike Hnefatafl, the Royal Game of Ur has survived the centuries pretty much unscathed, thanks to a copy of the rules recorded on a Babylonian tablet. Played in the Middle East centuries ago — in places like Syria and Iran — the Royal Game of Ur was clearly popular, as evidence of the game has been found as far away from the Middle East as Crete and Sri Lanka.

The game and its trappings penetrated deep into Middle Eastern society. An Ur game board was carved like graffiti into a wall in the palace of Sargon II (dating back to the 700s BC). The Babylonian tablet indicates that certain game spaces were believed to be good omens, and could be interpreted as messages from the beyond.

The game was eventually either supplanted by backgammon or evolved into a version of backgammon, depending upon different historical accounts.

[Image courtesy of Chess Variants.com.]

Tori Shogi dates back to 1799 in Japan. Also known as Bird chess — thanks to game tiles named after phoenixes, cranes, and swallows — Shogi is played on a board seven squares wide and seven squares deep.

Unlike many chess variants, Tori Shogi allows for captured pieces to return to play, a nice twist that deepens the familiar gameplay style.

[Image courtesy of Bodleian Libraries.]

But chess and backgammon aren’t the only games with centuries-old precursors. The geographical game Ticket to Ride also has an aged forebearer in Binko’s Registered Railway Game, which was built around a map of the United Kingdom.

An educational game about placing trains on the map and determining how far they travel, this game has survived the decades relatively unscathed by time.

Those are just four examples of games that were either lost and then rediscovered, or games that fell out of favor, only to be resurrected by curious modern players.

And once again, these games are just the tip of the iceberg. There are centuries-old versions of The Game of Life, Parcheesi, a dating game, checkers, and more when you start digging!

As you can see, games have been a part of human civilization dating back millennia. We were always meant to play puzzles and games, it seems.

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Puzzles in Pop Culture: Felix the Cat

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It’s fun to uncover little puzzly bits of history, but when history, puzzles, and entertainment intertwine, it always makes for intriguing viewing.

So when friend of the blog Darcy Bearman showed me a Felix the Cat cartoon from the 1920s that centered around an unsolved crossword puzzle, naturally I was intrigued.

It wasn’t hard to track down a copy, given how practically everything seems to be on YouTube these days.

Here are the official details:

Felix All Puzzled (1924)

  • Director: Pat Sullivan
  • Animator: Otto Messmer
  • Distributor: M.J. Winkler Productions

Originally Released on January 15, 1925.

Felix is hungry, but his owner won’t feed him until he finishes his crossword puzzle. And he’s fixated on the down clue that will complete the puzzle, “Vertical. Found chiefly in Russia.”

Pondering what the answer could be Felix, the cat laments that he could eat if only he could get to Russia and uncover the missing word.

A nearby mule kicks Felix all the way to Russia, seemingly out of spite — clearly a Moscow Mule — and Felix lands in a small hut. Momentarily mistaken for a bomb, he leaves the hut and heads into town.

He sees two Russians leaning over some papers, and presumes that the answer will be on those papers. But after sneaking into the building, he’s accused of spying, shot at, and chased out. As it turns out, these two men are plotting a revolution, and they toss bombs at Felix.

After avoiding several of them, Felix is blown into the air by the last one, and ends up back in America.

His owner, the ungrateful boor, immediately asks if Felix found the answer. He doesn’t ask how his trip was, or if he’s alright, or hey, can I get you a bite to eat after your mule-and-bomb-propelled world tour. What a jerk.

And Felix’s snarky reply turns out to be the correct answer.

Felix laughs. His owner does a little victory dance. And the cartoon ends.

Naturally, I can’t help but ask… DID YOU FEED FELIX NOW THAT YOUR PUZZLE IS DONE, YOU SELFISH DOOFUS? I mean, come on. It’s the whole reason that Felix bothers going to Russia. He wants to eat. Feed him!

But I digress.

You may have noticed that the cartoon is a little choppy. If you did, kudos to you. As it turns out, most of the copies of this cartoon that are in circulation are from a Kodascope print where several scenes were cut. Given that the original run time listing was 5 minutes, suddenly the choppiness makes sense.

A half-dozen sequences or so are missing from this version, and they explain some of the weirder moments in the cartoon. For instance, the mule kicks Felix because the question marks (from his attempts to figure out how to get to Russia) tickle the mule.

Additionally, if you were wondering why the first Russian Felix meets thinks he’s a bomb, it’s because he got a letter from the revolutionaries earlier that reads “Today, you die!” (Which is admittedly a little grim.)

Now, let’s talk about that puzzle.

TRIPPLE is a pretty strange 1-Across. A chiefly South African term for a horse’s gait (according to Merriam Webster, anyway), you can’t help but wonder if they simply misspelled TRIPLE.

But the rest of the puzzle is fairly straightforward. It’s a 7×7 grid with a few two-letter entries (which wouldn’t fly in most crosswords these days). The combination of EASTERS and EVADERS crossing at the S is admittedly underwhelming.

The only other entry that jumps out at me is NVA, but only because I wonder how it would be clued. It’s not like a 1925 cartoon would be referencing the North Vietnamese Army.

Upon further digging, I suspect this would have been clued referencing the National Vaudeville Artists, a union formed by Edward Franklin Albee. The clue “Theatrical organization” is used for NVA in a 1953 New York Times puzzle, according to XwordInfo.

Of course, with obtuse cluing like “Chiefly found in Russia,” even a small grid like this could prove to be a challenge!

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You can also share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and explore the always-expanding library of PuzzleNation apps and games on our website!