Tag Archives: Wordplay

New Puzzle Sets for PDCW App and Daily POP Crosswords!

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Hello puzzlers and PuzzleNationers! Happy Friday!

We’re excited to announce new puzzle sets for both of our marvelous crossword puzzle apps! Yes, whether you’re a fan of our Penny Dell Crosswords App or our Daily POP Crosswords app, we’ve got something special for you!

First off, we have the Cheers! Deluxe Set for the Penny Dell Crosswords App!

With special themed puzzles and plenty of great puzzles at all difficulty levels for you to enjoy, it’s the perfect way to cap off the end of summer, the start of the school year, or just a pleasant Friday at home!

And for the Daily POP Crosswords users, we have our latest featured set, Out of This World!

Consisting of ten puzzles, all with space-related themes, this puzzle set offers the fresh, pop culture-savvy cluing you’ve come to expect from PuzzleNation, all in ten terrific puzzles collected for your convenience and enjoyment!

Both are available now for in-app purchase, so don’t miss out on these terrific new puzzle bundles!

Happy puzzling, everybody!

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A 5-Letter Word Related to Crossword Skills? Try “Music”

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A few years ago, I wrote a post discussing the curious intersection of music and puzzles. It centered around several studies about the effects both listening to music and performing music can have on individuals taking tests or solving puzzles.

There were two intriguing takeaways from these studies:

  • Both adults and children perform better on tests, puzzles, and problem-solving exercises when music is involved (ex.: if they listen to music before or during the test).
  • Children who are given music lessons often achieve greater heights in other subjects, including math and sports.

But it didn’t occur to me until much later that the connection between music and crosswords in particular has been in evidence for quite some time.

There are two 7-time champions in the history of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament: Dan Feyer and Jon Delfin. Think about that. Fourteen out of forty-one ACPT tournaments have been won by one of these men. Practically one out of every three!

And both of them have a musical background as pianists and music directors.

But they’re not the only ones. Constructor Patrick Blindauer, puzzler and actress Whitney Avalon, Lollapuzzoola co-founder Brian Cimmet, and even our own Director of Digital Games Fred Galpern are all musicians.

So what’s the connection between music and crossword puzzles?

No one can say for sure, but there are theories.

In the crossword documentary Wordplay (and quoted from the article linked below), former New York Times Public Editor Daniel Okrent mentioned why he felt that musicians and mathematicians were good fits as crossword solvers:

Their ability to assimilate a lot of coded information instantly. In other words, a piano player like John Delfin, the greatest crossword player of our time, he sits down and he sees three staffs of music and he can instantly play it. He’s taken all those notes and absorbs what they mean, instantaneously. If you have that kind of mind, and you add it to it a wide range of information, and you can spell, you’d be a really great crossword puzzler.

Crossword constructor and psychology professor Arthur Schulman — known for a series of seminars entitled “The Mind of the Puzzler” at the University of Virginia — would agree with that statement. He posited a correlation between word puzzles, math, and music, in that they all involve a quick and intuitive understanding of symbols. It’s about “finding meaning in structure.”

In an interview with the New York Times, Dan Feyer built on this idea, stating that music, math, and puzzles all have pattern recognition in common, quickly recognizing combinations of blanks and spaces and mentally filling in possible answer words, even before reading the clues.

Now, clearly, musical skill and proficiency isn’t required to be a good crossword solver — I’d classify myself as a pretty good solver and I have an almost magical lack of musical talent — but it’s intriguing to ponder how puzzling could easily be wrapped up with a musical bow.

Do you know any other puzzlers with a musical background, or are you a lyrical solver yourself? Let us know in the comments section below! We’d love to hear from you!

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A Dollar For Your Thoughts? It’s the Hundred Dollar Puzzle!

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[Image courtesy of ColourBox.com.]

That’s right, fellow puzzlers and PuzzleNationers! It’s that time again when we pit our puzzly minds against a fiendish brain teaser and test our mental mettle!

You might’ve seen this brain teaser making the rounds on social media. It’s known as the hundred dollar puzzle, and unlike most brain teasers, this one is less about the puzzle and more about how we got to the solution.

Intrigued? You’re not the only one. Let’s take a look at the brain teaser:

A young man sees a shirt for $97. He borrows $50 from mom and $50 from dad. He buys the shirt and is left with $3 change.

He gives $1 to mom, $1 to dad, and keeps $1 for himself. Now he owes his mom $49 and his dad $49.

$49 + $49 = $98 + his remaining $1 = $99. Where did the other $1 go?

[Image courtesy of CollecTons.]

People love brain teasers like this, because at first glance, and even at second glance, the math SEEMS to hold up.

But the real trick to this one is that it’s asking the wrong question. The other dollar didn’t go anywhere.

The problem here is… as soon as he pays his parents back, it’s no longer about one hundred dollars. It’s about ninety-eight dollars.

Let’s look at total borrowings versus borrowings after paying back his parents. The original specs were:

What he owed: $100
What he had: $3 and a $97 dollar shirt.

But the goalposts changed when he paid his parents back a dollar each. (And if he plans to pay the loan off a dollar at a time, it’s going to take FOREVER for them to get their money back.)

What he now owes: $98
What he has: $1 and a $97 dollar shirt.

The math adds up. Your total borrowings go from $100 to $98 dollars, and you spent $97 dollars and put the extra dollar in your pocket.

So the final equation in the brain teaser is flawed. It’s not $49 + $49 = $98 + his remaining $1 = $99. It’s $49 + $49 = $98 = his remaining $1 and his fancy shirt $97.

[Image courtesy of Ali Express.com.]

Sometimes, brain teasers aren’t about crunching numbers, but finding the logical flaw in the puzzle itself.

We hope you enjoyed unraveling the hundred dollar puzzle, and if you have any brain teasers, riddles, or other puzzly suggestions for mental challenges to conquer, let us know in the comment section below! We’d love to hear from you!

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

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!

The (Increasingly Lengthy) History of Games

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Being a student of history means constantly discovering amazing new things about our world, our culture, and ourselves. There are so many unexpected twists and turns, synchronicities, coincidences, and flat-out mind-blowing facts waiting to be uncovered.

And when you’re a student of history with an interest in puzzles and games, it means you get to discover just how long humans have been dabbling in baffling brain teasers and friendly competition.

Board games, for instance, have been around a long time, longer than most people realize. There is evidence that Go has been played in China for more than 5,500 years!

And many other games also have shockingly long lineages. Chess can be traced back to the seventh century in India. Game boards have been found in king’s courts, university halls, and even former houses used by the Knights Templar, as pictured above.

We’ve previously explored that Viking gravesites from the ninth century reveal that board games were not just a pastime for the Vikings, but that their win-loss records were important enough to be recorded for posterity!

Check this out. It’s an ancient Greek painting on a vase, dating back to 530 BCE. This piece is an example of the black figure technique where images painted on clay turned black when the clay was fired. It depicts the two mightiest warriors of the Trojan War, Achilles and Ajax, playing a board game to keep themselves busy during the siege of Troy.

It’s unclear what game they’re playing, though many historians believe the warriors are rolling dice in the image. That would make sense, since astragali (the knuckle-bones of goats and sheep) were used in ancient Greek gambling games.

Dice have an equally ancient history. The Egyptian game of Senet, which was played with dice, dates back over 5,000 years.

Dice games have been uncovered in Mesopotamian tombs (some as far back as the twenty-fourth century BC), and a Vedic Sanskrit text known as the Rigveda, which dates back to India in 1500 BC, also mentions dice.

Tile games have a similarly deep history.

Chinese Dominoes can be traced back to writings of the Song Dynasty, nearly a thousand years ago. Dominoes as we know them first appeared in Italy during the 1800s, and some historians theorize they were brought to Europe from China by traveling missionaries.

Another tile game, Mahjong, has been around for centuries, but there are several different origin stories for the game, one tracing back to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), another to the days of Confucius (500 BC).

Perhaps at some point, I’ll try to put together a historical timeline of gaming (similar to the crossword timeline I created around the 100th anniversary of the crossword).

In the meantime, I’ll settle for being utterly fascinated with just how long humans have been socializing, relaxing, and competing through the medium of games.

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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!

Putting the “Daily” Into “Daily POP Crosswords”

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One of my favorite features built into the Daily POP Crosswords app is the ability to keep track of the puzzles you’ve solved. The Calendar screen is always a treat, with a special, unique icon appearing on the calendar for every puzzle you’ve completed.

But in addition to those daily icons, there’s also a Streak counter that details both the number of days in a row you’ve solved the daily puzzle and the date your solving streak began.

You can see your streak on the Home screen in the lower left corner (next to your coin total), as well as on the Calendar screen in the upper right corner, on your Profile screen beside your Solver ID, and on your Scores screen at the top of the page.

The app keeps track of your streak even if you haven’t linked it to your Facebook account, just as it keeps track of your daily icons on the Calendar page. (Of course, if you link your FB account to the app, you get bonus coins with which to solve additional puzzles. Hint hint.)

Naturally, watching my own Streak counter rise, only to reset when I accidentally miss a day, makes me wonder… What’s the longest streak amongst Daily POP Crosswords solvers?

I took to social media to ask the PuzzleNation readership, and the top Streak counts that solvers reported hovered between the 50 and 60 day mark. Which is quite impressive! That’s nearly two months without missing a single day!

But, as it turns out, I didn’t have to go far to find the highest Streak count I’ve encountered thus far in my search. How high was the Streak count, you ask?

152!

Yes, one hundred fifty-two days in a row! Nearly five months of solving without missing a day!

This total was amassed by friend of the blog and fellow puzzler Lori, who revealed her impressive puzzly feat to me around the 90-something day mark, and has been dutifully solving ever since!

She sheepishly admitted to me this week that it had slipped her mind to solve on Monday, and she was devastated to have broken her Streak, as she’d been hoping to go a full 365 days.

What do you think about that, fellow puzzlers and PuzzleNationers? Do you have a Daily POP Crosswords Streak that rivals super-solver Lori’s? Let us know where your Streak stands in the comment section below!

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

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!

Back to School Puzzle Punnery!

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You may be familiar with the board game Schmovie, hashtag games on Twitter, or @midnight’s Hashtag Wars segment on Comedy Central.

For years now, we’ve been collaborating on puzzle-themed hashtag games with our pals at Penny Dell Puzzles, and this month’s hook was #PennyDellSchoolPuzzles, mashing up Penny Dell puzzles with school subjects, supplies, cliches, and more, all about back to school!

Examples include: Mechanical Pencil Pusher, StarSpelling Bee, and Tossing & Turning (the Night Before a Big Exam).

So, without further ado, check out what the puzzlers at PuzzleNation and Penny Dell Puzzles came up with!

PaperBlips

Homecoming and Going

Piggybackpack

Lockerkuro

A-Plus Fours

Three of a Kindergarten

Schoolmaster Words (from Schoolmaster’s Variety Puzzles)

Middle School of the Road

In the Middle School

Back of the Word Rebus

Homework Runs

High School Scorer

Top to Bottom of the Class

Substitutions Teacher

Bull’s-Eye Spiral Notebook

Mixed Bookbag

Exchange Blackboards

Foreign Exchange Boards Student

A Few Multiple-Choice Words

Circles in the Square Root of Pi

Head of the Classified Adds

Crossing Guard Arithmetic

Textbook Worms

Crypto-Names and Dates

Double Occupancy Dorm Rooms

Give Homework and Take Attendance

Parse a Phrase

Staring Out the Window Boxes

End of the Line in the Cafeteria

Summer’s End of the Line

Learning the ABC’s

Class is Across & Down the Hall

High school Drop-Outs

Letterdropout

Letter Perfect Attendance

Short Attention Spanners

Freshman year Ups & Downs

Who’s Calling the Nurse?

Study Group Values

Home Rooms

It Facts and Figures

Lab Partners

Ringmaster’s degree

Gold Stars and Arrows

Chemistry Labyrinth

Yearbook Photo Finish

Spellingbound

Many of our contributors offered up puzzly versions of sentences you’d hear around school!

No eating Chips in the library.

Honeycomb your hair, you’ll be late for school.

Line ’em Up… for detention!

TODAY’S MENU: a Bowl Game of Alphabet Soup

Passing notes? Would you care to Share-a-Letter with the rest of the class?

Brick by Brick the new school was built.

Class, take your Places, Please.

Student: “Miss Lane, I can’t do this problem.”
Teacher: “Try to Figgerit out!”

What kinds of tests do monsters take? Criptoquizzes

Snow day Cancellations will Carry-Over into the summer!

Rodney DanGarfield Quotables: Double Negative lesson: “I don’t get no respect”

Rodney DanGarfield Quotables: “Why don’t you call me some time when you have no class?”

One solver offered the voice of experience…

Even though I graduated long ago, I still get excited by school supply displays! And now a little advice for those back-to-schoolers:

This might be a Throwback, but I remember when you got ready for Class-ified Adds by packing your TrapperKeyword in your Bookworm bag.

You could be a WordMathlete ready for the big Countdown.

You can get through those two-a-days Two at a Time to practice a perfect Bull’s-eye Spiral and make it to the Bowlgame.

And there’s One and Only valedictorian, so Try-Angles your best, and you can do it Step by Step.

Another solver delved into history with a look back on her puzzly school days:

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, please join me on a trip down memory lane as I travel in my TIME MACHINE and go back to school. During my first few DAIS-Y of school, I learned the ALPHABET PLUS played a lot of SIMON SAYS. My teacher gave us CRACKERS for snack time, but I wish she had given us BOXES of CRACKERJACKS instead. Some of the kids in my class loved constructing with wooden shapes and were pretty amazing BLOCKBUILDERS.

In elementary school, we were encouraged to increase our vocabularies and had to EXPLORAWORD every day. There was quite a bit of homework in which we had to FILL-IN the BLANKWORD to prove that we understood what we had learned. In my junior high years, I took shop class, in which we were taught to use JIGSAW SQUARES. I remember that there were BITS & PIECES of wood all over the floor of that classroom.

It was also during one of those junior-high years that we had the dreaded CIRCLES IN THE SQUARE dancing unit in gym class. Having to stand there, FACE TO FACE with a random classmate was nothing short of awkward. Later on, in high school, I KENKEN remember having a particularly cranky math teacher. I used to joke that he taught CROSS ARITHMETIC.

Well, after covering all those years of school, WHAT’S LEFT? Oh yes – just my college years. You may laugh when you PICTURE THIS, but I was the DRUMMERMAN major of our marching band. We’d SHUFFLE along, HERE & THERE during HALFTIME at every football game. Well, friends – that concludes our journey. I hope that you enjoyed your ONE & ONLY chance to experience the magic of time travel.

Finally, one solver set her puzzly school ideas to music…

It’s a fact
School is a Balancing Act
We race to Beat the Clock
Jocks hit Home-Runs and run Around the Block
While all the Bookworms and busy bees
Are learning their ABC’s
Dodge ball teams
Odds and Evens
Pick and Choose
Todds and Stevens
Tots Add One on their Abacus
Seniors are taking Quote Calculus
Rah-rahs cheer “All Four One”
Teachers are saying “Are we having fun?”
Lunch bell rings, Woohoo!
Lovebirds enjoy Alphabet Soup for Two
Keep on Moving, Line-Em Up
Scholars bolt down lunch before time is up
Outside kids play games of Hopscotch, Simon Says, and Seven-Up
Substitutions Fill-In when teachers are out
Classes and studies, hopefully no Drop-Outs
Text Message, Telephone Call
Is Johnny taking me to the Harvest Ball?
Guys and gals Mix and Mingle, then Pair Off
Stags feeling Out of Place at the Disco
Cause Double Trouble, throw Chips
Then Face to Face with…Guess Who?
Principal Chase!
School play time!
So Places, Please
Custodians clean the school Top to Bottom
Sweep spilled Animal Crackers and Crackerjacks
Miles of Bounty, the quicker Picker-Upper
Days come Full Circle
Work is done
Now home to supper!
Only question is: How many more days till summer?

One of our fellow PuzzleNationers also got involved in the puzzly fun! Jane W (aka @jawurts10) offered up the delightful entries “Essay Can You See” and “Cramming And Jamming,” which were great fun. Nice job!

Have you come up with any Penny Dell School Puzzles entries of your own? Let us know! We’d love to see them!

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

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!