Logic-Puzzles.org is a great new site that is dedicated to logic grid puzzles.  These puzzles feature a set of assertions, generally about a group of people and what kind of pets they have, what color hats they wear, etc.  The goal is to determine from the limited set of assertions, which pet each person has, etc.  There is a grid that accompanies the puzzle that helps you solve it.

Logic-Puzzles.org provides a seemingly unlimited amount of these puzzles and a great interface for playing them.  The grid is provided for you and you can fill it out on the site.  The site will also keep time, so that you know how long it takes you to solve a puzzle.  I would highly recommend checking it out.

There’s a new sudoku variation over at The Griddle called Curve Doku.  The puzzle combines a killer sudoku with a greater-than sudoku.  It’s called Curve Doku because the two puzzles are connected by curves that also serve as blocks in the sudoku grid.

It’s recently been determined that 22 moves or less are needed to solve any configuration of a Rubik’s Cube.  There is more information about this on mathpuzzle.com.  (That information comes from here.)

I got an email about a new kind of puzzle called Mozaniac.  The puzzle involves assembling pieces to create a picture, but it differs from jigsaw puzzles in a couple ways.  The pieces interlock in a way such that they overlap each other.  In this way, a single set of pieces can be used for four different puzzles when both the front and back of the pieces are used.

There are a number of puzzles for sale on the site.  Some of them feature fine art painting, which the creators not are not terribly difficult, and others require you to assemble pictures of numbers which are the more challenging puzzles.  What’s missing from this site is a small Mozaniac puzzle that you can print out and try for yourself.

The tag line for Foldit is “Solve Puzzles for Science.”  It’s a protein folding game and the results of the game being played by people around the internet will be used for scientific research.  The idea is that a large number of people playing a game can perform some tasks better than computers.  Does that really work?  From what I can tell, that is the question.  The focus of the research right now seems to be proving that this works.

So, how is the game?  When you play, you get dropped into protein folding without much introduction.  It’s not entirely clear, to start, what the goal is or what your tactics should be.  As you play and experiment, the goals become more clear: avoid collisions, create hydrogen bonds, eliminate voids.  I also was able to develop a little bit of strategy but the only tools that I seemed to have available were pulling on the protein chain and wiggling the backbone.  I’m not entirely sure what I was doing, but I managed to get progressively better scores.

In all, it’s worth a look.  And if anyone can explain the game to me a little more, that would be great.

Grand Tour Puzzles involve a grid of points that all need to be connected by a single loop.  To begin the puzzle, a few of the points are already connected to insure a unique solution.  There is a great resource for Grand Tour puzzles on the web here.  Also, for anyone interested in the math behind the puzzle, check out this page.  Enjoy!

Vexus Puzzle is a web site that features new and original logic puzzles.  There are two puzzle types currently available to try on the site, Navigrid and Isolate.  Navigrid is a puzzle that requires you to fill a sequence of numbers into a grid.  The trick is that there are only a set number of moves that can be made between two consecutive numbers.  These moves are listed below the grid and each can only be used once.  Isolate requires you to devide a grid into sections of different sizes which are listed below the grid.  Each section must contain exactly two squares with blocks in them and each internal point in the grid must have at least two line segments connected to it.

That’s the two puzzles in a nut shell but, as always, the best way to get a sense of them is to click over and try them out.  Enjoy!

I got an email today about a web site dedicated to pentominoes.  Currently, the site is running a competition for readers to solve a pentomino sudoku.  It is similar to a standard sudoku, but the grid is made up of pentominoes and the numbers in each pentomino sum to 22.  Enjoy!

Here’s a fun little story about a man who put together a 24,000 piece jigsaw puzzle.  According to the article, the puzzle took him 537 hours over 179 days to complete.  There’s a nice picture of the completed puzzle with the article.

There’s an article in the Times Online about an art installation going in at the Stanmore Underground station in northwest London.  The installation is part of an Art On The Underground project that is sponsoring installations in a number of stations around London.  What’s interesting about the Stanmore station is that it focuses on crossword puzzles.

Serena Korda, the artist behind the installation, chose crossword puzzles as a theme because the Stanmore station is near where code breaking computer were housed during World War II.  Solving a Times crossword puzzle in less than 12 minutes was a requirement to join the codebreakers at Bletchley Park.  The installation was also inspired by information leaflets handed out in the underground during World War II.  These leaflets featured a crossword on the back.

Along with installation, there are a number of crossword puzzles themed around Stanmore.  The installation itself provides clues for the puzzles.  The installation is called The Answer Lies at the End of the Line.  And, apparently, this is also true for any who can’t solve the puzzles.

Imangi is a new word puzzle game for the iPhone.  At its most basic level, the game involves finding words in a grid, however in Imangi you have the option of altering the grid by rotating the letters in individual rows and columns.  The idea is to maximize your score.

Imangi Studios is interested in getting feedback on the game from puzzle lovers.  So drop in and let them know what you think.

It’s still a few months away, but publicity has already started for the Sudoku National Championship in Philly on October 24-25.  The championship will include guest appearances by Will Shortz and Maki Kaji, credited as “the man who gave sudoku its name.”  (The creator of sudoku is actually American Howard Garns.)

It looks like they learned a lot in the first go around and have made a number of improvements for this years competition.  Most notable are help determining which level you belong in and a prize structure that awards more to the third place winner in the advanced level than the first place winner in the intermediate level.

The blog The Most Beautiful Things has a post today about the most beautiful puzzle type.  The writer concludes that the most beautiful type is the variety cryptic crssword–a cryptic crossword with an interesting twist.  This is described as the “holy grail” of puzzle types.  There are a lot of great links in the post to variety cryptic crosswords which, as the post notes, can be hard to come by.

There’s a nice video on the Britannica Blog about a new digital puzzle.  The puzzle is four blocks with a grid of LEDs on top.  The LEDs light up in specific patterns and the object is to arrange the blocks so that all of the edges match up properly.  The puzzle is timed and can also tell when it has been correctly solved.

Black Ink is a nice little app that I stumbled upon for Mac users who love crosswords.  The basic idea is that it is a unified interface for a number of free crossword puzzles available on the internet.  Black Ink will download the puzzles automatically and save them so that you can play them all in one place.  There is a cost for this app ($24.95), but you can also download a free 30 day trial version.

Found through MacApper.