An brief article on the WTOP in Washington website called “Shaping Minds with Puzzles” seems like it would be a great starting point for teachers looking to use puzzles in their classrooms.

It starts by referencing an article that discusses the education value of jigsaw puzzles, but the article discusses a wide range of puzzles.  There’s some brief puzzle history (quick when was the first crossword published?) including a mention for the Elliott Avendon Museum.  The article even points towards resources for getting kids involved in creating puzzles.

The main problem is that the article is unfortunately free of links, though many of the sites it discusses can be found easily enough through google.

Here’s a word equation puzzle from mathpuzzle.com:

A+L+P+H+A=1, B+R+A+V+O=2, C+H+A+R+L+I+E=3, D+E+L+T+A=4, E+C+H+O=5, F+O+X+T+R+O+T=6, G+O+L+F=7, H+O+T+E+L=8, I+N+D+I+A=9, J+U+L+I+E+T=10, K+I+L+O=11, L+I+M+A=12, M+I+K+E=13, N+O+V+E+M+B+E+R=14, O+S+C+A+R=15, P+A+P+A=16, Q+U+E+B+E+C=17, R+O+M+E+O=18, S+I+E+R+R+A=19, T+A+N+G+O=20, U+N+I+F+O+R+M=21, V+I+C+T+O+R=22, W+H+I+S+K+E+Y=23, X+R+A+Y=24, Y+A+N+K+E+E=25, Z+U+L+U=26

The goal of the puzzle is to solve for each individual letter. There’s also an interesting discussion on the site about how to find a complete set of words that result in a single, unique solution. This is the kind of puzzle where I appreciate the form even if I don’t think I would particularly enjoy solving it.

Or so it seems.

As sudoku becomes more and more of a craze, I expect we can start to hear more outrageous comments about it.  It’s a floor wax; it’s a dessert topping; or whatever.  I came across a news article today that was gratuitously mentioning sudoku just to sell insurance.

I’m telling you right now.  Sudoku is fun and can probably help your analytical thinking skills.  It’s probably not going to solve all of your financial problems.  I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but what can I say?  Sometimes the truth hurts.

There always seems to be more and more of these popping up, so I guess they deserve a mention.

Online puzzles are web-based puzzle games where solving puzzles leads you through a series of web pages. For each page in an online puzzle, the goal is “to get to the next page” but how exactly you manage to do that varies from page to page. Often you will have to click somewhere on the page and then enter a password, but you’re just as likely to have to enter a new URL suggested by the puzzle on the page. Often, you will have to look at the page source or find a hidden file. The challenge of the puzzles, more than anything else, is figuring out what exactly you have to do.

I think the most famous example of this game is notpron, which I played for a few screens. Then I reached a screen that seemed to want me to use a program that comes with Windows, and well… I’m not a Windows user and that was that.

There are dozens of this kind of game on the internet now. Most of them are trying to get a piece of the success of notpron. You can find a good list on the wikipedia page.

Through the Funny Emails blog, I found a flash jigsaw puzzle where the image changes while you’re trying to assemble it.  This is a great idea even if this isn’t the best implementation.  The puzzle is extremely simple and the image is mostly blue sky.

I hope that someone is working on a better version.

The Express-Times in New Jersey has a story about a puzzle contest that was used to raise relief funds for a family whose home was destroyed in a fire.  The contest pitted 75 teams against each other to see who could be the first to complete a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle.

It’s great to see puzzles bringing people together… like the pieces of a puzzle.

I read over on N-Sider about a new puzzle game called Magnetica that will be released for Nintendo DS. It seems to be identical to a Japanese game called Puzzloop. I’ve never played Puzzloop but, from what I’ve read and the screenshots I’ve seen, it seems that there’s a flash game called “Bear and Cat” based on it which i have often played. (Note: Bear and Cat is not an English game, but it should be easy for puzzle solvers to figure out how to play. Also, I’d love it if anyone can tell why there’s a cat mentioned in the title.)

The game involves a line of colored spheres that travel in a fixed path, inching ever closer to your submarine. You destroy the spheres by shooting other colored spheres into the line. If you create a row of three or more of the same color the spheres explode. But if the line of spheres reaches your sub, you die. It’s fun, addictive, and worth a look.

Newsweek has an interview with Puzzle Master Will Shortz about sudoku.  Shortz fields questions about why he thinks sudoku is addictive, whether or not it makes you smarter (a definite yes), and whether the trend will pass.

It is a craze, and the craze is not going to last forever. I think a lot of people are doing it now because its cool, maybe a little hip, certainly its something people are talking about and they want to try it. Certainly this won’t last forever, but I think Sudoku is like the Crossword Puzzle, it’s going to be here forever.

I encountered two “world’s largest” puzzle stories today. One was about a crossword, the other was about a jigsaw puzzle.

Through Crossword Puzzle Links, I found a place where you can buy the “World’s Largest Crossword Puzzle” according to the Guiness Book of World Records. According to the site:

Breaking the 1996 Guinness record, this crossword hangs on a full seven feet by seven feet of wall space and has 28,000 clues for over 91,000 squares.

The second story was a BBC story about a man who completed what “could be the world’s largest commercially available jigsaw.” The puzzle was 10 and a half feet long and 5 feet wide.

Ready for the puzzle game you wear? Well, it’s coming.

I first read about EDOC laundry on joystiq, which called it a new alternate reality game that involves clothing. So I clicked over to the EDOC site and looked around a bit. It seemed like some of their shirts had some cleverly hidden messages on them. An interesting gimmick, but not necessarily something I would call an ARG. So I dug a little deeper.

I quickly turned up an interview with Dawne Weisman on the Alternate Reality Gaming Network site, wife of ARG pioneer Jordan Weisman. There was indeed more going on beneath the surface. EDOC has some people from people from 4orty2wo Entertainment working on the project–notably Elan Lee and Sean Stewart. These guys are writers, so we know that there is at least some kind of story with a plot.

An article over at Wired explains a little bit more. It also provides some clues on how to solve some of the puzzles on the shirts and, in the process, they raise more questions than they answer.

It remains to be seen how much people get into this game, but it’s definitely got some good minds behind it.

Forsmarts has published Issue 20 (or issue 10 of season 7; I’m not really sure how that works, but I haven’t been visiting the site for very long) and this issue contains three interesting puzzles. Forsmarts, is a semi-annual puzzle competition that includes puzzles on the more difficult end of the spectrum.
Fair warning: What I write below might be a little confusing if you have not actually seen the puzzles.

The first puzzle is based in a hex grid and requires you to place some number of 3-cell figures into the grid. Each cell in each figure will contain a number that corresponds to the number of other filled cells in a direct line with it. Some partial figures are already placed. This puzzle is a standard logic problem with very specific constraints. It essentially says, here are some digits. For each digit, place the corresponding number of additional digits in hexes that are within a direct line. And they must be adjacent in groups of no more or no less than three. Of course, it’s the last constraint that’s the kicker.

The second puzzle is a dominoku. It’s a 7X7 grid jigsaw sudoku (of course, all 7X7 sudokus must be jigsaws) but instead of the placing digits one at a time, you have to place from a given set of dominos. Essentially, you have to place the digits two at a time. It’s an interesting sudoku variation and one that requires very few digits given at the start.

The third is an optimization puzzle, to be solved by the best possible solution. It requires you to write numbers frome one to ninety nine (in english and in any order) into a grid, starting from the top left and filling in left to right from the top line to the bottom. The catch is that a given letter can be repeated only once in any row or column. The goal is to include as many digits as possible. So, quickly, the largest possible grid is 16X16 since the numbers share 16 letters in common. However, it may not be possible even to come up with one row with 16 different letters, let alone 16. I think the best solution will involve finding a row length that will allow you to have a maximum number of rows. But that’s only a guess, I haven’t come up with a solution yet.

MyDNA, a health blog, posted an article called “Brainteasers or time-wasters” about the recent sudoku craze and puzzles in general.

The article is a little more one sided than the title would lead you to believe. Mostly, the article discusses the many neurological advantages of puzzle solving.

I’m a little disappointed, actually. I was hoping for an article I could disagree with.

A brief description of a new puzzle game called Enigmo 2 was recently posted on The Unofficial Apple Weblog. I decided I would download the demo and give it a try.

This is the kind of puzzle game that is ideal for people with engineering minds. It requires you to build “machines” to accomplish specific tasks. The tasks basically involve redirecting water, plasma, and lasers to the appropriate recepticles. Each element has different properties, moves in a different way, and is redirected differently than the others. The water drops straight down and can be redirected with small discs that bounce the water in a parabolic arc in a new direction. Lasers travel in straight lines unless they are reflected with mirrors. Plasma also travels in a straight line, but its path can only be changed by black spheres that work like a gravity well for the plasma.

Along the way you may have to make your laser strike a specific panel to start the flow of plasma. Or you may need to send your water through a cylinder to turn off a force field. Additionally the machines work in three dimensions which adds for some interesting twists. Manipulating the puzzle in 3D can be a little challenging at first, but the interface is actually quite well done and easy to use.

The demo only lets you play the first few levels which are only very basic puzzles (only the last one actually requires you to do anything in 3D.) But if its done well (and it seems like it is), future levels should include some interesting logic puzzles. To play all of the levels, you need to pay $29.95 for a serial number. And, unfortunately for many, it only runs on Mac OS X.
Overall, I was impressed. One or two really challenging puzzles added to the demo would have completely sold me. As it is, you only get a very basic feel.

Through a homeschooling blog, I came across a website boasting one billion mazes.  I certainly don’t have time to verify this, but this seems to be true.  (Ok puzzle maniacs: If you did one maze a minute, how long would it take you to finish one billion puzzles? Answer at the bottom.)

These mazes must be computer generated (the alternatives are too hard to imagine, really.)  They are all in printable PDF form where page one is the maze and page two is the solution.  And they vary considerably in difficulty.  If you’re into mazes, check it out.  But I suggest you don’t try to solve them all.

On the same blog post that led me to the mazes, there was also a brief description of a “touch Rubik’s Cube.”  It’s a standard Rubik’s Cube that has six different materials covering the six different sides so that you can solve the puzzle without even looking at it.

(Answer to above question:  Assuming you took no breaks and lived long enough, you would finish the mazes in just over 1902 years.  Or just under two millenia, depending on how you look at it.)

I came across a new gadget called The Puzzle Clock on the Home Tone blog.  When the alarm goes off, the pieces of a small jigsaw puzzle pop up from the top of the clock.  You have to then assemble the puzzle to stop the alarm.

The site presents this gadget to those who often do a morning sudoku or crossword, but the puzzle on top of the clock is too simple to interest any real puzzle enthusiasts.  It seems more geared towards people who want to kick the snooze button habit.

Now, if they made a clock that required you to solve a sudoku before the alarm would shut off…