Last year, in connection with the release of Pirates of the Carribean: Dean Man’s Chest, Vovlo buried one of their cars and set up a series of puzzle games for contestants to play.

This year, in connection with the release of Pirates of the Carribean: World’s End, Volvo has dumped a chest full of gold (and a set of car keys) in the ocean for a lucky contestant to find. There will be online puzzle games again. And, of course, a quest to your local Volvo dealer will be a requirement, just like last time.

The contest begins next week, but the sign up page is already live.

Sudoku Tiger is a site that offers software for playing Sudoku, Killer Sudoku, and Hashiwokakero (here shortened to Hashi.)  The software is not free, but there are free puzzles of all of the featured kinds available on the site.

Of particular note is the solving guides for sudoku, killer sudoku, and hashiwokakero.  Sudoku solving guides are a little dime a dozen these days, but the it’s worth checking out the guide for hashiwokakero.

Here’s a new puzzle. Enjoy!

pdf solution

There’s currently an alternate reality game going on around the NBC show Heroes called Heroes 360. One of the characters from the show, Hiro Nakamura, has a blog that often features puzzles and clues for the game. One of the most recent puzzles is a crossword puzzle that’s quite challenging.

Yes, Bill Clinton loves the NYT crossword.  But we all knew that before Wordplay, right?  The May 6th edition of the NYT will feature a crossword created by Bill Clinton, presumably with a baby-boomer theme.

Here’s a new puzzle. Enjoy!

pdf solution

I recently came across a site featuring Sudoku-Ball. The Sudoku-Ball takes overlapping sudoku puzzles to a new level. The idea is that the overlapping puzzles are layed out on the surface of a sphere so that they eventually the chain will wrap back around to the same puzzle again.

The site makes the game available as a Java applet, but it’s not easy to use. There are multiple steps before you can actually play the game. Still, it’s worth a look.

Through the Wired blog Geekdad, I came across the web site for Kadon Enterprises. Kadon apparently owns the trademark on the term “gamepuzzle.” Their products are games that can be played competitively by multiple players. Or by a single player in a form that more resembles solving a puzzle. The blog post talks a little about the lasers used to make the puzzles. If you like pentominoes, this is probably a good site to check out. Pentominoes seem to be a major feature of a number of their games.

Here’s a new puzzle. Enjoy!

pdf solution

I’ve decided to start posting some sudoku variations that I’ve been playing around with.  I wanted to start with a variation that I hadn’t tried before, but since this is opening week for baseball, I decided to go with a new Scoreboard Sudoku instead.

I really like this variation.  There is definitely some interesting logic required for solving it.  Unfortunately, you have to know baseball to solve it.  Now, baseball is huge in Japan, so maybe there is a demand for this kind of puzzle.  Still, I’m working on ways to incorporate the nice aspects of Scoreboard Sudoku into a variation that doesn’t require sports knowledge.

This puzzle is similar to the last one.  There is a lot of variation potential here that I want to explore, mostly with different scoring options.  That, however, will be for another day.  Rules for this puzzle can be found at the link above or in the pdf file below.  Enjoy!

solution pdf

Su.Doku.Es recently posted an article about the Nikoli puzzle called Hitori. So, I figured it was a good opportunity to write about it. A Hitori puzzle presents a grid filled with numbers. To solve the puzzle, you need to black out numbers such that there is only one of each in every row and column. Sound familiar? There are a couple other constraints. Squares that are blacked out can’t be orthogonally adjacent to each other. Also, every square that is not blacked out must be orthoganally adjacent to at least one other square that is not blacked out. Here is an example of a Hitori puzzle from wikipedia.

If you’re interested in a collection of Hitori puzzles that you can play online, I suggest checking the Perplex City site.

Through Brainwagon, I found a great book by Sam Loyd on mathpuzzle.com. The full title of the book is Sam Loyd’s Cyclopedia of 5000 Puzzles, Trick, and Conundrums with Answers. Published in 1914, the work is now in the public domain and Ed Pegg, Jr. has graciously made it available on his site. On the site, you’ll find 193 high quality scans containing all of the books pages. It’s a little hard to look through, but the full illustrations are available this way. I haven’t had a chance to look through the whole book yet, but puzzles of all kinds are available.

Wei-Hwa Huang has a post on his blog about forming a Nikoli-like puzzle club in the US.  He’s looking to start a web site first before moving to print and he’s looking to find puzzle designers to help get the project off of the ground.

Here’s a new puzzle. Enjoy!

pdf solution

I first cam across Derrick Schneider’s blog, An Obsession with Food, when he wrote about a puzzle of his that was appearing in Wine Enthusiast.  Derrick recently emailed me to let me know that he’ll be writing about some of the food themed puzzles in his mechanical puzzles collection.  You can find them on his blog under the category “Culinary Conundrums.”

The first puzzle he has written about is the Dove-tail Bar.  The puzzle is constructed from wood so that it resembles a Dove Bar.  To solve the puzzle, you must remove a “bite” from the top.