Here’s a new puzzle. Enjoy!

pdf solution

The Philadelphia Inquirer will be sponsoring a National Sudoku Championship hosted by Will Shortz.  The event will take place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on October 19-21.  This is the first National Sudoku Championship in the US and prizes will range from $100 to $10,000, which goes to the winner along with a trip to the World Championships next year in India.

Here’s an interesting new flash game called Plupon.  In Plupon, digits fall down the screen inside little bubbles.  Your goal is to combine 3 of the digits so that they sum to a multiple of 10 (in this case, only 0, 10, or 20.)  You advance to the next level when you’ve made enough of these combinations; the exact number varies by level.  A bar on the bar on the bottom keeps track of your “health.”  This bar shortens whenever a digit reached the bottom, with the larger digits having a greater penalty than the smaller ones.  It also shortens when you create a sum greater than 10 that is not a multiple of ten.  Here, the greater the modulus, the larger the penalty (i.e. 19 is worse than 11.)

As the levels go up, the bubbles come down faster.  It also appears that the frequency with which certain digits appear varies from level to level.

I wasn’t intending to post two puzzles today but because of server issues, it happened anyway. Why not? Enjoy a second puzzle!

pdf solution

Here’s a new puzzle. Enjoy!

pdf solution

I got an email from Trip Payne (whom you might remember from such films as Wordplay) this past weekend letting me know about his new site.

The site has lots of information about Trip, including a list of puzzle books that he’s written or contributed to.  It also contains a number of original puzzles.  There are currently 20 puzzles available and are all crosswords or interesting crossword variations.  And there’s a good range in the initial offerings.  There are traditional crosswords and cryptic crosswords.  There are also a number of crisscross puzzles, where all of the words for the puzzle are given and you need to figure out how they fit together in the grid.  Then there are the “variety” puzzles that include some twist.

There are promises of more puzzles to come, so this would be a good site to keep an eye on.

Here’s a new puzzle. Enjoy!

pdf solution

I was recently hunting around for a good crossword puzzle feed when I came across Puzzler’s Cave.  Puzzler’s Cave features both crosswords and sudoku, but it was the crosswords that interested me.

The site divides it’s puzzles into three categories: Quick, Cryptic, and Themed.  The Quick puzzles are standard puzzles, usually on the easier side.  Cryptic crosswords are crosswords where each clue is a word puzzle.  And in Themed crosswords, many of the clues center around a specific theme (like a recent puzzle with a classic Star Trek theme.)

Hard-core cruciverbalists will definitely find these puzzles on the easy side.  But it’s a great site that provides a regular free crossword.

SmartKit recently posted an article on Liebig “Puzzle Cards.”  Liebig is the Liebig Extract of Meat Company, which was founded in 1840 by Baron Justus von Liebig.  His “extract of meat” product was intended to provide a cheap and nutritious meat substitute for those that couldn’t afford real meat.

The company also made sets of trading cards, some of which were hidden object puzzle cards.  The cards would have a question printed on them like, “Where is the X?”, and the goal was to find that object.  The card on the SmartKit site asks “Where are the other smokers?”  If you read the comments for that post, you can find the answer.  (Note:  You won’t be able to find the object in my mini-picture.  It’s just there to give you an idea of what they looked like.)

If you’re interested in more hidden object puzzle cards, I found a great collection of them on a site called cardmine.

Here’s a new puzzle. Enjoy!

pdf solution

The New York Times crossword puzzle, constructed by Cathy Millhauser with clues written by President Bill Clinton, is available online now. On this site, you can fill it in on line. For some reason the first clue was already filled in when I clicked over to it. Not a particularly had clue, but crossword purists should be warned. There’s also a PDF available.

The puzzle comes with an Editor’s Note from Will Shortz: The clues in this puzzle are a little more playful and involve more wordplay than in a typical crossword. You have been warned.

I got an email asking me to check out a new puzzle type called a number maze designed by Mike Reilly. The number maze is a very simple puzzle with a few easy rules, which is always a good thing. You start with a grid that resembles a standard maze. The idea is to lay out the numbers from 1 to 12 in either ascending or descending order. Any orthogonally adjacent numbers must be sequential unless there is a “wall” of the maze between them. And each of the numbers must appear in the maza an equal number of times.

There are a number of sample puzzles on the site. The smaller ones tend to be easy, but the larger ones can be quite challenging. I’ve noticed that a fair number of these puzzles have multiple solutions, though all that’s really needed is a little refining. Also, a number of the puzzles have no initial clues. In theses cases, I would think that any of the puzzles should have at least 12 solutions, if they have any. If you were to increment all of the numbers in a valid solution by 1, with 12 incrementing to 1, you would get another valid solution. And so 12 valid solutions. In this case, the valid solution might be the pattern of numbers rather than the numbers themselves.

Also of note, there are a number of “poker” mazes that use card ranks instead of the numbers 1-12.

I recently got an email directing me to a site for a puzzle called The Runes. The Runes is a large collection of puzzles that can be purchased through the site. There are 27 individual sheets with 300 puzzles on them.  If you want an idea of what this is like, check out these sample puzzles available online.  The puzzles are of various kinds.  The puzzles are also linked so as you solve individual puzzles, you are presented with new puzzles through combining puzzle solutions.  And, of course, there’s one over-arching puzzle called “the ancient mystery.”