• KrazyDad is working on creating a new type of slitherlink puzzle called Altair slitherlink.  The grid for the puzzles is based on a medieval Islamic tiling.
• Mathpuzzle.com has some new material this week… including some interesting analysis on how many moves it takes to solve a Rubik’s Cube.

There was a little post on BoingBoing recently about a Japanese speed cubing kit.  By “speed cubing”, I mean trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube in as little time as possible.  Interestingly, this seems to have little to do with how well you can solve the puzzle but rather how easily your cube can be manipulated.  The kit comes with lubrication and mini screwdrivers (for loosening the cube’s screws.)

My Puzzle Fix is a puzzle blog that offers a daily puzzle for your enjoyment.  Of particular interest on this site are the “Double Meaning” crossword puzzles.  These are crossword puzzles where there are two clues for each word.  Additionally, the clues are grouped by across and down but, otherwise, they are given in completely random order.  So you don’t know, at the start, which clues go with which words.

Here’s a fun news story about a puzzle solving parrot named “Ten.” The story has a video with it that is a bit more informative than the news blurb. The parrot faces off against zoo visitors in what is called a “chain puzzle” which the video reveals to be a simple tavern puzzle that many readers will recognize. In fact many of you will think, as I did, that you could certainly beat the parrot.

The reason why the parrot beats all of the visitors is that the parrot has already solved the puzzle. It simply has to do what it knows how to do to take the two pieces apart. The people facing off against it are actually trying to solve the puzzle. Still, it’s pretty amazing to watch the parrot complete the puzzle and I was particularly amused by the little boy who tried to watch what the parrot was doing and imitate it. There’s something delightfully ironic about that.

• Passion for Puzzles has a link to an interesting game called Open Doors.  The game is played in a maze that’s filled with doors that only open in a specific direction when you move through them or move by them.
• Logic puzzler had a type of puzzle on the site called “Architect puzzle.”  This puzzle came from from a site called Wydawnictwo LOGI, that has more architect puzzles available and plenty of other puzzles.

Andrew M. Greene emailed me a link to some puzzles that he made up for the Jewish holiday of Purim, which is today.  Enjoy!

I just got a tip about a “mystery hunt” style puzzle game called Clue Chaser.  The game requires players to solve a series of puzzles and the first one to solve them all wins a prize.  The creators of the game are looking to have a competition every three months or so.  Game 1 has already been completed and it took about 32 days.  Game 2 begins on April 1st.

Just a quick roundup this week. The Griddle has a new puzzle called a Braille Wordsearch. At first glance, it just seems like a wordsearch that needs decoding, but that’s not quite the case. One of the interesting things about braille is that the letters can actually overlap each other. The result is several overlapping wordsearch boards. This is the kind of puzzle that I would put more in the category of interesting than fun. Still worth a look.

I got an email today about a new puzzle called Trizm puzzles.  Trizm puzzles are based on sudoku puzzles in that you have to fill in a grid with digits and specified regions of the grid may only contain each digit exactly once.  The main difference between Trizm puzzles and sudoku puzzles is that Trizm has a triangular grid.  As a result, there are no rows or columns, just rows and crossbars.  The new layout is a little tricky to understand at first, but it has an interesting result.  Some of the triangles in the grid may be part of only one region making them harder to fill.  Others may be part of four regions.

Currently, there are only printable versions of the puzzles on the site but I’m told that a javascript version that will allow you to complete puzzles on the site will be coming soon.  There are even versions planned for the iPhone and Facebook.  Enjoy!

• This may be a little late thematically, but the puzzle is still fun.  Blaine’s Puzzle Blog has a leap day puzzle.
• A while back, I tried to mix puzzles with poker.  I just recently discovered that Puzzle Monster has a casino puzzle section.  Its latest addition is primes.
• Passion for Puzzles posted about a flash game called BrickS.  It’s a little bit of a twist on an ubiquitous puzzle style.  The goal is to match three bricks of any color to collect them.  The difference in this game is that a brick will change color when you click it to the color of an adjacent brick that the arrow inside the brick is pointing to.

The results are up for the 31st Annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.  Tyler Hinman wins again.