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.

Through download squad, I came across Simon Tatham’s Portable Puzzles, a fantastic collection of little puzzle games for your computer. There are some that everyone will be familiar with: sudoku, minesweeper, mastermind, etc; along with some nikoli games like hashiwokakero (”bridges” in English) and some types of puzzles that I’ve never seen before. He even has a puzzle called “untangle” which seems to be identical to planarity.

Best of all, these games will most likely run on your computer regardless of your operating system. The puzzles are available for Windows, Mac OS and Unix based systems.

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.