I have a thing for puzzles based on games where knowledge of the rules of the game help you to solve the puzzle. I’ve been trying for a while to come up with a good puzzle based on Texas Holdem Poker. (For Texas Holdem neophytes, instructions for the game can be found at the previous link.) The idea that kept coming to my mind was the climactic poker scene in Casino Royale when James Bond wins all of the chips. There are four or five players left at the time and they all have cards that make up good hands with the common cards, and still they are all hands of very different values. I wondered if you could figure out what the four common cards were if you were shown each players individual cards and given the final rankings. As a proof of concept I came up with the puzzle below. There are six hands. Hand 1 ranks highest with the common cards and hand 6 ranks lowest. The object is to determine the common cards.

I this puzzle is fairly easy and, of course, the idea would be to provide as little information as possible and still have a unique solution. I’m not sure yet if really challenging puzzles can be made, but I think there is potential here.

Oh yeah, and here’s the answer.

Puzzle Poker is a new poker themed puzzle game from the makers of The Incredible Machine. The game design is simple and is intended to appeal to casual gamers. The only thing you really need to know about poker is what the hands.

The game is played on board with 5 rows of 5 cards. You can move the cards around the board by rotating the cards in any given row or column. As you may have guessed, each individual row and column is a poker hand and the object is to come up with the best set of ten hands you can get. Each hand has a chip value, and there’s a chip goal for each round that you need to beat. Also, you steadily lose chips the longer you play.

The game is harder than it seems at first. It requires you to spot good hands quickly and then shift the cards around in ways that don’t damage your other good hands.

Like most games targeted at casual gamers, there’s a playable demo and an activation key can be purchased.