I’ve discovered a new blog that links here authored by a young man named Winston Breen. Winston, as it turns out, is a fictional character from the book The Puzzling World of Winston Breen by Eric Berlin. It’s a YA mystery novel that features a number of solvable puzzles. Quotes from the web site compare the novel to Encyclopedia Brown or a Da Vinci Code for young adults. From what I can see on the site, Winston Breen may be cooler than both of these. Don’t get me wrong. As a kid, I loved Encyclopedia Brown, but the smoking gun in his mysteries tended to be a misplaced word or a breach of etiquette. And I distinctly remember having a conversation once about The Da Vinci Code and how it would be great to have a similar book with real puzzles. Well, Winston Breen appears to be just that.
The book has a section that allows you to download puzzles from the book. Presumably so that you can download them and print them out so that you won’t have to write in the book. The puzzles are available now to anyone, although the book won’t be out for some months. The instructions for these puzzles are incomplete, but you can still get a good sense of them. There’s a good variety of puzzles here. Definitely for a younger crowd, but I’m still impressed.
While we wait for the book to come out, there’s Winston’s blog. Right now, the only insight we get into Winston’s character is that he loves puzzles. Currently, there are two posted and his blogroll lists a number of puzzle sites, including this one.
