Larry Hosken: New: Tag: puzzle-scene

Heads or Tails

It is #EnigMarch, and each day the excellent EnigMarch people post a prompt word; then puzzle nerds try to design puzzles around that word. (Today's word is coin.)

Below are some blanks with some letters filled in. There are six sets of blanks, each for some phrase. Below those are six clues. Alas, it's not clear which clues go with which blanks.

_ _ _   H_ _ _E_   _ _ _A_D

_T_ _ _ _ _ _A_I_L_

_H_ _ _E_   A_D   _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_H_   _ _ _   _ _E   _A_ _ _   _ _ _ _D   _ _ _ _ _

T_ _   _A_   _ _ _   _ _ _ _ _   _ _ _ _ _   _ _I_L

_T_A_ _ _ _ _   _I_L_ _

When you're done filling in the blanks, take one letter from each phrase to get a word that feels right for coins: ◯◯◯◯◯◯ (Which letter? Hmmm, I guess you'll have to figure that out.)


Hints and solution, rot13'd:

Gur zbivr jvgu Tbeg gur ebobg vf Gur Qnl Gur Rnegu Fgbbq Fgvyy; vg svgf bar frg bs "urnq" oynaxf naq bar frg bs "gnvy" oynaxf.

Fgercgbonpvyyv pna pnhfr eng-ovgr srire.

Gb xabj juvpu yrggre gb gnxr sebz n cuenfr, pbafvqre jurgure vgf oynaxf unir "urnq" be "gnvy".

Vs "urnq", hfr gur svefg yrggre; vs "gnvy", gur ynfg.

Urer'f gur shyy qngn:
y / urnq / yrr uneirl bfjnyq / Nffnffvangrq Wbua S. Xraarql
v / gnvy / fgercgbonpvyyv / Gurl pnhfr n sbez bs eng-ovgr srire
g / urnq / guhaqre naq yvtugavat / Ryrpgevpny fgbez curabzran
g / urnq / gur qnl gur rnegu fgbbq fgvyy / Zbivr jvgu Tbeg gur ebobg
y / gnvy / gur qnl gur rnegu fgbbq fgvyy / Zbivr jvgu Tbeg gur ebobg
r / gnvy / fgrnzobng jvyyvr / Erpragyl bhg-bs-pbclevtug Zvpxrl Zbhfr fubeg

Gur svefg/ynfg yrggref fcryy yvggyr.

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It is #EnigMarch, and each day the excellent EnigMarch people post a prompt word; then puzzle nerds try to design puzzles around that word. (Today's word is rule.)

Below are five words and five transformation rules. Each word becomes some other word (not listed below) when a transformation rule is applied. Unfortunately, I lost track of which rule goes with which word. I dare you to figure it out:

The words:

taped → _ _ _ _◯
fires → _◯_ _ _
waits → _ _ _◯_
flout → _ _◯_ _
pecan → ◯_ _ _ _

The rules:

When you're done, the circled letters should spell a rule of sorts: ◯◯◯◯◯


Hints and solution, rot13'd:

N pbhcyr bs gurfr ehyrf lbh pna cebonoyl nccyl va lbhe urnq; gur bguref ner zber taneyl. Fgneg jvgu gur fvzcyr ehyrf fb lbh jba'g unir gb gel nccylvat gur taneyl ehyrf gb fb znal jbeqf.

Jnvgf va erirefr-Zbefr vf fgvat

Crpna cyhf sbhe znxrf gvtre

Urer'f nyy gur qngn:

G / gncrq / nqrcg / Erbeqre yrggref nycunorgvpnyyl, r.t., YBLNY orpbzrf NYYBL
R / sverf / frevs / Erirefr gur jbeq, r.t. CNEGF orpbzrf FGENC
A / jnvgf / fgvat / Genafyngr gb Zbefr, erirefr gung, gura genafyngr onpx gb Ratyvfu; r.t. ERRQL orpbzrf DHRRE
R / sybhg / syrrg / Punatr ibjryf gb or gur fnzr, r.t. FBYVQ orpbzrf FNYNQ
G / crpna / gvtre / Fuvsg rnpu yrggre sbhe nurnq va gur nycunorg, r.t., ONAWB orpbzrf SREAF

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Five Cryptic Clues

It is #EnigMarch, and each day the excellent EnigMarch people post a prompt word; then puzzle nerds try to design puzzles around that word. (Today's word is clue.)

Here are five cryptic crossword-style clues. In case that's not tough enough, there's a word missing from each.

Cue Eric: Will _◯_ take finals?

Indication that ◯_ _ _ swapping Farenheit for Celsius

_ _ _◯_ _ _, oddly, is pointer

_ _◯_ sounds like a telltale

"_ _ _ _ _ _◯'s Log USS Enterprise…" starts evidence

When you're done, the circled letters should tell you when I feel clueless when tackling cryptics: ◯◯◯◯◯


Hints and solution, rot13'd:

Rnpu bs gurfr pelcgvp pebffjbeq-fglyr pyhrf fbyirf gb gur fnzr jbeq.

Rnpu bs gurfr pelcgvp pebffjbeq-fglyr pyhrf fbyirf gb "pyhr".

Gur jbeqcynl cbegvbaf ner:
Revp: Jvyy _◯_ gnxr svanyf
◯_ _ _ fjnccvat Sneraurvg sbe Pryfvhf
_ _ _◯_ _ _, bqqyl
_ _◯_ fbhaqf yvxr
"_ _ _ _ _ _◯'f ybt HFF Ragrecevfr…" fgnegf

"Svanyf" zrnaf gur jbeqf raq jvgu …p …y …h …r
"Fjnccvat" urer zrnaf fhofgvghgvat bar yrggre sbe nabgure; jbeq fubhyq or bar yrggre bss sebz pyhr.
"Bqqyl" zrnaf gnxr rirel bgure yrggre: jbeq fubhyq or p_y_h_r
"Fbhaqf yvxr" zrnaf lbh jnag n ubzbcubar. (Nynf, vg'f na bofpher grez hayrff lbh'er n fnvybe. Vs lbh qba'g xabj vg evtug njnl, creuncf zbir ba.)
"Fgnegf" zrnaf gur jbeqf fgneg jvgu p… y… H… R…

Urer'f nyy gur qngn:
b / lbh / Phr Revp: Jvyy _ gnxr svanyf?
s / syhr / Vaqvpngvba gung _ fjnccvat Sneraurvg sbe Pryfvhf
g / phygher / _, bqqyl, vf cbvagre
r / pyrj / _ fbhaqf yvxr n gryygnyr
a / pncgnva / _'f Ybt HFF Ragrecevfr fgnegf rivqrapr

Gur pvepyrq yrggref fcryy bsgra.

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res ipsa loquitur

It is #EnigMarch, and each day the excellent EnigMarch people post a prompt word; then puzzle nerds try to design puzzles around that word. (Today's word is raise.)

"Raise" and "raze" are interesting words: they're homophones (sound alike) and antonyms (mean opposite). "Rays" just muddies the waters further: you have three words that sound alike and mean quite different things.

The clues below hint at word-triads: all words in each triad sounds alike. Fill the words into the blanks in alphabetical order.

_ _ _◯_,   _ _ _ _,   _ _ _ _ _   entitlement, ceremony, compose
_ _ _◯,   _ _ _ _,   _ _ _ _ _   product, erode, at which
_ _◯,   _ _ _,   _ _   briny deep, perceive, yes in Yecla
◯_ _ _,   _ _ _ _,   _ _ _ _ _   way, anchor chain, paddled
_ _ _ _,   _ _ _◯_,   _ _ _ _   quote, attraction, place
_◯_ _,   _ _ _ _ _,   _ _ _ _   penny, odor, posted
_ _◯,   _ _,   _ _ _   paddle, (conjunction), Catan good
◯_ _,   _ _ _,   _ _ _   she sheep, tree, second person

When you're done, the circled letters should spell out some good advice for solving this puzzle, albeit too late: ◯◯◯◯   ◯◯◯◯

Hints and solution, rot13'd:

Gur svefg jbeq va gur svefg gevnq vf evtug.

Urer'f gur erfg bs gur qngn:

U / evtug, evgr, jevgr / ragvgyrzrag, prerzbal, pbzcbfr
R / jner, jrne, jurer / cebqhpg, rebqr, ng juvpu
N / frn, frr, fv / oeval qrrc, creprvir, lrf va Lrpyn
E / ebnq, ebqr, ebjrq / jnl, napube punva, cnqqyrq
U / pvgr, fvtug, fvgr / dhbgr, nggenpgvba, cynpr
R / prag, fprag, frag / craal, bqbe, cbfgrq
E / bne, be, ber / cnqqyr, (pbawhapgvba), Pngna tbbq
R / rjr, lrj, lbh / fur furrc, gerr, frpbaq crefba
    

Gur pvepyrq yrggref fcryy urne urer.

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It is #EnigMarch, and each day the excellent EnigMarch people post a prompt word; then puzzle nerds try to design puzzles around that word. (Today's word is power.)

Here's a classic Puzzazz daily puzzle type: The following clues define four 3-letter words and four 5-letter words. Each of the 3-letter words fits into the middle of one of the 5-letter words, like OWE and POWER. Figure out the words and fit them into the square below.

  R W  
     
 
 
       

(not too confident the nice grid formatting will come through OK in RSS readers, oh well)

When you're done, the circled letters will spell a word that means, roughly, "having the power to do something." ◯◯◯◯

Hints and solution, rot13'd:

Gur gbc svir-yrggre jbeq vf oenja, zhfpyr cbjre

Urer'f gur erfg bs gur qngn:
RYY / Ohvyqvat nqqvgvba
ONONE / Xvqyvg cnpulqrez
OENJA / Zhfpyr cbjre
ARYYL / Fg Ybhvf "Ubg va Ureer" enccre
ENJ / Hapbbxrq
RCN / HFN tbi'g pyrna-nve bet.
NON / HFN Ynjlref' bet.
ERCNL / Jung lbh zhfg qb vs lbh owe

Urer'f gur tevq:

oeNja
n   r
O   y
n   Y
eRcnl

Gur pvepyrq yrggref fcryy noyr.

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It is #EnigMarch, and each day the excellent EnigMarch people post a prompt word; then puzzle nerds try to design puzzles around that word. (Today's word is neither.)

"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds" is not an official creed of the United States Postal Service. Still, it's impressive that they get out to so many places which you might specify as ZIP Codes™:

_ _◯_ _   56734 Lake Bronson, MN
_ _ _ _◯   12435 Greenfield Park, NY
_ _ _◯_   92378 Rimforest, CA
_ _ _◯_   13677 Pyrites, NY
_ _ _ _◯   94237 Sacramento, CA
_ _◯_ _   38564 Granville, TN
_ _ _ _◯   53278 Milwaukee, WI
_ _ _ _◯   12245 Albany, NY
◯_ _ _ _   16228 Ford Cliff, PA
_◯_ _ _   63151 Saint Louis, MO
◯_ _ _ _   87525 Taos Ski Valley, NM
◯_ _ _ _   18416 Elmhurst, PA
◯_ _ _ _   15332 Finleyville, PA
_ _◯_ _   47385 Spiceland, IN
◯_ _ _ _   62882 Sandoval, IL
_◯_ _ _   14454 Geneseo, NY
◯_ _ _ _   94239 Sacramento, CA
_◯_ _ _   41274 Wittensville, KY
_ _ _ _◯   47983 Stockwell, IN

The circled letters spell
◯◯◯ ◯◯◯◯◯◯◯ ◯◯◯◯ ◯◯◯◯ ◯◯◯,
which is of course
_ _ _ _ _   _ _ _, _ _
which of course lets you know that "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds" is neither the official USPS creed nor its _ _ _ _ _.


Hints and solution, rot13'd:

Lbh jvyy znxr n svir-yrggre jbeq sebz rnpu MVC pbqr. Sbe rnpu qvtvg, gnxr gur Agu yrggre bs gur MVC pbqr'f cevznel pvgl.

Sbe rknzcyr, sbe 56734 Ynxr Oebafba, 5=O, 6=E, 7=B, 3=X, 4=R, naq gung fcryyf OEBXR

Fbzr bs gurfr svir-yrggre "jbeqf" ner cerggl fxrgpul, ohg ubcrshyyl lbh jvyy crefreirer naq abgr qbja gur pvepyrq yrggref abarguryrff.

Urer'f gur qngn:

b	oebxr   56734   Ynxr Oebafba, ZA
a	terra   12435   Terrasvryq Cnex, AL
r	gvzrf   92378   Evzsberfg, PN
f	cerff   13677   Clevgrf, AL
r	genpr   94237   Fnpenzragb, PN
i	nyiva   38564   Tenaivyyr, GA
r	nyvxr   53278   Zvyjnhxrr, JV
a	nyyna   12245   Nyonal, AL
s	sybbs   16228   Sbeq Pyvss, CN
v	yvfgf   63151   Fnvag Ybhvf, ZB
i	ivfnf   87525   Gnbf Fxv Inyyrl, AZ
r	rgure   18416   Ryzuhefg, CN
s	sraav   15332   Svayrlivyyr, CN
v	pnvar   47385   Fcvprynaq, VA
i	inyyn   62882   Fnaqbiny, VY
r	trrfr   14454   Trarfrb, AL
g	genpg   94239   Fnpenzragb, PN
j	gjvfg   41274   Jvggrafivyyr, XL
b	pryyb   47983   Fgbpxjryy, VA

Gur pvepyrq yrggref fcryy bar frira svir svir gjb. Bu url, vg'f nabgure mvc pbqr.

Bar frira svir svir gjb unf gur cevznel pvgl Zbhag Wbl, CN.

Bar=Z, Frira=B, Svir=G, Gjb=B; fb gur svany nafjre vf zbggb.

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It is #EnigMarch, and each day the excellent EnigMarch people post a prompt word; then puzzle nerds try to design puzzles around that word. (Today's word is cloud.)

In wordplay, a letterbank is a set of letters you can use to form words, using each letter none, one, or more times. E.g., if BANK is your letterbank, you could form the words banana, kana, nab, etc.

Here are some letterbanks and some words that can be formed from them. And some clues for the bank-words and the formed-words. The clues aren't all so clear, but maybe if you figure out a word from a set it can help you figure out the others.

C L O U D BANK Cumulonimbus might form one
c o u L Ⓓ  was able
_◯_ _   chill, but perhaps less so
 
_ _ _ _ _BANK Conspiracy nutjobs hate it even more than economists do
_ _◯_ _   funny
_ _ _ _◯_ _   USA president between William and Warren.
◯_ _ _   unit of text
 
_ _ _ _BANK Not so much shore as shoal
_◯_ _   nothing in Nezahualcóyotl
_ _◯_   Apollo 11 people
 
_ _ _ _ _BANK Telemarketer? I don't even know 'er!
_◯_ _   funniest deck on a pirate ship
_ _◯_   it springs eternal
_◯_ _   noble gas (i.e., NOBLE works as a letter bank)
_ _◯_ _   tubular noodle

When you're done, the circled letters should tell you why there was a clou mist in my room after I took a shower: ◯◯◯◯   ◯◯◯   ◯◯◯◯


Hints and solution, rot13'd:

Gur onax-jbeqf ner: pybhq, jbeyq, fnaq, cubar

Urer'f nyy gur qngn:

+ pybhq / Phzhybavzohf zvtug sbez bar
q pbhyq / jnf noyr
b pbby / puvyy, ohg creuncf yrff fb

+ jbeyq / Pbafcvenpl ahgwbof ungr vg rira zber guna rpbabzvfgf qb
b qebyy / shaal
e jbbqebj / HFN cerfvqrag orgjrra Jvyyvnz naq Jneera.
j jbeq / havg bs grkg

+ fnaq / Abg fb zhpu fuber nf fubny
n anqn / abguvat va Armnuhnypólbgy
f anfn / Ncbyyb 11 crbcyr

+ cubar / Gryrznexrgre? V qba'g rira xabj 're!
b cbbc / shaavrfg qrpx ba n cvengr fuvc
c ubcr / vg fcevatf rgreany
r arba / aboyr tnf (v.r., ABOYR jbexf nf n yrggre onax)
a craar / ghohyne abbqyr

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Mixology

It is #EnigMarch, and each day the excellent EnigMarch people post a prompt word; then puzzle nerds try to design puzzles around that word. (Today's word is mix.)

Mixology is the study of cocktails. You might think the words and phrases below are just nonsense, but they're actually cocktails. Each has a secret extra ingredient mixed into it until it's nearly unrecognizable. Hopefully you can recognize them nonetheless. (If you don't know cocktails, don't worry; there's a relevant menu below.) Combine the secret ingredient to find out what some people think the most important component of cocktails.

A   remains private VESPER MARTINI
_   his life force
_   that man can
_   log time
_   train him
_   disco era
_   fizzling
 
_   remains with us
_   insalutary
_   nitrogen
_   atomism
_   tool companies
_   your whiskers
_   airsquid

Menu: Manhattan, cosmopolitan, daquiri, gimlet, gin fizz, irish coffee, martini, mimosa, negroni, rusty nail, sidecar, vesper martini, whiskey sour, white Russian


Yes, this is pretty much the same gimmick I used on Pi Day. My first thought was that MIX is Roman numerals, but I used those just a few days ago. Then I thought of this gimmick. And then I was tired of thinking, so I'm re-using it, so there.

Hints and solution, rot13'd:

Fbzr bs gubfr qevaxf ner rnfvre gb nantenz guna bguref. Znxr n dhvpx cnff gb fcbg rnfl barf. Gura nabgure fybjre cnff jvgu gur qevaxf lbh unira'g pebffrq bhg.

Urer'f gur chmmyr qngn:

n : erznvaf cevingr : irfcre znegvav
y : uvf yvsr sbepr : vevfu pbssrr
p : gung zna pna : Znaunggna
b : ybt gvzr : tvzyrg
u : genva uvz : znegvav
b : qvfpb ren : fvqrpne
y : svmmyvat : tva svmm

z : erznvaf jvgu hf : juvgr Ehffvna
n : vafnyhgnel : ehfgl anvy
g : avgebtra : artebav
g : ngbzvfz : zvzbfn
r : gbby pbzcnavrf : pbfzbcbyvgna
e : lbhe juvfxref : juvfxrl fbhe
f : nvefdhvq : qndhvev

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But here there are no cows.

It is #EnigMarch, and each day the excellent EnigMarch people post a prompt word; then puzzle nerds try to design puzzles around that word. (Today's word is neighbor.)

In the Robert Frost poem "Mending Wall," the narrator and their neighbor walk along a broken wall, replacing fallen stones. The neighbor says "Good fences make good neighbors." Did he think both walkers were experiencing some benign transformation as they went?

Anyhow, the lines of text that follow aren't a poem; they're a puzzle. Figure out what they have in common and get a letter from each to spell something:

_   Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
_   definition
_   The Battle Hymn of the Republic
_   electronic devices
_   hijab
_   Graham Norton
_   University of Ghent
 
_   beef goulash
_   Tour de France
_   Agamemnon
_   EBCDIC
_   cause and effect
_   misunderstanding
 
_   Gandhiji
_   calmness
_   top quark
_   hdqrs.
_   menopause
_   UV wavelength
_   deftly
_   Sylvester Stallone
 
_   i am not
_   de facto
_   hijacking
_   Afghanistan
_   Notting Hill
_   Cab Calloway
_   Constantinople
_   esqrs.
_   first

_ _ _ _ _ _ _    _ _ _ _ _ _    _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _    _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _


Hints and solution, rot13'd:

Jbj, uqdef. naq rfdef. ner cerggl jrveq "jbeqf". Gur chmmyr qrfvtare zhfg unir orra cerggl qrfcrengr gb hfr gurz. Jung qb gurl unir va pbzzba?

Rnpu yvar unf n gevnq bs "arvtuobe" yrggref, yrggref nqwnprag va gur nycunorg. Sbe rknzcyr "uqdef." unf DEF.

Sbe rnpu yvar, wbg qbja gur zvqqyr yrggre bs vgf gevnq. Sbe rknzcyr, va "uqdef.", wbg qbja gur E.

Urer'f gur chmmyr qngn:

z Sevrqevpu Jvyuryz Avrgmfpur
r qrsvavgvba
a Gur Onggyr Ulza bs gur Erchoyvp
q ryrpgebavp qrivprf
v uvwno
a Tenunz Abegba
t Havirefvgl bs Turag

s orrs tbhynfu
r Gbhe qr Senapr
a Ntnzrzaba
p ROPQVP
r pnhfr naq rssrpg
f zvfhaqrefgnaqvat

v Tnaquvwv
z pnyzarff
c gbc dhnex
e uqdef.
b zrabcnhfr
i HI jniryratgu
r qrsgyl
f Flyirfgre Fgnyybar

a v nz abg
r qr snpgb
v uvwnpxvat
t Nstunavfgna
u Abggvat Uvyy
o Pno Pnyybjnl
b Pbafgnagvabcyr
e rfdef.
f svefg

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It is #EnigMarch, and each day the excellent EnigMarch people post a prompt word; then puzzle nerds try to design puzzles around that word. (Today's word is odd.)

"I want to write a parody. What are some movies with odd numbers in the title?"

"Wait, how do you spell 'parody'?"

_   Snow White and the _____ Dwarfs
_   The Whole _____ Yards
_   _____ Psychopaths
_   _____ Samurai
_   The Magnificent _____
_   Ocean's _____

Hints and solution, rot13'd:

Sbe rnpu zbivr gvgyr, svyy va gur oynaxf jvgu na bqq ahzore jvgu lbhe rkgrafvir zbivr xabjyrqtr.

Bapr lbh xabj gur ahzore A, wbg qbja gur Agu yrggre bs gur gvgyr. Sbe rknzcyr, frira: fabj ju*V*gr.

v : frira : Fabj Juvgr naq gur _ Qjnesf
a : avar : Gur Jubyr _ Lneqf
f : frira : _ Cflpubcnguf
n : frira : _ Fnzhenv
a : frira : Gur Zntavsvprag _
r : ryrira be guvegrra, jbexf rvgure jnl : Bprna'f _

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Club Bangers

It is #EnigMarch, and each day the excellent EnigMarch people post a prompt word; then puzzle nerds try to design puzzles around that word. (Today's word is club.)

Here are some song lyrics. Alas, there's a word missing from each. Maybe you have some of these memorized. Maybe you can figure others out from context. If this isn't your forte, you can always search your favorite lyrics site. (That's how I got most of these.)

Ed Sheeran Shape of You
♫ A club isn't the  _ _◯_  place to find a lover / So the bar is where I go (Mm) ♫
 
Beyoncé Single Ladies (Put a Ring on it)
♫ Up in the club (Club), we  _ _ _◯  broke up (Up) / I'm doin' my own lil' thing ♫
 
Cardi B Bodak Yellow
♫ You in the club just to  _ _◯_ _ , I'm there, I get paid a fee ♫
 
50 Cent In da Club
♫ You can find me in the club,  _◯_ _ _ _  full of bub' ♫
 
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis Thrift Shop
♫ That shirt's hella dope / And  _ _ _ _◯_  the same one as six other people in this club is a hella don't ♫
 
Justin Bieber Love Yourself
♫ For all the times that you rained on my parade / And all the clubs you  ◯_ _  in using my name ♫
 
J. Cole Power Trip
♫ The same clubs that I used to get  _ _◯_ _ _  out / Life got Kriss Kross'd: totally crossed out ♫
 
Beyoncé Partition
♫ See me  ◯_  in the club with fifty-'leven girls / Posted in the back, diamond fangs in my grill ♫
 
Young M.A. OOOUUU
♫ This Hennessy gettin' to me / I ain't gonna  _◯_ , I'm a little smizz / I'm a little drizz / But we in the club, man / OOOUUU ♫
 
DJ Khaled I'm the One
♫ When I met her in the club, I asked her who she  _ _ _◯  ♫
 

Hints and solution, rot13'd:

Lbh pna svaq zbfg bs gurfr ylevpf ol tbvat gb travhf.pbz naq frnepuvat sbe "pyho" va ylevpf

Urer'f nyy gur qngn:

f ; orfg ; Rq Furrena ; Funcr bs Lbh ; N pyho vfa'g gur orfg cynpr gb svaq n ybire / Fb gur one vf jurer V tb (Zz)

g ; whfg ; Orlbapé ; Fvatyr Ynqvrf (Chg n Evat ba vg) ; Hc va gur pyho (Pyho), jr whfg oebxr hc (Hc) / V'z qbva' zl bja yvy' guvat

e ; cnegl ; Pneqv O ; Obqnx Lryybj ; Lbh va gur pyho whfg gb cnegl, V'z gurer, V trg cnvq n srr

b ; obggyr ; 50 Prag ; Va qn Pyho ; Lbh pna svaq zr va gur pyho, obggyr shyy bs oho'

a ; univat ; Znpxyrzber &nzc; Elna Yrjvf ; Guevsg Fubc ; Gung fuveg'f uryyn qbcr / Naq univat gur fnzr bar nf fvk bgure crbcyr va guvf pyho vf n uryyn qba'g

t ; trg ; Whfgva Ovrore ; Ybir Lbhefrys ; Sbe nyy gur gvzrf gung lbh envarq ba zl cnenqr / Naq nyy gur pyhof lbh trg va hfvat zl anzr

f ; gbffrq ; W. Pbyr ; Cbjre Gevc ; Gur fnzr pyhof gung V hfrq gb trg gbffrq bhg / Yvsr tbg Xevff Xebff'q: gbgnyyl pebffrq bhg

h ; hc ; Orlbapé ; Cnegvgvba ; Frr zr hc va gur pyho jvgu svsgl-'yrira tveyf / Cbfgrq va gur onpx, qvnzbaq snatf va zl tevyy

v ; yvr ; Lbhat Z.N. ; BBBHHH ; Guvf Uraarffl trggva' gb zr / V nva'g tbaan yvr, V'z n yvggyr fzvmm / V'z n yvggyr qevmm / Ohg jr va gur pyho, zna / BBBHHH

g ; sryg ; QW Xunyrq ; V'z gur Bar ; Jura V zrg ure va gur pyho, V nfxrq ure jub fur sryg

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Happy March 17th! It is #EnigMarch, and each day the excellent EnigMarch people post a prompt word; then puzzle nerds try to design puzzles around that word. (Today's word is ancient.)

How often do men think about the Roman Empire? Anyhow, it was still present in Britain in the 5th century, such that someone born there/then might reasonably be expected to spot what's going on in this puzzle, even if they were captured by slavers and taken to a foreign land:

_ The Irish Sea
_ visionary
_ very pretty
_ uprising
_ every year
 
_ visions
_ antiquities
 
_ spirit
_ partition
_ Visigoths
_ known to exist

Hints and solution, rot13'd:

Lbh jnag gb rkgenpg bar yrggre sebz rnpu cuenfr.

Va rnpu cuenfr, gur yrggref V, I, naq K ner obyqrq. Zber fhogyl, gur yrggref P, Y, Q, naq Z qba'g nccrne ng nyy.

Ebzna ahzorevat vf vzcbegnag.

Sbe rnpu cuenfr, chyy bhg gur Ebzna ahzrenyf naq fgvpx gurz gbtrgure gb znxr n ahzore A. Gura hfrq gur Agu yrggre bs gur cuenfr.

Sbe rknzcyr, va "Gur Vevfu Frn", gur Vv Ebzna ahzrenyf znxr gjb. Gur frpbaq yrggre bs "Gur Vevfu Frn" vf U.

Urer'f gur shyy yvfg:

U Gur Vevfu Frn
N ivfvbanel
C irel cerggl
C hcevfvat
L rirel lrne

F ivfvbaf
G nagvdhvgvrf

C fcvevg
N cnegvgvba
G Ivfvtbguf
F xabja gb rkvfg

Gur yrggref fcryy Unccl Fg Cngf!

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Many Hands Make Aight Work

Happy March! It is #EnigMarch, and each day the excellent EnigMarch people post a prompt word; then puzzle nerds try to design puzzles around that word. (Today's word is hand.)

Although I am an enthusiastic member of my MIT Mystery Hunt team, my attention to detail is… what it is. My teammates insist on checking my work, even on my favorite parts:

_ Marching Hands
_ Rubik's Cuba
_ Vows Garden
_ Deck Konundrum
_ Pyre Meta
_ Point by Numbers
_ Solitaire Hanuman
_ Burkina Fast
_ Scavenger Hurt
_ Knights and Knives
_ Connect the Does
_ Rush Dour

If they find me staring stuck at a puzzle, they find my mistakes and point me at "_ _ _ _    _ _ _    _ _ _ _ _"


Hints and solution. First (accessibility-ish) hint is in clear; other stuff is rot13'd:

This puzzle assumes you know some MIT Mystery Hunt jargon: Duck Konundrum, Pure Meta.

Rnpu cuenfr unf bar yrggre jebat.

R.t., gurer'f n chmmyr glcr pnyyrq "znepuvat onaqf" abg "znepuvat unaqf"

Sbe rnpu cuenfr, abgr qbja gur jebat yrggre. R.t., gur U va unaqf. Chg 'rz gbtrgure gb sbez n cuenfr.

Urer'f gur shyy yvfg:
Znepuvat Unaqf (Znepuvat Onaqf)
Ehovx'f Phon (Ehovx'f Phor)
Ibjf Tneqra (Ebjf Tneqra)
Qrpx Xbahaqehz (Qhpx Xbahaqehz)
Cler Zrgn (Cher Zrgn)
Cbvag ol Ahzoref (Cnvag ol Ahzoref)
Fbyvgnver Unahzna (Fbyvgnver Unatzna)
Ohexvan Snfg (Ohexvan Snfb)
Fpniratre Uheg (Fpniratre Uhag)
Xavtugf naq Xavirf (Xavtugf naq Xanirf)
Pbaarpg gur Qbrf (Pbaarpg gur Qbgf)
Ehfu Qbhe (Ehfu Ubhe)

Gur zvfgnxra yrggref fcryy Unir Lbh Gevrq

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3D Movies

It is #EnigMarch, and each day the excellent EnigMarch people post a prompt word; then puzzle nerds try to design puzzles around that word. (Today's word is 3D.)

See if you can figure out what movies I'm* talking about here. Put together their first letters to remind yourself what you did with those large-volume sodas at at the movie theaters.

◯_ d_ _ _ _ d_ _ _ _    D_ _ 
The aliens are coming and their goal is to invade and destroy Earth. Fighting superior technology, mankind's best weapon is the will to survive.
◯_    _ _ _ _    _ _ _ _ _ d'_    _ _ dd_ _ _ 
When a woman's long-time friend reveals he's engaged, she realizes she loves him herself and sets out to get him, with only days before the wedding.
◯_ _    D_ dd_ 
A lazy law school graduate adopts a kid to impress his girlfriend, but everything doesn't go as planned.
◯_ d_ _ _ _    _ _ _ _ _    _ _ d   _ _ _    _ _ _ _    _ _ _ _ _ d_ 
In 1938, after his father goes missing while pursuing the Holy Grail, Indiana Jones finds himself up against the Nazis again
◯_ _ _    _ _ d   _ _ d'_    _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _    _ d_ _ _ _ _ _ _ 
Two rock-'n-rolling teens, on the verge of failing their class, set out on a quest to make the ultimate school history report
◯d_ _ _ d _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ d_ 
The solitary life of an artificial man—who was incompletely constructed and has scissors for hands—is upended when he is taken in by a suburban family
Ⓓ_ _ _    _ _ d D_ _ _ _ _ 
After a woman leaves a briefcase at the airport terminal, a dumb limo driver and his dumber friend set out on a hilarious cross-country road trip to Aspen

*Here, "I'm" is short for IMDB, whence I stole the summaries


Hint: You either need to know lots of movies or be good at searching teh internets.

Solution, rot13'd:

Vaqrcraqrapr Qnl
Zl Orfg Sevraq'f Jrqqvat
Ovt Qnqql
Vaqvnan Wbarf naq gur Ynfg Pehfnqr
Ovyy naq Grq'f Rkpryyrag Nqiragher
Rqjneq Fpvffbeunaqf
Ⓓhzo naq Qhzore

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Happy Pi Day! This round's on me. It is #EnigMarch, and each day the excellent EnigMarch people post a prompt word; then puzzle nerds try to design puzzles around that word. (Today's word is spirit. Kinda spooky.)

You might think the words below are just nonsense, but they're actually alcoholic spirits. Each has an additive mixed into it until it's nearly unrecognizable. Hopefully you can recognize them nonetheless. Combine the additives to find out what Ghostbusters do when they see a spirit.

COPIES _   _ _ _ _ _
QUANTILE _   _ _ _ _ _ _ _
JOUST _   _ _ _ _
DVORAK _   _ _ _ _ _
GAIN _   _ _ _
CARPARK _   _ _ _ _ _ _

Hints and solution, rot13'd:

Urer'f n yvfg bs fcvevgf juvpu vapyhqrf nyy gur eryrinag barf naq n srj bguref gb xrrc lbh ba lbhe gbrf:
neenpx, oenaql, pbtanp, tva, zveva, cvfpb, ehz, fbwh, grdhvyn, ibqxn, juvfxl

Gur svefg fcvevg vf CVFPB naq gur rkgen yrggre vf R

Urer'f gur shyy fbyhgvba:
pbcvrf / r / cvfpb
dhnagvyr / a / grdhvyn
wbhfg / g / fbwh
qibenx / e / ibqxn
tnva / n / tva
pnecnex / c / neenpx

Gur rkgen yrggref fcryy ragenc

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Happy Marsh March! It is #EnigMarch, and each day the excellent EnigMarch people post a prompt word; then puzzle nerds try to design puzzles around that word. (Today's word is wave.)

The Marshall Islands are in a remote part of the Pacific Ocean. If you're sailing/rowing there, you really don't want to miss, or else you can find yourself in the middle of nowhere, short on supplies. These islands are low atolls; they don't stick up very high. (Maybe you saw a viral video some weeks back with a wave of water bursting through doors to swamp a room at a US Army base? That was at the Marshall Islands.) This low-ness means that if you're rowing/sailing there, you might be kinda-close, but still not be able to see an island over the horizon.

Thus, back in the days before GPS, anyone who wanted to settle in the Marshall Islands, occasionally sail out for an excursion and find their way back and not die had to be super-good at navigating. Thus the Marshall Islands are the last place on earth where there's still traditional knowledge of wave piloting, navigating by feeling the waves.

In wave piloting a navigator pays attention to the waves that toss and turn their boat. When I, an ignorant city slicker, look out at ocean waves, I just see a confusing mess of motion. But a skilled wave pilot figures out something like "Most of these waves are going from east to west; but some of them are coming from from an angle off that-a-way. Therefore, there must be an island off over the horizon that-a-way that these waves are bouncing off."

With that in mind, see if you can figure out this four-word phrase based on the waves radiating off it:

puzzling image; an expanse of cyan with some black squiggles that could be the outlines of letters

I have no idea how to hint this one, sorry. I bet it's either totally easy or impossible, but I'm not sure which.

Solution, rot13'd:

Gur zrffntr vf onfx va ersyrpgrq tybel.

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It is #EnigMarch, and each day the excellent EnigMarch people post a prompt word; then puzzle nerds try to design puzzles around that word. (Today's word is shield.)

The language of heraldry and the language of flags have much in common. With this in mind, consider how one might exercise one's arms so one could carry a heavy shield around all day.


Hint and solution, rot13'd:

Gurfr fgenatr jbeqf ner ryrzragf bs urenyqvp qrfvta. Jung qb gurl ybbx yvxr?

Jbaqre jul gur synibegrkg jnagrq hf gb guvax nobhg syntf.

Pbhyq vg or frzncuber? Bu ab, vg'f frzncuber.

Gur funcrf bs gurfr urenyqvp guvatvrf xvaqn fhttrfg fbzrbar ubyqvat gurve nezf ng frzncuber-vfu natyrf. Gung jbhyq fcryy: CHYY HC

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Happy March! It is #EnigMarch, and each day the excellent EnigMarch people post a prompt word; then puzzle nerds try to design puzzles around that word. (Today's word is bridge.)

To abridge is to shorten some text, ideally preserving the sense. You could also shorten some text by chopping the first letter off of each word. For example, abridge would become bridge. National Puzzlers League people would call this "lop off the first letter" idea beheadment.

Can you figure out these beheadments? When you're done, gather the heads for the name of a beheaded saint (not necessarily a cephalophore (cephalophore-ness isn't part of the puzzle. I just found out about the word while researching the puzzle and thought it was wild that there was a word for that)).

summarize A/B R I D G E connecting structure
not at all! _/_ _ _ _ OK, well sometimes
peril _/_ _ _ _ _ ire
road race _/_ _ _ _ partner
all _/_ _ _ _ certainly
~½ of adults _/_ _ _ _ harbinger
wiggliest piece _/_ _ _ _ _ ~½ a synodic day around now
Aruban, e.g. _/_ _ _ _ _ _ _ lies and libel
now! _/_ _ _ _ a bridge might be shaped like this

Hints and solution, rot13'd:

abj! : jung zbagu vf vg?

jvttyvrfg cvrpr: fcrpvsvpnyyl, purff cvrpr

pregnvayl: vs "zhpuyl" jrer n jbeq, vg jbhyq unir orra n orggre pyhr

Yvfg bs orurnqrq jbeqf:
oevqtr
rire
natre
nyyl
irel
bzra
avtug
fynaqre
nepu

Yvfg bs haorurnqrq jbeqf:
noevqtr
arire
qnatre
enyyl
rirel
jbzra
xavtug
vfynaqre
znepu

Gung fnvag vf Naqerj Xvz, n.x.n. Naqerj Xvz Gnrtba

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The Attention We Bring To It

It is #EnigMarch, and each day the excellent EnigMarch people post a prompt word; then puzzle nerds try to design puzzles around that word. (Today's word is zero.)

Someone who'd thought about such matters said:

"All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act."

Inner qualifications: zero, devo, teen, parses, tech, lobo, tonal, tunes, spend

_ _ _ _    _ _ _    _ _


belle Haleine, eau de voilette


boîte-en-vAlise


george washingTon (allegorie de genre)


la mariée mise à nu par ses célibaTaires, même (le grand verre)


monte caRlo bonds


nu descendant un escalIer n° 2


porte-chApeAux


Why not sneeze, rose sélavy?


à regarder d'un œil, de prèS, pendant preSque une heure


Hints and solution, rot13'd:

Gur cvpgherf qba'g znggre; gur gvgyrf qb.

Va guvf chmmyr, gur gvgyrf unir qvssrerag pncvgnyvmngvba guna gur bevtvanyf.

Pna lbh svaq "mreb" nzbatfg gur gvgyrf?

Vs lbh pna'g svaq "mreb", pna lbh svaq "mr"?

Lbh pna svaq rnpu bs gur vaare dhnyvsvpngvbaf va gur gvgyrf, ohg rnpu vf vagreehcgrq ol fcnprf be chapghngvba naq fhpu.

Sbe rnpu vaare dhnyvsvpngvba, svaq gur eryrinag gvgyr naq wbg qbja vgf pncvgny yrggre. Gurfr yrggref fcryy: Jung neg vf

J mreb Jul Abg Farrmr, Ebfr Féynil?
U qrib Oryyr Unyrvar, Rnh qr Ibvyrggr
N grra Obîgr-ra-inyvfr
G cnefrf Yn znevér zvfr à ah cne frf péyvongnverf, zêzr (Yr Tenaq Ireer)
N grpu Cbegr-puncrnhk
E ybob Zbagr Pneyb Obaqf
G gbany Trbetr Jnfuvatgba (Nyyrtbevr qr traer)
V gharf Ah qrfpraqnag ha rfpnyvre a° 2
F fcraq À ertneqre q'ha œvy, qr ceèf, craqnag cerfdhr har urher

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You Spin Me Right

It is #EnigMarch, and each day the excellent EnigMarch people post a prompt word; then puzzle nerds try to design puzzles around that word. (Today's word is thread. Kinda spooky coincidence when you consider that 🧵 was a clue in the puzzle I wrote yesterday.)

The word thread can be "unraveled" into two smaller words: the and rad. You might call the a "start" word; its first letter is thread's first letter. Similarly, you could say rad is an "end" word: its last letter is thread's last letter. But the word isn't therad; you must braid things better than that for the whole to hold together.

Here are emoji cluing several "thread" words. Some of these, you can probably get just from the emoji. For the others, you might want to see what you can spin from the remaining bits.

🧵 h r e a d
😅 _◯_ _ _ _
⛓️ _ _ _◯_ _
📥 ◯_ _ _ _ _
💨 _ _ _◯_ _
 
👤 _ _ _ _◯_
🧣 ◯_ _ _ _ _
 
💬 ◯_ _ _ _ _
🧲 _◯_ _ _ _
💮 _ _ _◯_ _
😭 _ _ _ _◯_

The start words: can, fat, fbi, fun, man, net, sad, set, sum, the, win

Rad end words: arc, bit, car, get, her, his, how, let, rad, red, way

Was it really a coincidence I used 🧵 as a clue yesterday? I think it was a Ⓣ◯◯◯◯ ◯◯ ◯◯◯◯. (Some folks are convinced that a puzzle lurks in the words that the EnigMarch people are handing out. I don't have an opinion on that, other than "I'm wary of getting hypnotized by spaghetti".)


Solution, rot13'd:

Guernq / gur enq / 🧵
fJrngl / frg jnl / 😅
punVaf / pna uvf / ⛓️
Fhozvg / fhz ovg / 📥
sneGrq / sng erq / 💨
funqBj / fnq ubj / 👤
Snoevp / sov nep / 🧣
Syhrag / sha yrg / 💬
zNtarg / zna trg / 🧲
arpGne / arg pne / 💮
juvaRe / jva ure / 😭

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It is #EnigMarch, and each day the excellent EnigMarch people post a prompt word; then puzzle nerds try to design puzzles around that word. (Today's word is rock.)

So I made one of those fancypants drill-ladder web page things. I didn't try to embed the puzzle in this here blog post page because I didn't want to think about whether the puzzle styles and the blog-post styles would fight. Anyhow, go check out the drill-ladder web page thing.

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It is #EnigMarch, and each day the excellent EnigMarch people post a prompt word; then puzzle nerds try to design puzzles around that word. (Today's word is watch.)

What does a watched pot never do? Well, it doesn't do many, many things, but experts of English idiom know that a watched pot especially never boils.

A watched pot never  boIls
A magician never  …
 
Quitters never  …
Cheaters never  …
Eavesdroppers never  …
The apple never  …
Faint heart never  …
 
A creaking door never  …
Winners never  …
The course of true love never  …
A wild goose never  …
Lightning never  …
 
Tale never  …
Tomorrow never  …
 
A little hard work never  …
An elephant never  …
Paper never  …
 

boIls, cOmes, falls far from thE tree, falls from its Hinges, forgetS, hear any good of themselVes, hurt Anyone, laid a Tame egg, loses in the Telling, prospEr, qUit, Ran smoothly, refused inK, reveals his secreTs, Strikes twice, wiN, won faiR lady

_ _   _ _ _ _ _   _ _ _ _ _   _ _   _ _ _.


Hints: Well, you want to know a lot of idioms or else be good at faking it. Hopefully you know some of these; and with those eliminated you can match up the rest. Hopefully?

Solution, rot13'd:

N jngpurq cbg arire obVyf
N zntvpvna arire erirnyf uvf frperGf

Dhvggref arire jvA
Purngref arire cebfcRe
Rnirfqebccref arire urne nal tbbq bs gurzfryIrf
Gur nccyr arire snyyf sne sebz guR gerr
Snvag urneg arire jba snvE ynql

N pernxvat qbbe arire snyyf sebz vgf Uvatrf
Jvaaref arire dHvg
Gur pbhefr bs gehr ybir arire Ena fzbbguyl
N jvyq tbbfr arire ynvq n Gnzr rtt
Yvtugavat arire Fgevxrf gjvpr

Gnyr arire ybfrf va gur Gryyvat
Gbzbeebj arire pBzrf

N yvggyr uneq jbex arire uheg Nalbar
Na ryrcunag arire sbetrgF
Cncre arire ershfrq vaX

Gur hccre-pnfr yrggref va gur "obvyf" cuenfrf fcryy Vg arire uhegf gb nfx.

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Like a Record, Baby

It is #EnigMarch, and each day the excellent EnigMarch people post a prompt word; then puzzle nerds try to design puzzles around that word. (Today's word is round.)

It's neat that if you move the last phoneme in ROUND 'round to the front, it makes a different word, DROWN.

do w n Sleep with the fishes
_ _◯_ Expand
_◯_ _ _ Pile
_ _ _◯_ It's used to pi puncture
◯_ _ _ Journey
_ _ _◯_ Cousin of "visual"
_ _◯_ Sheet
_ _ _◯ Body part

INCH, LOAF, ONYX, PIERCE, ROGUE, ROUND, TAX, WRECKED

Read the circled letters to remind yourself what's going on: Ⓡ◯◯◯◯◯◯◯


Hints and solution, rot13'd:

Nppbeqvat gb gur PZH sbyxf jubfr cubargvp qvpgvbanel V hfr, gur ynfg cubarzr va GNK vf F, abg XF be fbzrfhpu.

Gung pebffrq-bhg "cv" vf n gbb-pyrire-ol-unys ahqtr gung lbh jnag gb fcva CVREPR urer.

Ha-fcha jbeqf, va beqre bs hfr: ebhaq, ebthr, gnk, cvrepr, jerpxrq, balk, ybns, vapu.

Gur fcha jbeqf, va beqre, ner: qEbja, teBj, fGnpx, fcrNe, Gerx, fbaVp, syBr, puvA. Gur pvepyrq yrggref fcryy ebgngvba.

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Oh hi, Mark

Happy March! It is #EnigMarch, and each day the excellent EnigMarch people post a prompt word; then puzzle nerds try to design puzzles around that word. (Today's word is sign.) That's kind of neat, if you think of a sign as a "mark." It sounds kinda like "March" and Wikipedia says that's not a coincidence:

In medieval Europe… a march was a border between realms… It seems that in Old English "mark" meant "boundary" or "sign of a boundary", and the meaning only later evolved to encompass "sign" in general, "impression" and "trace".

Anyhow, I suppose it would be appropriate for you to solve this slitherlink, finding the boundary, and then note which letter-marks are within. They should spell a word.


Hints and solution:

The Wikipedia article about slitherlinks has a pleasantly-surprising amount of advice on solving them.

If you're not having fun but nevertheless feel compelled to solve, there are automatic slitherlink solvers out there.

If you want the answer, follow this here link to see the solution.

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Case-by-Case Basis

It is #EnigMarch, and each day the excellent EnigMarch people post a prompt word; then puzzle nerds try to design puzzles around that word. (Today's word is shift.)

Did you ever wonder how keyboards came to have "Shift" keys and how they got that name? The earliest typewriters only supported capital letters. But then:

For the second Remington model [typewriter], engineers Lucien Crandall and Byron Books chose to add lowercase letters using a clever method: they changed each of the typebars to have two letters, one above the other, and added a key that would shift up the entire carriage—the moving mechanism that carried the paper wrapped around the platen—and cause the subsequent typebar to hit the shifted carriage with the other letter.

Naturally, they named that key Upper Case. …

The Upper Case key had its counterpart, Lower Case. … At some point in the 1880s, the maker renamed both keys Shift while swapping the action so that the carriage shifted only when one of the keys was held.

Shift Happens, Marcin Wichary

Keeping that in mind, consider the following. It should appear sideways. (I worry that RSS readers and such might not display it correctly? If it doesn't appear sideways, maybe you want to click through to the blog post.)

 

Keep it stiff, old chap: _ _◯
Become less vigilant: _ _ _ _   _◯_ _ _
Punish harshly: _ _ _   _ _ _◯
Despicable: _ _ _ _   _   _ _ _ _ _'_   ◯_ _ _ _
Advantage: _ _◯_
Society's class that has
the bread (affluent):
_ _ _◯_

 

◯◯◯◯◯◯: _ _ _ _

Hints and solution, rot13'd:

Rnpu pyhr yrnqf gb n cuenfr bs gur sbez hccre fbzrguvat be ybjre fbzrguvat.

Jura jevgvat nafjref va gur oynax, yrnir bhg gur "hccre" be "ybjre" jbeq; ohg guvf gryyf lbh juvpu qverpgvba gb jevgr gur erznvavat jbeqf va gur oynaxf. R.t., sbe "hccre yvc", jevgr yvc hcjneqf fb gung gur Y vf va gur pvepyr.

Gur cuenfrf ner:
hccre yvc
ybjre lbhe thneq
ybjre gur obbz
ybjre guna n fanxr'f oryyl
hccre unaq
hccre pehfg

Gur pvepyrq yrggref fcryy yhzone. Gung'f lbhe ybjre onpx, fb jevgr onpx qbjajneqf va gur oynaxf

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March March March March March

Happy March! It is #EnigMarch, and each day the excellent EnigMarch people post a prompt word; then puzzle nerds try to design puzzles around that word. (Today's word is musical.)

Since it's March, here are five cryptically-clued marches.

_ _ _ _ _ = Leader of band (that's a defintion, I'm not cluing the letter B, snap out of it)


This puzzle is a lot easier if you know lots of famous marches, like maybe you failed to solve the MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 puzzle "Something in Common" for eleven hours or you used some circus clown music as your phone's timer sound and now it's burned into your memory forever. In case that's not you, here's a list of famous marches, guaranteed to include the marches clued above:

All Sports
American Patrol
Americans We
Amparito Roca
Anchors Aweigh
Band of America
Bandology
Barnum and Bailey's Favorite
Belgian Paratroopers
Big Cage
Black Horse Troop
Black Jack
Blaze Away
Billboard
Bombasto
Boston Commandery
Bravura
Brighton Beach
Brooke's Chicago Marine Band
Chicago Tribune
Chimes of Liberty
Coat of Arms
Colossus of Columbia
Colonel Bogey
Combination
Commando
Coronation
Country Band
Crusade for Freedom
Children of the Shrine
E Pluribus Unum
El Capitan
Emblem of Unity
Entry of the Gladiators
Fairest of the Fair
Footlifter
Gallant Seventh
Hands Across the Sea
High School Cadets
In Storm and Sunshine
Independentia
Invincible Eagle
Invercargill
Joyce's 71st New York Regiment
Klaxon
Königgrätzer
Liberty Bell
Melody Shop
Men of Ohio
National Emblem
Officer of the Day
On Parade
On the Mall
Onward and Upward
On the Square
On the Quarter Deck
Old Comrades
Our Director
Pomp and Circumstance
Preußens Gloria
Last Long Mile
Purple Carnival
Purple Pageant
Radetzky March
Repasz Band
Robinson's Grand Entree
Salutation
Semper Fidelis
Semper Paratus
Screamer
Second Connecticut Regiment
Seventy-six Trombones
Southerner
Stars and Stripes Forever
Strike Up the Band
Sweeney's Cavalcade
Tenth Regiment
Thunderer
Up the Street
Washington Grays
Washington Post
White Rose


Solution, rot13'd:

F RZCREBE GH - B (rtt) + CNNF = Frzcre Cnenghf

RY + CVGN va PNA = Ry Pncvgna

(WX, PNY) jrfgjneq (erirefrq) va ONPX = O ynp xw NPX = Oynpx Wnpx

JNFUVAT GBA CBFG = Jnfuvatgba Cbfg

Tengvsl gur byq frangbe bar ovt nantenz sbe Ragel bs gur Tynqvngbef

Rkgenpgrq yrggref fcryy ZNWBE

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False Friends

It is still #EnigMarch. Thus, each day the EnigMarch people post a prompt word; and puzzle nerds such as myself attempt to design a puzzle to that prompt. (Today's word is false.)

A false friend is a word in a foreign language language that looks similar to an English word, but means something else. E.g., compare English embarrassed and Spanish embarazada ("pregnant").

🇪🇸 Spanish

ú t i l actually means insignificant. You wanted ineficaz.

_◯_ _ _ actually means bargain. You wanted pandilla.

_ _ _ _ _ _◯_ _ _ _ _ _ actually means appreciably. You wanted sesudamente.

◯_ _ _ actually means soup. You wanted jabón.

_ _ _◯ actually means eleven. You wanted una vez.

🇫🇷 French

_◯_ _ _ _ _ actually means transaction. You wanted aventure amoureuse.

_ _ _ _◯ actually means enamel. You wanted courriel.

_ _ _ _ _◯_ _ _ _ actually means sunstroke. You wanted isolation.

_ _◯_ _ _ actually means face. You wanted silhouette.

🇮🇹 Italian

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _◯ actually means topic. You wanted litigio.

_ _ _◯_ _ _ _ _ _ _ actually means sympathetic. You wanted esauriente.

_◯_ _ _ _ _ _ _ actually means disappointment. You wanted illusione.

_ _ _ _◯_ _ _ actually means factory. You wanted tessuto.

🇳🇱 Dutch

◯_ _ _ actually means physician. You wanted kunst.

_ _ _◯ actually means ring. You wanted riem.

_◯_ actually means that. You wanted dobbelsteen.

_ _◯_ _ actually means coarse. You wanted bosje.

_ _◯_ _ _ actually means honey. You wanted slijpen.

Put together what you have from 🇪🇸 + 🇫🇷 + 🇮🇹 + 🇳🇱:
◯◯◯◯◯   ◯◯◯◯   ◯◯◯◯◯◯◯◯◯


Hints and solution, rot13'd:

V qba'g xabj gurfr ynathntrf; V sbhaq yvfgf bs snyfr sevraqf ol pyvpxvat ersrerapr yvaxf ba gur Jvxvcrqvn cntr. Lbh zvtug qb gung, gbb.

Gur snyfr sevraqf ner:

Súgvy tNatn frafvoYrzragr Fbcn bapR

nSsnver éznvY vafbyNgvba svTher

netbzragB pbzCerafvib qRyhfvbar snooEvpn

Negf oryG qVr teBir ubAvat

Gur pvepyrq yrggref fcryy bhg gur zrffntr: SNYFR SYNT BCRENGVBA

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Welcome to the month of March! It is #EnigMarch anew. Thus, each day the EnigMarch people post a prompt and nerds try to design puzzles around that prompt. (Today's word is door.)

_ ◯ _ _ Caramel and nougat coated with milk chocolate
_ _ ◯ _ _ _ _ _ First emperor relevant in this context
_ ◯ _ _ President of Moldova
_ _ _ ◯ _ _ Had a bad time on the Ides of March
_ _ ◯ _ _ Two-faced and associated with doorways

The circled letters make: ◯◯◯◯◯


Hints and answer, Rot13'd:

Zra pna'g fgbc guvaxvat nobhg gur Ebzna Rzcver naq arvgure pna V.

Jrypbzr gb gur zbagu bs Znepu! Lrc, Znepu. Lrc. Jung vf Znepu?

Zbaguf fher ner arng.

Rnpu bs gurfr pyhrf vf nobhg n Ebzna tbq be uhzna jubfr anzr vf cneg bs gur rglzbybtl bs n zbagu anzr.

zNef, nhThfghf, zNvn, whyVhf, wnAhf: gur pvepyrq yrggref fcryy NTNVA. Jrypbzr gb gur zbagu bs Znepu! Vg vf #RavtZnepu NTNVA.

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I didn't go to school at MIT, but I've played in the MIT Mystery Hunt. So I've sent in some thank-you money, and thus landed on their alumni fundraising mailing list. They just sent me a postcard about their upcoming 24-Hour Challenge fundraiser; the postcard got my attention because it had a crossword, albeit a sparse "vocabulary" crossword emphasizing MIT trivia.

screen shot: part of a crossword grid and some clues

I didn't go to school at MIT, but I've played in the MIT Mystery Hunt. So I've studied and absorbed a fair amount of MIT trivia. Sure, I know a five-letter MIT unit of measurement; six-letter nature's engineer. I might bristle a bit with San Franciscan pride when asked what "MIT" holiday is on March 14th (That's a nerd thing, not just an MIT thing. It started at the Exploratorium!), but I know what to write in the grid.

I didn't go to school at MIT, but I've played in the MIT Mystery Hunt. So thanks to that, sure, I know what the MIT undergraduate class ring is called. It occurs to me that I don't know what the class ring was called at the school that I actually attended. (Did my school's ring have a name? Is it normal for school rings to have names? MIT's is the only one I know.)

Anyhow, if you want to flex your MIT knowledge (whether your studied there or not), go to the fundraiser page and scroll down until you see the download the crossword button.

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Martin Renfried is going to send out a cocktail-themed cryptic crossword every couple of months; if you subscribe to his Patreon, he'll send those crosswords to you. He wrote a couple of cryptics for MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 and has written other cryptics for other puzzle-y contexts. ☜ Click the link on that there sentence if you'd like to see some examples of his work. For more info about his upcoming cocktail-themed cryptics, go to http://www.negroniscocktails.com/about.html

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The Hearst Newspapers News-sites, no doubt jealous of the NYT's puzzle section, have launched their own syndicated puzzle page, Puzzmo. Each day there's a cool mini-crossword from the AVCX folks and some other puzzles. (I don't think you need to subscribe to a Hearst news-site to play the puzzles. When I tried visiting in Incognito just now, it let me get started on the crossword. To play some of their "experimental" and "bonus" puzzles, you need to join Puzzmo; as near as I can tell, that's separate from being a Hearst news-site subscriber, maybe?)

I got mad at a couple of their word puzzles because they leaned on some obscure words. E.g., I got stuck on a Typeshift puzzle and asked for a hint. The hint told me I should have used the word motlier. Motlier. As in "Look at that motley fool and the motlier fool next to him," I guess. I didn't want to have to use a desperate-Scrabble-ploy word to solve a puzzle.

I enjoyed solving the clever crosswords. I wasn't having fun solving the Typeshift and Wordbind puzzles, knowing that my scores would always be trounced by folks who could stomach using words like motlier. (Scrabble champs would no doubt point out that the real problem is that I'm unwilling to put in the work to memorize those weird words. Anyhow.)

Instead, I wrote a couple of little computer programs to solve those puzzles for me. That was fun. I set them up to favor using actual-words-that-people-use; but fall back to words-never-uttered-outside-a-Scrabble-board.

two computer windows next to each other. On the left a browser window shows the Puzzmo site, zoomed in on a Wordbind puzzle. On the right, a computer command line shows someone using a program called wordbind.py to cheat ahem I mean suggest words to use in the puzzle; it suggests using the ahem word backstamped.

Unfortunately solving those puzzles still isn't fun, even with the helper programs… So I stopped. But I still visit the site each day for the cool crossword.

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Everybody likes to complain about crosswordese, but this puzzle does something about it.

screen shot of UI for a puzzle grid. Highlighted entry is 15 letters. Clue is: What someone might say after a countdown en la noche del 21 de diciembre

(I heard about it via xwords by a ladee)

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USA Chain Restaurants Word Ladder I made another word ladder: USA Chain Restaurants. This one was pretty tough for me, a San Franciscan who doesn't make it out to other parts of the country these days. I look at _A_BY'S and do...

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Like many San Franciscans I've recently struggled played with Chris Arvin's excellent Name SF Streets game. Crossword fiend that I am, I thought Remembering street names by looking at a map is hard; ...

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I walked past a storefront near 33rd Ave and Judah and saw some big Braille out of the corner of my eye. I snapped a hasty pic through the window, but didn't try to get a better one—inside the ...

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I updated the lists of "popular" phrases and words over on the phraser page. These new lists have fresh data from Wikipedia and some other wikis. Perhaps making the biggest difference between this up...

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The Richmond Review, my horrible neighborhood paper, has reached a new low. Yes they still, in the year 2023, publish a column by Quentin Kopp. Yes, they publish letters from residents who threaten c...

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I have gone five million steps while playing the Pikmin Bloom phone game. Look on my walks, ye mighty, and despair! (Yeah, yeah, I know some other people have more steps than this. I bet there's...

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It is #EnigMarch, and when dared to design another puzzle, I say there's no going back now. I'm thinking of some words. For each of these words, you can form a new word by reversing three of its let...

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It is #EnigMarch, and I might design a puzzle if given a nudge. It's interesting that PULL and PUSH are antonyms and yet have the same number of letters. Not just about the same, give or take, bu...

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It's #EnigMarch, and when dared to design a puzzle, I do what they say. When I was searching Bartlett's Familiar Quotations yesterday, I decided to write some new quotations. But that was difficul...

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It's #EnigMarch, and when challenged to design a puzzle, I'm inclined to try. Punctation mark that annoy's when misused In electronics, phenomenon by which one circuit's signal interferes with ano...

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It's #EnigMarch, and when dared to design a puzzle, I can handle the heat. If you fill in this fire-kissed crossword, the circled letters spell out a kind of fire. Across: 1. Not many 4. George...

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It is #EnigMarch, and when they challenge us to design a puzzle, I ask "how high?" In the three sequences below, you will grow words. You'll start with a two-letter word, then add a letter to get t...

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It's #EnigMarch and there's a daily puzzle design challenge. Today's challenge is KNOT. Alas I do not have some new knotty puzzle idea. FWIW, I wrote a knot puzzle some years back, tho. ...

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It's #EnigMarch, and when challenged to design a puzzle, I make time even if I feel kinda buried. In this crossword, most clues are cryptic, but the clues that just say undead don't have any wordpl...

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It's #EnigMarch, and I'm still attempting these puzzle design challenges, even ones that sound kinda random. I'm thinking of a six-sided die, but with a letter on each face instead of a number. He...

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It is #EnigMarch, and thus there is a new puzzle design challenge today, as has been foretold. To crack today's code, figure out what the opposite of colorblindness is and use that, I guess. ...

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It's #EnigMarch, and I'm still attempting these puzzle design challenges, even ones that sound kinda random. I'm thinking of a six-sided die, but with a letter on each face instead of a number. He...

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It is #EnigMarch, and if it sounds like they have a puzzle-design challenge, I listen up. Some fiend has split each of these six-letter words into two three-letter words! The letters within each th...

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It's #EnigMarch, and when dared to design a puzzle, I take the bait. "All fishermen are liars." If someone tells you that they caught FriedrIch NietzScHe but had to let him go, they probably just ca...

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It's #EnigMarch, and I still respond to puzzle-design challenges, even if they seem really out there. The spaces between these words seem OK but are supposed to be letters: … with &nbs...

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It's #EnigMarch, and I respond to a puzzle design challenge, even if it can be a pain. So here's a puzzle: Waayaahtanwa chief, as described by foreigner, maybe: _ _ _ _ _   _ _ ◯ King's...

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It's still #EnigMarch and when I hold the internet up to my ear, I think it's telling me to write a puzzle, so here you go: shell wily even sway year Adele tests kayak wavy mean away care dense I...

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It's #EnigMarch, and when dared to create a puzzle, I do. To find today's hidden message, you will need to cut out a stencil from the key-card. Which letters to cut out? The ones that form the c...

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It is #EnigMarch and when dared to design a puzzle, I still make space in my schedule. Across: 1. Runway pavement 7. Get new loan from S&L, perhaps 11. Who might sell you a pedigree pup ...

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Happy π Day! It's still #EnigMarch and so I took a moment to respond to a challenge by putting together a puzzle: Already-published book, revised:   _ _ _ _ _ _   _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ES...

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It's still #EnigMarch and today's puzzle-design challenge lit a fire under my ass. Find matches for what to try if you can't find matches: 5 FLINT BUTANE   4 LIGHTER GLYCERIN ...

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It is still #EnigMarch and when they dare us to write a puzzle, I do. When faced with a tower of books, you need a word ladder, obviously. When you've climbed that tall ladder, how will you ente...

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It is #EnigMarch, and I am again exhorted to create a puzzle. "Be bold" is a fun phrase because "be" sounds like B, the first letter of BOLD. With that in mind: “B BOLD and mighty forces will come ...

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It is #EnigMarch, and I have been once again baited into creating a puzzle. This puzzle uses interstate words: words formed by placing 2-letter USA state abbreviations in other words. E.g. in the fir...

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It is still #EnigMarch, and I am still ruled by double-dares to create puzzles. Neo: Just had a little déjà vu. Trinity: What did you see? Neo: A black cat went past us, and then another that look...

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It is still #EnigMarch, and I am still taking double-dares to create puzzles. When folks cuss on internet forums, they replace one or more letters with symbols. The QWERTY standard swear-rule the sy...

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It is still #EnigMarch, and I am still succumbing to double-dares to create puzzles. In my previous puzzles, I've started out with instructions; this time I'll supply no directions, you should be ab...

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It is still #EnigMarch, and I am still reacting to double-dares to create puzzles. Here's a cryptid I mean cryptic clue: Bull-head one takes Jupiter's six relating to cattle. (6) To get you in the ...

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It is still #EnigMarch and I am once again responding to a dare to create a puzzle. The jeweler knows that an uncut gem doesn't look right; you need to chip away a bit to see the precious stone. On...

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It is still #EnigMarch and I am once again responding to a double-dare to create a puzzle. Here's something I'd like to use as a cryptic crossword clue gimmick, but I think traditionalists would thro...

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Once again, I respond to an #EnigMarch challenge by writing a puzzle. This one has a lot of flavortext, but fortunately I outsourced the work to L. Frank Baum: TikTok the Machine Man …Dor...

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#EnigMarch is a daily puzzle creation challenge; each day during the month of March, it double-dares everyone to create a puzzle. I made a puzzle today: We place "egg" words in "nest" words and hope...

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#EnigMarch is a daily puzzle creation challenge; each day during the month of March, it double-dares everyone to create a puzzle. I made a puzzle today: I don't know if I'll stick with this all ...

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I'm just now realizing that the head of the San Francisco Sheriff's Department Oversight Board is Jayson Wechter, the guy who ran those Chinese New Year parade Treasure Hunts. Wow, hmm. Wow. OK. Tha...

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The puzzles.mit.edu https certificate expired two days ago. Is this a puzzle? ...

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🍝 Spaghetti 2023 is happening https://www.ericberlin.com/2023/01/05/a-serving-of-spaghetti/ 🍝 "A #puzzle by its nature is something purposefully constructed, often with painstaking effort so as to ...

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W- were they on sale? Suddenly ballards are all over Golden Gate Park. (Pictured: Ballard, ballard, ballard. Bollards, ballard. Ballard, barrier, ballard. Ballard, barrier, ballard.) Oh...

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I see the New York Times Guild is going on strike tomorrow and puzzle nerds are realizing they can't play Wordle (assuming they don't want to cross the picket line to play with puzzles). I'll post li...

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rephrased Phraser word+phrase lists I updated the scored word and phrase lists over at the phraser page, using data from a recent copies of Wikipedia and other wikis. Soon after I updated them, I saw that my over-enthusiastic tool tha...

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In theory, the "Mumbled Artist's Instructions" puzzles were a challenge to figure out some absurd thing an AI had tried to draw. Reverse-engineering an AI is a fun challenge. But it turns out AI is ...

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If Monday's Mumbled Artist's Instructions puzzle was too hard, good news: there is now a "reveal answer" button. ...

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Mumbled Artist's Instructions Puzzle 2022-11-21 This is a puzzle. I gave an artist some instructions, a two-word English comic book title. Alas, I mumbled those instructions and the artist did their best to depict what they heard and came up with ...

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If Monday's Mumbled Artist's Instructions Puzzle was too difficult, I have good news: There is now a "reveal answer" button. ...

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Mumbled Artist's Instructions 2022-11-14 This is a puzzle. I gave an artist some instructions, a two-word English phrase. Alas, I mumbled those instructions and the artist did their best to depict what they heard and came up with this: ...

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I just went through the emotional rollercoaster of watching someone solve a puzzle live on video. It was a puzzle I helped write, so I was pretty much either yelling "no no no" or breathing "whew!" t...

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If Monday's Mumbled Artist's Instructions puzzle stumped you, you'll be glad to know there's now a "reveal answer" button. ...

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Mumbled Artist's Instructions 2022-10-31 This is a puzzle. I gave an artist some instructions, a three-word English phrase. Alas, I mumbled those instructions and the artist did their best to depict what they heard. The artist gave me four ...

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Laberinto Verde: floreciendo Folks continue to decorate the car-free portion of JFK Drive Promenade. There's a new road mural, Laberinto Verde: floreciendo by Josué Rojas, assisted by Anthony Jiminez. I suppose to really ca...

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If you were stumped by Monday's "Mumbled Artist's Instructions" puzzle, you'll be glad to know it now has a "reveal answer" button. ...

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Last year, I spotted some Hallowe'en riddle decorations at a neighbor's house. Alas, I didn't spot them until after Hallowe'en, too late to be useful. So this year, I'll post a link back to my last-y...

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Mumbled Artist's Instructions Puzzle 2022-10-24 This is a puzzle. I gave an artist some instructions, two words. Alas, I mumbled those instructions and the artist did their best to depict what they heard. Can you guess the original phrase? If...

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If you stared at Monday's Mumbled Artist's Instructions puzzle and still couldn't figure out the answer, you'll be glad to know it now has a Reveal Answer button. I'm just impressed because my paren...

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Mumbled Artist's Instructions Puzzle 2022-10-10 This is a puzzle. I gave an artist some instructions, a two-word name. Alas, I mumbled those instructions and the artist did their best to depict what they heard. Can you guess the original phra...

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If you were still stumped by that Mumbled Artist's Instructions puzzle despite the hint, there is now a Reveal Answer button on the page. ...

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If you were stumped by that "Mumbled Artist's Instructions" puzzle, it wasn't just you. The puzzle page now has a hint button. Press that button for a hint. ...

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Mumbled Artist's Instructions Puzzle This is a puzzle. I gave an artist some instructions, a three-word English phrase. Alas, I mumbled those instructions and the artist did their best to depict what they heard. The artist gave me four ...

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phraser improvements Phraser, the tool for generating word+phrase lists useful for solving+designing puzzles, is now smarter when reading crossword constructor dictionaries. Thus, hundreds of thousands of words+phrases g...

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I've had a good time playing the word puzzle game Cell Tower at https://www.andrewt.net/puzzles/cell-tower/ ...

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Maybe a secret message; maybe a wild goose chase, I dunno: I saw this sign hanging behind a door on Douglass Street near 18th: If you dig up your trusty puzzlehunter's decoder sheet and start r...

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I'm feeling lucky. Just days after I figured out how to extract a list of titles of well-known movies and TV shows from IMDB data, today's Toddle puzzle category is movie titles. Toddle challenges y...

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crunching IMDB data IMDB, the Internet Movie DataBase, has a lot of information about movies, TV shows, actors, directors, gaffers, animators, etc. I just crunched some exported IMDB data to build a crossword dictionary...

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I updated the big ol' list of words and the big ol' list of phrases on the Phraser page. A couple of months back, I noticed that The Collaborative Word List Project was now free. I've used the C.W....

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Thr33dle I made Thr33dle, a version of 3-Polydle with an auto-suggest function. That's a strange statement with a lot to unpack. In the past few months, I've played a lot of Polydle, a Wordle variant tha...

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The Collaborative Word List Project is a darned useful resource for word puzzle constructors and now it's free.* This is a list of phrases and hand-tuned scores. Here are a few lines from the file: ...

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Genius ...

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Daily 5-dle #0007 11 : 5&8&6&11&10 polydle.github.io/?classic/daily/5 ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨 ⬜🟩⬜🟨⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟩 ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬜🟨⬜⬜🟨 ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜ ⬜🟨⬜🟨⬜ ⬜⬜⬜🟨🟨 ⬜⬜⬜🟨🟨 ⬜⬜🟨⬜🟨 ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟨🟨⬜🟨🟩 ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ 🟩⬜⬜⬜⬜ 🟨⬜⬜🟨⬜ ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜ 🟩⬜⬜⬜⬜...

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Wrung‽ When I noticed that Wordle's list of potential answers had ARISE but not BOXED, I figured that it only used "root" words: single number, present tense, etc. But WRUNG was an answer. And now I peek at...

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Link: "Puzzle World" Discord I joined the Puzzle World Discord, a set of chat rooms for puzzlehunt and gnarly-puzzle enthusiasts. If you're not into Mystery Hunt and peek at this Discord today, you might think "oh gee whiz maybe...

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Okay, now RAISE is my new Wordle starter word. As before, I am not the first to figure this out. Last night, I was measuring a starting word's quality based on how many green and yellow squares it yi...

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Update: This blog post, which superceded another blog post, has since then itself been superceded. Try to keep up. Also, my "only root words" explanation wasn't quite right. Apparently, non-root wo...

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UPDATE: This post has been superceded. I've been playing Wordle, the online game that's like a cross between Mastermind and guess-the-word. It occurred to me that the ideal "starting word" would hav...

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Rest in Peace, Stephen Sondheim Along with his Broadway accomplishments, Sondheim was important to puzzles and puzzle hunt culture. He collected puzzles. He ran puzzle hunts. He wrote "The Last of Sheila," a movie that features a s...

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On Hallowe'en evening, kids in St. Louis don't just say "Trick or treat," they ask jokey riddles. Unfortunately, these little kids make up their own jokes, and the results are abusrdly unfunny. Each ...

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Book Report: Planning Your Escape It's a book about escape rooms and it's pretty interesting. I came at the book as someone who knows plenty about puzzle hunts and some things about puzzles and has picked up a fair amount of immersiv...

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I got wind of a new-ish public word list for crossword constructors, the spread the word(list). So I grabbed a copy and tossed it into the big pile of data that feeds the "Phraser" phrase and word li...

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Palace Games: The Attraction Today I helped play the The Attraction escape room experience at Palace Games. It was awesome and fun. As usual with escape rooms, there's not much you can say specifically about them, lest spoilers....

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I had a fun time solving Patrick Berry's puzzle extravaganza "Containment Policy." It took a while to get through. The puzzles were pretty straightforward to solve, but then I spent a while staring a...

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Consider this a "soft re-opening" announcement for Octothorpean. Also, I'm asking for bright ideas on a UI/usability thing. Update: a couple of smarties suggested using "Import/Export" instead of "...

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I'm working on getting the # Octothorpean # puzzlehunt back online. You know how the first 80% of the project takes 20% of the time? I think that's about where I am on getting this thing ba...

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wordnet, is-a ColinTheMathmo asked folks to think of animals that were also verbs, like "bug". I thought of some and then it occurred to me: wordnet ("wn") is a computer tool that knows the meaning of many many wo...

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I enjoyed this crossword puzzle's gimmick: https://www.theatlantic.com/free-daily-crossword-puzzle/?id=atlantic_20210221&set=atlantic&puzzleType=crossword ...

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I had some thoughts about automatically-generated mazes rattling around in the back of my head and figured out a way to apply an algorithm from that Mazes for Programmers book to a problem I'd notice...

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The US Postal Service announced new stamps for 2021. One title especially caught my eye: "Mystery Message." Wow, a stamp with a hidden message. Sounds like something right up my alley. According...

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Book Report: Mazes for Programmers This book is about randomly generating mazes by writing computer programs. Before reading this book, I'd tried randomly generating some mazes, but those mazes hadn't pleased me: too many little nubbl...

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If you're in the SF Bay Area and your COVID pod contains enough puzzle nerds to take on an escape room, check out Trivium Games, a.k.a. the folks behind the Ghost Patrol puzzle hunts. They made a Gho...

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I got an email from a game show that's casting. If you're a trivia nerd in California, they'd love to hear from you: I'm Joanna, one of the Casting Producers for the hit quiz game TV show, "The Cha...

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When I read that Puzzled Pint now has a Code of Conduct, my first thought was "What about scissors?" … and they have a clause about scissors. They thought of everything.* Nice job, f...

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The really unsettling thing about out-in-the-world puzzle hunts, eldritch horrors aside, is days later when you think you see puzzles everywhere. Just looking down at the sidewalk and you think you s...

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Curtis and DeeAnn of Team Snout were in town. We played the Edison Room over at the excellent Palace Games Escape Rooms. And and and Curtis had Puzzled Pint stickers with him, so now my laptop is ext...

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I was unintentionally cruel a while back. I posted a photo saying "ha ha ha, this wall decoration could almost be Braille, I see codez everywhere ha ha ha". And then some nice folks pointed out that ...

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Were you excited to hear that I'd written a set of Puzzled Pint puzzles, but on the evening in question you felt really lazy and you just stayed home? Yeah, me too. All is not lost: the excellent PP ...

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The building across the street from the Temporary Transbay bus Terminal continues to be constructed. Recently, the building-side facing the bus terminal got decorated. Basically, it's a dark wall wit...

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Puzzled Pint is coming up on Tuesday. I wrote this month's set, aided (a lot) once again by excellent Puzzled Pint editor Neal Tibrewala and excellent anonymous-to-me playtesters who I love even thou...

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Aftermath I stopped resisting, just downloaded ♫ Semper Paratus ♫ and added it to my folder of walking music. #mysteryhunt ...

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New plan for the coming year: #mysteryhunt Thank you, #SETEC! We had a blast. And now, bed. ...

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This crossword puzzle auto-fill program coincidentally got ¾ of the way to a mini-theme by randomly picking phrases out of a hat… M S I O INSIDEUSA T R U N N O ERIKSATIE N E G ...

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Book Report: Puzzlecraft (Humble Bundle edition) I flipped through this book recently. Maybe "flipped through" isn't the right phrase. I was viewing the .pdf on a tablet. I'd already read an older edition of the book, now I wanted to flip through i...

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Comic Report: Form of a Question It's an autobiographical graphic novel structured around the author's run on Jeopardy!. In the world of trivia, there are clear answers, but not so much in the real world. I'm guessing not so many fo...

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Book Report: The Unseen World It's a novel about a young lady who grows up amongst researchers at something kinda like MIT's AI Lab, but different. There's learning and forgetting and machine learning and I suppose machine forget...

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Book Report: The Woman Who Smashed Codes Before I read this book, I vaguely knew that Elizebeth Friedman was a skilled codebreaker but figured I would never know the deets since her work was classified. But this biography pulls some impres...

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Puzzle Extravaganzas are Everywhere, even Waterholes Worldwide I wrote a set of puzzles for Puzzled Pint. And I'd like to write some notes about what it's like for a puzzle-designer to go through the Puzzled Pint process. But I'm just now getting around to it be...

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If you like puzzles and/or beer & are free this Tuesday evening, maybe you want to do Puzzled Pint. In a bold departure from making puzzles about the # typographic symbol, I drafted some puzzles ...

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Book Report: Can You Solve My Problems? It's a book about puzzles and brainteasers. There are puzzles, there are brain-teasers, there are essay-ish bits exploring some ideas in detail. There were some puzzles that I hadn't encountered befo...

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Looking forward to a few days of knowing what needs to be done with no idea how to do it. ...

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Book Report: York / The Shadow Cipher It's YA fiction in which the city of New York has a puzzlehunt embedded in it that residents have tried to solve for decades. You might think that's an overly fanciful premise—cities change con...

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Remember that list of phrases and/or that list of words in a text file handy for designing/solving word puzzles? I updated those lists again with some fresh content. While I'm here: Happy Thanksgivi...

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Long before the Two-Tone Game puzzlehunt …there was a two-tone ska single decorated with a crossword puzzle, as seen on the Puzzlenation blog. ...

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Curtis Chen has a new novel out and a new game-ish thingy to provide some backstory. Go visit www.kangaroo2.com to learn more about the novel Kangaroo Too. And then visit __.kangaroo2.com for the gam...

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Remember phraser, that tool for generating puzzle-design-friendly word lists? I just updated it. I found OMDB, a big database of movie info with a public API. (Did I find it? Or did one of you tell m...

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You should do Puzzled Pint this month I playtested this month's Puzzled Pint puzzles. They're fun! You should scoop up some friends and go solve them Tuesday. ...

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Book Report: The Lost Frenchman It's a thriller in which puzzly geocachers are unusually qualified to seek a treasure. It is fun in much the same way the National Treasure movies are fun, but with better puzzles. If that sounds lik...

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Book Report: Thunderstruck It's two intertwined biographies. One is a biography of Marconi, inventor of the wireless telegraph. One is a true-crime biography of a fugitive who was caught due to the wireless telegraph. The Mar...

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Iron Puzzler 2016 announced Iron Puzzler is once again coming to the SF Bay Area. This is that weekend-long combo puzzle-design and puzzle-solving contest in which teams spend Saturday creating puzzles using "secret ingredients...

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phraser, a word list generator When you construct word puzzles, it's good to have a nice list of words to work with. Over the last several weeks, I've been tinkering on and off to build phraser, a tool that chugs through wiki data...

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Today I handed out puzzle pieces for Shinteki. If you're a SF-area puzzle nerd, you probably perked up when you read that and though Aw FOMO, I better not have missed a Shinteki event. Settle down: t...

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That was an amazingly fun playtest! I am just back from Palace Games, the folks who do the Houdini Escape Room in San Francisco. They're putting the finishing touches on a new room. After we playtest...

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Worlds Colliding, well, Lightly Brushing anyhow QuizUp, a trivia quiz app, is built using Pants, that build tool I wrote documentation about. ...

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No Exit "No Exit: Play by Sartre where he's forced to play a really boring Room Escape game."          –Phonogram: The Immaterial Girl Hell is other peop...

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Yesterday, I passed the site of SCRAP's upcoming escape room game, Escape the Jail. It was a little bittersweet to consider that "Escape the Jail" theme. On the sweet hand: Run More Games, yay. On...

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Puzzled Pint is now in San Francisco's East Bay. Because spending more time in traffic than in puzzling is for chumps. ...

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When puzzle nerds get crafty… Not only are you doing a mystery quilt, but you're also solving a murder mystery! With each month you get both a chapter of the story and a new quilt block to ma...

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Today's mail brought a batch of Kickstarter goodies from Oubliette Escape: a booklet of short stories and some pretty postcards. I remember that some of these are puzzles and some aren't. I don't re...

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I drew five letters in chalk, one letter in each of five sidewalk squares. I drew slowly, deliberately, neatly. Maybe ten seconds per letter? So figure it was about a minute before the security guard...

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Team Archimedds Boogs did not win the bar trivia. But we didn't come in last place, either. This was especially impressive since (a) we missed the first round and (b) there was a whole round of golf ...

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Book Report: 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5 + RND(1)); : GOTO 10 It's a book about a little "one-liner" Commodore 64 BASIC program. What happens when a bunch of academics want to talk about the good ol' days of 1980s home computer programming? A book like this, th...

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Team up for SF Puzzled Pint? Puzzled Pint is tomorrow evening.* I wanna play. Would you like to team up to play in San Francisco? If so, I'd love to hear from you. (I went a couple of months ago. That time, I trusted to my luck...

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Game: Broken Age The Broken Age game is pretty; it's like playing a painting; and it has funny jokes! There are also some not-so-funny jokes; one challenge in the game is a puzzle in which you have to set up a funny ...

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"Indexing" When I reported on the book How to Puzzle Cache, I mentioned The book uses "indexing" to mean something other than what my local puzzling tradition calls "indexing". …you might have wonder...

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Book Report: How to Puzzle Cache How to Puzzle Cache teaches you how to decode/decipher/unpuzzle many, many ways of hiding secret messages. I'm a puzzlehunter, so I was reading it and thinking it's useful for puzzlehunting. It's int...

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Puzzled Pint @ Zeitgeist Puzzled Pint has been around for years, but until tonight I hadn't been. It was always far away. It was a monthly puzzling get-together. Folks would gather at a bar to solve puzzles. A few days ahead...

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It's like the opposite of the sunk cost fallacy. I've put hours into roughly prototyping this puzzle. Now I'm hoping that playtesters think it's totally boring so I don't feel obliged to put in the t...

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Who's running Puzzled Pint in San Francisco? (Yeah, I guess I could have found out by going. But that would have required remembering to look up from the computer. Ha! As if.) ...

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MIT Mystery Hunt puzzle idea: Code of Conduck Conunudrum. I don't know what to do with it, though. ...

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Link: Braille Notation for Complex Cello Music "Feldman’s piece in particular, which uses geometric figures over the course of a graphically represented x-axis of time, cannot be transcribed at all into standard braille music encoding." ...

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There's a National Puzzle Day (but I'm not sure which nation it's for). There's an International Puzzle Day. I think I planned something for one of those Puzzle Days. At some point in the past, I se...

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Link: How to Puzzle Cache A little bird told me about a new book: How to Puzzle Cache. It's about puzzle-geocaches. The author's Cully Long; he's one of the folks who put together the Dastardly Manhattan Puzzle Caches, some ...

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Link: puzzle blog turtlegraphics.wordpress.com Remember the math professor in St Louis who inspired both teams who played in the year I site-monitored DASH there? He made an escape-the-room game and started a blog to write about it… and, I...

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Book Report: Cool Gray City of Love It's a book about San Francisco. Something of a cross between a history and a gazetteer; it's a collection of 49 essays, each using a San Francisco neighborhood as a leaping-off point for talking abo...

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Puzzle Hunts are Everywhere, even ExitGames.co.uk It's not just about escape-the-room games: This site has launched a major new section that has always been intended to be one of its primary focuses. This site talks about puzzle hunts frequently, ...

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Tonight's Adventure Design Group presentation was about The Go Game. They got their start around here. Thus, it wasn't 100% surprising when founder Finn mentioned early on talking with Alexandra Dix...

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Book Report: The Maze of Games The Maze of Games is a puzzle extravaganza: about 52 puzzles leading up to four meta-puzzles leading up to another meta, along with some bonus puzzles. The variety was fun; and on those few occasions...

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Link: A Conversation with Puzzle Master Wei-Hwa Huang This person enjoys puzzles. ...

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Book Report: The Puzzle Instinct This book talks about how humans think their way through puzzles. It mostly does this by walking you through several classic puzzles. If you're already somewhat jaded of the classic puzzles, then lon...

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The Snoutcast interview with Yuan is a pretty good behind-the-scenes view of Puzzled Pint. ...

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Book Report: Undiluted Hocus-Pocus It's Martin Gardner's autobiography. It's about his life. It's not about logic puzzles, tricks with matchsticks, or computer simulations. Those are things he wrote about. His autobiography is about t...

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Nautical Flags, Richmond Posting this just in case it shows up later as a Shinteki puzzle site, you know? ...

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Book Report: Random House Puzzle Maker's Handbook It's a book about how to make crossword puzzles (and other word puzzles) from 1995, a revision of a book first written in 1981. It's about how to make (and edit and market…) crossword puzzles ...

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Link THIS every-state-in-continental-USA driving route is even MORE optimal (if you're optimizing for Scrabble). ...

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Dave Schweisguth knew about a couple more Escape-the-Room games, including one whose grand opening is Friday! ...

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Started a list of Escape-the-Room games on the Bay Area Night Game wiki. I know the list isn't complete—Tyler Hinman mentioned someplace I hadn't heard of… but of course I already forgot...

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Adventure Design Group: Presentation and conversation with JP LeBreton and Brandon Dillon (Double Fine) I'm up past my bedtime, so just some scribbled notes. They're both game nerds from the computer/video game company Double Fine. They've both come up with project ideas interesting enough such that I ...

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Book Report: Puzzle Craft "The subtitle's a lie, of course. We can't fit descriptions of how to make every type of puzzle into one book." And yet this book does show examples of many many kinds of puzzles. Along with each exa...

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Is this like Puzzled Pint for RebusRally folks? If I knew Swedish, maybe I'd know whether RallyPub is like Puzzled Pint for RebusRally fans… or not. I don't know Swedish, so all I can do is toss around tautologies. ...

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Link: "It's My Party," a memoir about some Jim Propp puzzle parties, written by David "Pablo" Cohn who it turns out isn't in Antarctica all the time. ...

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Book Report: The Magus ARGers and Situationists talk about this novel: its plot is something like that of the movie The Game, a sort of paranoid story in which several people playact around our protagonist, hoping to effec...

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Jotting Notes from Kazuya Iwata (Real Escape Game North America) at Adventure Design Group This spoileriffic talk was not recorded. So I'd better jot down some notes. Steering around the spoilers, but that's OK, because the non-spoilery stuff was interesting. Pizza ahead of time was fun. ...

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Book Report: Uncertainty In Games Greg Costikyan has designed more games than you have, so I pay attention when he writes something. Uncertainty in Games didn't contain any startling revelations that knocked me out of my chair, but i...

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I'm Feeling Coincidental A blind man asked me for help boarding the bus, so I helped him board the bus. That almost never happens. A while later, looked down and remembered I was wearing a Braille-Google-logo shirt, somethi...

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But if you meet a friendly horse / Will you communicate by Morse? ...

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Book Report: The Code Busters Club It's young adult fiction in which young adults solve a Real Crime by solving some common codes. Set in the alternate universe like this one, but if you want to get a message to nice people without th...

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Jotting notes on Odyssey Works' talk at the Adventure Design Group, 2013 A few months back, some folks from Odyssey Works gave a talk about their art. I heard about it from the Adventure Design Group meetup. Though I scribbled my thoughts afterwards, if you weren't there...

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Book Report: Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore Like every novel-reading San Francisco bay area tech worker, I enjoyed Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore. Its computer and code bits are more science-fantasy than hard science fiction, but they support...

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This isn't jotting notes on @writerguygames' presentation at the Adventure Design Group meetup hosted by the lovely folks at The Go Game. Rather, this is notes on the conversation afterwards. Because...

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The Secret Puzzle Hunt Cabal is a treasure. You can tell 'em "I'm thinking of running a hunt on the 13th" and, between them, they know when the MS Intern Hunt is, the NPL convention, the MS Puzzle Sa...

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Listened to Snoutcast discussion on puzzle-y activities to keep a team enthused during the months between hunts. Does it make sense to create a wiki listing puzzle extravaganzas? Is puzzle extravagan...

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I attended a talk by some folks from Odyssey Works (the inaugural talk of the Adventure Design Group Meetup). O.W. presented about their art: situations, each with an audience of one. It works like ...

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Things Will Shortz doesn't want to do …perhaps revealed via this New York Times job posting for a Director of Games, which I found out about thanks to the excellent Octothorpean playtest team WBYeats. Optimize games for discover...

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Jotting Notes on Jana Pouchla's LARP talk: Welcome to Larp. Let's Play It's Nordic LARP Talks Oslo 2013, specifically Jana Pouchla's talking about how to make LARP more accessible and welcoming to newbs. It's not a GC Summit talk; LARPing is not The Game; but I'm jotti...

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Jotting Notes on Lars Nerback's LARP talk: Three Ways to Make Games More Inclusive It's Nordic LARP Talks Oslo 2013, specifically Lars Nerback presenting three ways to make games more inclusive. (Thanks to Sara Thacher for pointing out that these talks are online) It's not a GC Sum...

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I played The Cave and it was pretty good All those good things you read about The Cave are true; you should go play it. All those good things you read about The Cave are probably more interesting than anything I'd write; there are a lot of ...

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Link: The International Code of Signals I watched the new Studio Ghibli film, "From up on Poppy Hill" and of course all I could think about was the marine signal flags. In the movie, our heroine, who lives in portside Yokohama, hoists sig...

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Buying tracks to construct a music puzzle. Don't even want to think about what my Amazon recommendations will look like after this. ...

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The Maze of Games is going to be a book with at least 30-something (I lost count) puzzles by folks you've heard of. These are the last 30-something hours of its kickstarter. So if you haven't ordered...

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Have you gotten around to ordering @MazeofGames yet? It's gonna be a puzzly choose-your-own-adventure book. Like The Dextrus of Tempus, only moreso. (But I bet if you know what The Dextrus of Tempus ...

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Link: Alice's Puzzle Page This was a fun puzzle trail. Trail? Extravaganza? Set of interlinked puzzles? You know. One of them things. Give it a whirl. New blog post: One of my favorite #puzzles! Alice's Puzzle Page vroospeak...

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Better decorating through anagramming From a crafty blog post on making a sign of hanging letters: I would have spell Hanuka the "normal" way, Hanukkah, but I ran out of scrapbook paper since I kept having issues until I figured out...

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Puzzle Hunts are Everywhere, even Kickstarter The Puzzazz folks want to send you a puzzle a month, a sort of time-release extravaganza. Or something like that, check it out. Be sure to watch the video for a new entry in your "Wei-Hua Puts His To...

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Book Report: Lightning Man It's a biography of Samuel F. B. Morse, the namesake of my favorite puzzlehunt code. So it's about time I read up on the man's life. He wanted to be an artist. He wanted to paint beautiful scenes, n...

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When we figured out that Black Bart's Hidden Hoard would take us to a labyrinth in SOMA, I was certain what GC meant, but wasn't too pleased. Though it turns out I was certainly wrong. On 8th Street,...

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Book Report: Many Subtle Channels in praise of potential literature In honor of USA's Buy Nothing Day, a report on a book that I checked out of the library: Many Subtle Channels It's a book about the OuLiPo. You've probably heard of them: they're a literary cabal in...

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Book Report: How to Sharpen Pencils I'm a technical writer. I write instructions. I often team up with a "Subject Matter Expert," someone who's really good at doing something. I ask them what they do and they write it down. You might w...

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Jotting Notes on Fundamentals of IRL Game Design It's a seminar by @jettstein. (You think I'm typoing "GC summit talk by Bob Schaffer" really badly, but no: instead of watching a GC Summit video today, I did something else.) I attended Fundamentals...

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Saw a Hash House Harriers pack run past, my first time seeing a live pack instead of just leftover chalk marks on the ground. At first I was kind of disappointed. I thought "If I were the hare, I wo...

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Speaking of "what's this kind of puzzle called?", what is "Put together the letter-triples ION ISS NSM TRA to form a word"? It's kind of an anagram, but easier since you've got three triples instead ...

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Tauba Auerbach's 50/50 Floor is on display at SFMOMA. You may recall that Auerbach is an artist who can think like a code-y puzzler though she sidled away from signal and over to noise for a while. T...

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http://ericberlin.com/?p=5066 is Heisenbergian puzzling: the observer gets an answer though it's not a puzzle. ...

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This week's snoutcast had an interesting tidbit "future events: bikes? Seattle? stay tuned!" And also some thoughts on puzzle-based learning if you're an educator. They're interviewing a math teache...

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Book Report: The Vanishing Violin It's another YA puzzle-mystery featuring the Red Blazer Girls. (You might vaguely remember that I read the first book in the series a while back. This time, the puzzlehunt story is a bit more believa...

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Link: Anagramr anagramming game This is me with the high score at an anagramming game: Leaderboard: @lahosken:170 @stalefries:111 @nwerneck:67 @ixpu:56 @ckolderup:55— An Anagram Game (@anagramr) August 30, 2012 You might wo...

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Book Report: The Mysterious Benedict Society It's a young adult adventure novel that starts out with a puzzly quiz. Kids who do well in the quiz team up to battle an evil conspiracy. This book is science fantasy, and the fantasy lost me. It's t...

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Pencil Bandolier: Subtle Counterweight During puzzle hunts, I run around wearing a bandolier to hold my pencils jauntily across my chest. Pencils don't weigh much, but they weigh something. Thus, I put a counterweight on the back of my ba...

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Book Report: Kobold Guide to Board Game Design Professional game designers write essays on topics in Board Game Design. Along the way, they get into project management, prototyping, usability, playtesting, and other good stuff. As a professional ...

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Pencil Bandolier: the new configuration Before: After: I tested out the pencil bandolier at the Real Escape Game. You ask: How did it go? I say: That's why we test. Perhaps the bandolier's boldest feature were the colored carpenter penc...

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Pencil Bandolier progress is as difficult as you make it Look, ma, no pins! You may recall a few months back I'd attached an over-heavy counterweight to the pencil bandolier with vague intent of letting some of the extra lead weight. Today, I got around to...

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Book Report: Glued to Games It's a book about the psychology of games. Why do we enjoy them? It's all very well to say that "Games are fun." You could say "Paper clips are fun," but then folks would tell you that you need to be...

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Book Report: Crossworld You'd think that I'd like to read a book about competitive crossword-puzzle solving featuring a first-hand report on playing in the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. Crossworld is such a book, fr...

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More Tyro Crossword Construction ramblings Some days ago, I posted some noobish thoughts about crossoword construction. I'd figured out that Nutrimatic's default word lists were good for Nutrimatic's use case, but not so great for a list of c...

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Crossword Compiler Noob Diary Unsurprisingly, creating mediocre crossword puzzles is easy but creating good crossword puzzles is hard. Mind you, I don't feel pressured to create great crossword puzzles. For puzzlehunts, I only ne...

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Crossword Compiler is a Windows application. The last time I tried running it on Linux, a few years back, it didn't work. But today it works. Kinda. Far enough to fill in a grid with words, which is ...

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Comics Report: Torso, Goldfish It was a good holiday season. My cousin-once-removed Paul was in town, and once again wanted a treasure-hunt game. And once again, he wanted to be on Game Control, not just playing. So he and his dad...

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Dr Who's Martians as Puzzle Designers #badpuzzles Cramming for the Doctor When game, I watch Doctor Who. The Pyramids of Mars arc aims at being puzzle-huntish... kind of... Towards the end, there's a Martian stronghold guarding a treasure chamber; ...

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Two steps forward, one slide back I bought a couple of clip-on lights. Also, I bought a new counterweight. To keep this whole mess from sliding forward (until all the pencils are under my elbow), I'...

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Link: Chess Story Dave Hill writes about playing chess for money in Zucotti Park. Right, that Zucotti Park. ...

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Now with carpenter-pencils clipped on. I found carpenter pencil clips for sale online, and they arrived. It turned out they weren't small enough to be "snug" on the pencils so I had to help them ou...

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I'm on my way to a new level of handiness or dorkiness... or maybe both at the same time. ...

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Book Report: Tactile Morse Code Sometimes, you can judge a book by its cover. I don't feel that I need to read the book Tactile Morse Code because its cover explains its system pretty well. Bonus irony points for being a book about...

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Book Report: Deep State If you've been listening to the recent Snoutcast podcasts, you've heard interviews with some ARG (Alternate Reality Game) folks. If you listened to this week's podcast, you might have heard of a Walt...

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Why I love Puzzalot Forum Post by Robotguy: I am working on a type of crossword that is played on the surface of regular polyhedra... [more explanation...] I would appreciate any feedback. And this yielded relevant, practic...

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Book Report: Adventures in Puzzling The cover promises multi-puzzle extravaganzas, and it delivers. There's a fun variety of puzzles here. And they're organized into extravaganzas—into groups of puzzles, with each group leading u...

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Book Report: Puzzle-Based Learning I recently reported on the first couple of Winston Breen books. And then Joe Fendel asked me if I'd read the Gollywhomper Games book. Apparently, puzzle-based young adult fiction is a thing? Back in ...

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Puzzle Hunts are Everywhere, even in NYC audibly Remember how I went to New York and kinda figured out that some of the puzzle nerds there were into some kind of puzzly-geocaching combination thingy that I never really figured out? This week's Snou...

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Book Report: Knuth: Selected Papers on Fun and Games Don Knuth is, of course, one of our greatest scholars of Computer Science. If someone asks you, "What's an efficient way to to sort ______ for quick retrieval?" you are always safe bluffing the answe...

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Swedish Rebusrally team name I would gladly steal: Baron Bosse Behöver Betänketid. I don't know what that means, but I'm sure I betänk like a bosse. On the other hand, not so much: The Sammanswet...

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Why is Corey Anderson so fast at puzzling? Constant practice. While most engineers scribble their designs on whiteboards, Corey draws his backwards on a transparent sheet of glass. Dude is badass. ...

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puzzlehuntcalendar.com makes a difference A few people have been playing the 2-Tone Game this past weekend—referred by puzzlehuntcalendar.com. I checked the IP addresses of three of the players; they were from the East Bay, Spain, and ...

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Book Report: Colossal Book of Wordplay It's a book by Martin Gardner (the Mathematical Games guy), edited by Ken Jennings (the Jeopardy! guy). So you might expect it to be pretty amazing. But it's a book of little word puzzles of the so...

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PhotoCity Pervasive Capture-the-Flag Photo Game Part II PhotoCity is this game where you "capture" areas of a city by photographing them. But you can't play in just any neighborhood. The game only works if you start in a place that they've "seeded". I h...

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Wonderella reminds us that following trails of puzzles is dumb. ...

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Puzzle Hunts are Everywhere, even the Art World There's this comic book artist, Jason Shiga. He makes these comic books that are puzzles; choose-your-own-adventure books that play with the flow of pages and frames within a comic book. You might ...

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Puzzle Hunts are Everywhere, even Meridian High School in Idaho Tonight I played in a puzzle event. The puzzles were pretty cool! They were designed by Mike Selinker, Thomas Snyder, Tyler Hinman... and maybe others? Eric Harshbarger designed the prizes; he's a ...

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Shopping is Hard; Let's Coin Phrases It turns out that REI's selection of headlamps is not as good as Hallmark's, depending on your criteria. In related news, the Triclops Headlamp is still missing; all hail the Quadruped Headlamp. ...

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Puzzle Hunts are Everywhen: That Article that mentions Sondheim's 1968 Hallowe'en Hunt A while back, the Puzzalot blog had an interesting article on Sondheim's 1968 Hallowe'en puzzle hunt. There was a lot of information there, most of which didn't come from this article by Allan Brien...

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So basically this poem says that codes lack the passion of poetry... well, the passion of good poetry. Maybe still better than, say "Pangolin Bowling" ...

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Braid is a fun game—and ported to Linux. If that's good news to you, don't get too excited right away. It was part of a bundle that's not available right now. But you can sign up to get notifie...

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Wikipedia article data is available again: http://download.wikipedia.org/enwiki/latest/ Now you can tinker with nutrimatic. ...

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Graph Pebbling and a Proof that there is an Infinite Number of Composite Numbers Yesterday, a plurality of the folks hanging out were math nerds. I'm not a math nerd, but I likes me some recreational math. Graph Pebbling has some fun little problems. The idea is that you have...

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Jotting Notes on Scott Blomquist's 2010 GC Summit Talk: Confidence and Acceleration in Puzzle Theory I'm jotting notes about another Game Control Summit 2010 talk: Scott Blomquist talks about Puzzle Theory, conceptual thinking about puzzle design. (Yeah, he talked about puzzle theory in 2009, too.)...

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Puzzle Hunts are Everywhere within and without the bounds of convention A few months back, Ian Tullis talked about puzzles, specifically puzzle-hunt puzzles, and how they've evolved. The quest for novelty drives puzzlehunt designers away from the "plain" puzzles that mos...

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Book Report: Tilings and Patterns I know what you're thinking: Oh no, Larry tried to read another math book. No doubt this means the blog's"unfinished" tag will soon be attached to another book report. But I made it to the end of t...

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Link: Jet Lamp video/talk about Text Adventure Games Yesterday after work I went out to see a movie, sort of. And I recommend you go see it, depending on where you are. The movie is "Get Lamp", and I haven't actually seen the whole thing yet. It's a...

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Comic Report: City of Spies My parents did pretty well playing the 2-Tone Game. Like, I don't think that the Burninators team needs to worry any time soon. But my parents did pretty well. And as they were walking from the &l...

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Puzzle Hunts are Everywhere, Even Sveden A page with a couple of RebusRally photos makes me think that Rebus Rallies happen more than once a year, though I rarely hear about them. ...

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Link: PhotoCity Pervasive Capture-the-Flag Photo Game Just watched a video of a recent talk by a University of Washington professor named Popovic. His schtick is crowd-sourcing difficult tasks by turning those tasks into games. (Have you heard of Rosett...

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Book Report: When You were a Tadpole and I was a Fish What's that you say? The Gathering for Gardner was this last weekend? Then I'm a few days late to be topical with a book report on When You were a Tadpole and I was a Fish. But books are a slow me...

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Comic Report: Meanwhile... The local members of the National Puzzler's League had a party last weekend, their Equinox party. I didn't go—I'm still not quite enough of a puzzle enthusiast to want to join the NPL. But I wa...

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Book Report: Between Silk and Cyanide It's the autobiography of the codemaster of the SOE an English spy organization during WWII. Wait! Dont' run away! It's not just math and cryptography and war. There's good stuff in here, too. Th...

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Link: Puzzle Forum @ Puzzalot If you're a puzzle-huntist, I'm sure you're already subscribed to the excellent Puzzalot blog, so I don't know why I even bother to link to link to his post announcing that he set up a puzzle forum. ...

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Puzzle Things are Everywhere, with Local Witnesses A while back, I blogged about Stuart Landsborough's Puzzling World, a tourist spot in New Zealand with a big maze and other weirdness. Why do I bring this up? Local gamist Chiu-Ki Chan went there, a...

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Book Report: The Snowball It's a biography of Warren Buffet. It's pretty long. But there are some good stories in here, the writing is good, and it smells well-researched. It edges around some touchy topics, but it's prett...

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Puzzle Hunts are Everywhere, even the world of corporate training... hey, don't fall asleep when I say that At work, I work in a training group. I was just listening to one of my fellow trainers talk about an outfit that makes some service for education/train-ish folks. It's called Moving Knowledge. It's...

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Link: Stuart Landsborough's Puzzling World Puzzling World is a tourist destination in New Zealand. It started out as a big maze for people to wander around in. Then they added some strange attractions. Some of the ad copy worries me, thoug...

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Book Report: Lewis Carroll in Numberland This book is about Lewis Carroll/Charles Dodgson as a mathematician. There were errors in the parts that I understood. So I didn't trust the other parts to help me to understand new stuff. Maybe I...

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White Ninjas-Specific Show Report Hey, somebody tell Bay Area Night Game Team White Ninjas that I found the perfect band to play their theme song. It's Leather Feather! Most of the people in the band dress up as white ninjas! (Or ...

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Puzzle Hunts are Everywhere, Even the Marin Headlands and maybe the Seat in Front of me on the Bus There was that awesome Shinteki Decathlon game a couple of weeks ago. One of the clue sites was Hawk Hill, a high hill in the Marin Headlands. It seemed like a neat site, so... yesterday I went bac...

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Book Report: Super Spy It is a comic book, a collection of little spy stories. I bought it because it was an Amazon recommendation (albeit a tepid Amazon recommendation) and it had Morse Code on the cover. I didn't like ...

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Jotting notes on Scott Blomquists' GC Summit 2009 Lecture "An Analytic Framework for Estimating Puzzle Quality" [I re-watched another 2009 GC Summit lecture. In this one, Scott Blomquist of Team Sharkbait talks about measuring puzzle quality. It's kinda a measure of puzzle simplicity--avoiding putting stuff ...

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Zine Report: Wired 17.05 (May 2009) I picked up the latest issue of Wired. A bunch of famous puzzlers made puzzles for it. There's, like, hidden puzzles inside. I didn't make it very far. There's a lot of stuff in Wired magazine. ...

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Link: Ken Jennings roolz San Francisco City Hall runs this town. And who runs city hall? Not Gavin Newsom--he's bumbling around, grooming himself for a gubernatorial run. Fortunately Jeopardy star Ken Jennings stepped in to keep city ha...

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Link: Warren Spector, Playing Word Games Warren Spector does not, as far as I know, play uppercase "T" The uppercase "G" Game. But he designs lowercase "g" games. He worked on some good stuff for the Paranoia pencil-and-paper RPG... uhm, ...

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Book Report: Going Postal Skott raises an excellent point: The diskworld novels also have golems. E.g., I read Going Postal. I read this Diskworld novel because it's where the puzzler team "The Smoking GNU" got their name. ...

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Jack O' Lantern Hidden Message Pumpkins? This year, I can't deal with pumpkins. This year, I'm leting Hallowe'en slide. My free time goes into BANG 19. Puzzles and logistics, logistics and puzzles. That's plenty to think about....

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Not exactly Puzzlehunts Tom Lester and Annie Burnham got married today. You might remember them from BANG 13... but it's been a couple of years, so you don't have to feel bad if you don't remember. But they're married now,...

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Puzzles from Down Under I don't know anything about the puzzles announced at the Google Australia Blog which is a little frustrating because I'm apparently not supposed to register to look at them.Labels: link, puzzle scene...

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PuzzleHunters.com : Register or be Anti-Social Behold a lovely forum for discussing puzzle hunts, puzzle magazines, and stranger things. It's new, so there's not much there yet. Scott Blomquist set it up and seeks your frankest feedback. He wri...

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Puzzle Hunts aren't really Everywhere I saw a campaign poster for Obama. It read Fired Up And Ready To Go ...laid out with those line breaks. I'm so acrostically minded that I found it crudely funny. I blame the puzzle hunts. (I a...

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Puzzle Hunts are Everywhere, I Get Tired Just Reading About Them Dave Hill posted his write-up of Hot Springs Midnight Madness 2007, which sounds like it was pretty awesome. These people are outside, at night, in the snow solving puzzles, if I'm interpreting thos...

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Not-exactly Puzzle Hunts are Everywhere Item: Saturday, I wanted to vote, so I walked through the Haight and down to City Hall. In the Haight, I noticed some young folks in matching t-shirts scurrying around. So I observed and eavesdroppe...

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Puzzles are Everywhere, Maybe Even mental_floss I work at an internet search company. I think that the awesome part about internet search is that you don't have to remember stuff anymore. If you might need to know the capital of California in th...

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Book Report: Brainiac It's a book about trivia by Ken Jennings, that guy who kept winning at Jeopardy!. Fortunately, this book is about a lot more than just Jeopardy!. The author explores the world of trivia--the histor...

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Link: Changing Roles of Katakana (and Italics) I just read an article with some conjectures about the cultural significance of the rise and fall of katakana amongst Japanese writing systems. Hey, gimme a break, I'm waiting for a slow download, I...

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Puzzle Hunts are Everywhere, but I guess they get lost anyhow I don't read Eric Harshbarger's LOGOLOG blog very often. Hey, give me a break--it doesn't have a feed. Thus, I have to remember to check it. I checked it today, thus finding some week-old ne...

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Book Report: Ilium Raymond Chen, celebrity blogger, gave a talk at my place of employment yesterday. Afterwards, I went up to ask him a question. (Well, OK, to request that he apply his combination of knowledge of En...

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Not exactly a Book Report; Not exactly PuzzleHunt-Related If you've always meant to check out the magazine Giant Robot but never got around to it, now you have some more motivation. Issue #44, in stores now, has an interview with Tetsuya Nishio. Yeah,...

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Link: Iron Puzzler If you're on the Bay Area Night Game mailing list, then you already know that Iron Puzzler is coming up. So I don't know why I even mention it.Labels: puzzle scene...

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Puzzle Hunts are Everywhere / Sad News If you've played in bay area puzzle-hunt games, you might have met a sweet dog named Libby. She traveled in the company of Alexandra Dixon, captain of Team Mystic Fish. Libby died on Friday night; s...

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Puzzle Hunts are Everywhere as Is Music Yes it is the Shinteki Decathlon II report, in which team Underlying Metaphors ("We will not be understood until it is TOO LATE") sweats a lot. Fair warning: there's not much in there abou...

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Puzzle Hunts are Everything I Read About, Even When They Aren't Saturday, there was a lot of puzzlehuntish activity on the peninsula. I wasn't playing in it. Well, not much. I knew that a bunch of folks were gathering for that PerplexCity hunt--people would ru...

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Puzzle Hunts are Everywhere I Go Long day at work; long bus ride back to my neighborhood; I blearily walk along Irving Street, thinking about dinner. But then I recognize the map-festooned jacket ahead of me. It's Dwight Freund, f...

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Links: Quality Content on the Internets Wow, it's a blog entry with a small pile of misc links. That's so retro. If you're into puzzles, set up your Personalized Google Home Page, and add some content to it. What content should you add?...

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Hiding Data in Metadata I'm flipping through this telegraphic code book which E. E. Morgan's Sons used for encoding messages long ago. Most of it consists of code words to convey phrases. E.g., instead of sending "one hund...

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