Scott Blomquist's space: Puzzles

The return of fun flash crap

Wed, 29 Nov 2006 00:20:52 GMT

Attn: Maloney--you'll like this.

Only sort of a puzzle, but pretty fun: http://www.gamegecko.com/idiottest.php.

Online mini-hunt

Thu, 14 Sep 2006 06:20:15 GMT

If you enjoy the kinds of puzzles I do, you should subscribe to Panda Magazine.

Even if you subscribe to Panda Magazine, you should try out There's a Moose on the Loose! The puzzles that I've solved so far are fun and seem well designed.

Coolest flash puzzle game ever!

Sun, 28 May 2006 19:27:22 GMT

http://jayisgames.com/archives/2006/05/click_drag_type.php

Intriguing...

Tue, 03 Jan 2006 14:40:07 GMT

http://avantgame.com/key.htm

Doubt that I'll plunk down the $28, but this does seem like it oughtta deliver on its promises: "We guarantee that for as long as you search for your lock, surprising people and places will reveal their secrets to you. We cannot guarantee that you will ever find the lock that your key opens. If you do find your lock, please send word—and stories."

NY Times puzzle extravaganzas

Wed, 05 Oct 2005 01:45:28 GMT

The New York Times started running somewhat-regular mini-extravaganzas* back on July 4, 2003. It actually succeeded in selling me a copy of the paper for the first one. After I found out that one was published online, I stopped rushing out to score a hardcopy, but I have followed along closely online.

I think you'll have to have a free NY Times login (or borrow a communal one from bugmenot.com) to get to the puzzles themselves.

Here are links to all of them so far (from newest to oldest):
The Old College Try (June 4, 2005)
Beat the Clock (December 31, 2004)
Let the Games Begin! (August 12, 2004)
Presents of Mind (December 25, 2003)
Patriot Games (July 5, 2003)

The thing about these puzzles is that, while challenging, they require no specialized puzzle-solving knowledge. In that respect, they're probably appealing to a much wider variety of people than the highly specialized puzzle events that I normally participate in. I have had a lot of fun with all of them so far, and I hope the Times continues this tradition.

*mini-extravaganzas, as defined by the National Puzzlers' League, are a number of puzzles having a theme or storyline, and usually with a final puzzle incorporating information from all previous stages.

Mooncurser's handbook thoughts (part 2/7)

Wed, 05 Oct 2005 00:37:52 GMT

[Wow--better get it in gear on this series of posts, or I'll forget everything I have to say about it!]

Read the first part of this series to get caught up, and then continue reading below.

I'll throw in a brief mention here of the application process for those of you who aren't familiar with Game-style events. Since it's impractical to host more than some small two-digit number of teams, and since there are often more teams than that who are interested in participating, Game organizers usually require some form of application for the event. Applications are usually evaluated principally on the amount of effort put into them. My team submitted a 16-page glossy magazine called "Shark Bait Quarterly". It'd take forever to explain all of the inside jokes, but there's lots of good stuff in there if you're just skimming through, too. Pay special attention to the Tips from the Baiting Masters at the bottom of each of the crew biographies pages. At any rate, it was a good enough application to get us in.

Since we made the cut, we were mailed a physical invitation about a week before the actual event. Up until that point, we didn't have much of an idea where the Game would start. The invitation itself looked like it was just a few pieces of card stock glued to each other in that common invitation-y way. We knew that more information had to be there somewhere, so we chose to dissect it. Turned out that the _real_ invitation was, in fact, inside the middle layer of the fancy invitation. It told us to make our way up to a hotel in Bellingham, WA.

On the Friday that the game actually started, we made our way up to Bellingham for a banquet in celebration of the release of the 42nd Mooncurser's Handbook. We were encouraged by Game staff to mix and mingle during the banquet instead of seating our entire team together at any one table, but they didn't explain why that might come in handy.

Leading up to dinner itself, they alluded to an executive in Galactic Consortium going rogue, but this was about the only plot development they did. It popped up one more time during the weekend, but in a somewhat weak way (we'll get to that later). I have to say, the near complete lack of a plot may well have been one of the only major disappointments for me in this entire Game.

After an all-around good meal (which it sure should have been considering the $300 per person participation fee), something spectacular happened. They rolled back the wall to the tune of awe-filled gasps from around the room, to reveal an elaborate set of games and activity stations. They quickly explained all of the activity stations, and more importantly that every activity was a group activity that required cooperation among competing teams. Every success in one of the activities earned your team additional information to use in solving one of several metapuzzles that would get your team hundreds of points.

The activities took the form of simple things such as stacking cups (yeah--of the CupStacking variety) with a plastic robot arm, answering Sci-Fi trivia questions game show style, and 4-way Dance-Dance Revolution. We had a lot of fun doing most of them, but despite a three-team coalition to solve the meta-puzzles, we didn't get any points for any of them.

By the end of the night, we had all done so much cooperating, that most teams had decided that alliances would be required to win the next day. We were eventually told that collusion was expressly forbidden, with one exception that would be explained later.

I'll explain that exception in the next installment of this series.

Warehouse puzzle

Sat, 10 Sep 2005 15:35:15 GMT

http://lightforce.freestuff.gr/warehouse.php

And, Shawn, if I don't post puzzles for a while, just start going through all of the puzzles linked to on the left side of that page. Some of them are hard!

(Use comments to point out particularly good/fun/difficult/whatever puzzles from this collection or any others--I've gotten us started.)

Super-hard puzzle!

Tue, 06 Sep 2005 00:23:03 GMT

http://www.cheesygames.com/panex/

(or the insanely hard original version)

http://gwyn.tux.org/~bagleyd/java/PanexApp.html

What instructions?

Tue, 06 Sep 2005 00:03:55 GMT

A couple of acquaintances of mine in puzzle-land (Mark Gottlieb and Mike Selinker) developed this year's Maze of Games for Gen Con, and I had the pleasure of being subjected to the puzzles for purposes of beta testing. There were a bunch of really fun puzzles in the set, but the most memorable phenomenon from the evening o' testing was how exaspirated Mark became over the fact that time after time, every single one of us playtesters repeatedly failed to read the instructions despite having been regularly reminded to do so. This often made the puzzles harder than they needed to be, and sometimes made them nearly impossible. Y'see, we are all regular participants in the type of puzzle competition where there are no instructions on the puzzles. We've been heavily conditioned to just start seeking signal in the noise and expect a word or short phrase to pop out the other end. These puzzles took that form exactly, except they had instructions. I swear that in every case where I got reminded to read the instructions, I didn't even notice that they were on the page. I swear.

Mooncurser's handbook thoughts (part 1/7)

Wed, 31 Aug 2005 03:33:11 GMT

As I mentioned in a previous entry, I played in a Seattle area Game a couple weekends ago. Despite not having much time outside work these days, it's time to start writing it up before I forget too much. I'll make it a series so I don't feel like I have to find hours to write up the whole thing in order to start getting my thoughts out there.

Leading up to the game, all we had to work from was the web site. On it were a few simple puzzles that either indicated things to include in our applications or to be sure to bring with us. Two of the puzzles particularly stand out in my mind.

[Warning: spoilers for the puzzles posted on GalacticConsortium.com follow. If you have any intention of solving them yourself, please go there now and come back when you're done.]

The first one was the handbook entry for a planet called Waxxo. It told some story about how the people of Waxxo wear things called flibs that come in size 40 or the next smaller size of 50 or the next smaller size that's a larger number still. We struggled for days to come up with something that met that description, and never really did. What they were looking for were t-shirts measured by interpreting their sizes (XL, L, M) as Roman numerals (which was obliquely hinted by the phrase "All roads lead to Waxxo"). Cute. But hard.

The second puzzle from the web site that stands out in my head was the handbook entry for senka, "a style of poetry popular among the inner planets". It's like a cross between a limerick and a haiku, only weirder. The puzzle hidden on that particular page is fairly straightforward, but the invented poetry form is pretty cute.

The site started out with a staticky background that we thought for sure ought to be a stereogram, but it wasn't. Eventually, they snuck in a stereogram. Who knows how long they had that planned.

In part 2, I'll talk about the Friday night activities. I'll have more things to both rant and rave about then.

Most addictive puzzle game of the century!

Tue, 30 Aug 2005 17:38:45 GMT

Warning: getting started with DROD (Deadly Rooms of Death) may result in chronic severe productivity loss!

Not that I have time to be addicted to a game these days, because we're coming up on the second milestone of the project I'm working on for MSN Search, but DROD is seriously the best Rogue-like puzzle game I've played since ZZT. And given the sound track (including the dialog), it may even be better than ZZT.

On to DROD!

We'll go with this one for today...

Thu, 25 Aug 2005 17:09:16 GMT

http://oos.moxiecode.com/examples/cubeoban/

Save Chasmton's Beer!

Wed, 24 Aug 2005 05:31:26 GMT

http://www.abc.net.au/gameon/chasm/chasmgame.htm

Puzzle season ends this weekend

Fri, 19 Aug 2005 18:56:41 GMT

Obligatory puzzle/game/thing to keep Shawn from yelling at me: http://www.planarity.net/

I'm headed up to Bellingham tonight with five of my puzzle-solvingest friends for the release party for the 42nd printing of The Mooncurser's Handbook. Something will "go terribly wrong" either at the party or at the hotel the next morning, and we'll be off on a quest to save the world in a 12 passenger rental van stuffed with every gadget that any of us owns. I'll write up a detailed report once I've caught up on sleep early next week.

After this event, my schedule doesn't have any puzzle-related events on it for many months. I think I just might experience debilitating withdrawal symptoms. But I have an event up my sleeve that I'm going to host sometime this fall. Stay tuned for more details.

Today's puzzle

Fri, 15 Jul 2005 06:48:30 GMT

http://gprime.net/game.php/puzzledsheep

I don't buy their quoted best possible score...

Thu, 09 Jun 2005 17:06:52 GMT

http://prustinteractive.com/games/sloyd3/index.shtml

Hapland 2

Mon, 23 May 2005 06:13:16 GMT

A sequel to the original Hapland puzzle has been released! http://www.foon.co.uk/farcade/hapland2/

(I think I posted the previous one, but just in case: http://www.foon.co.uk/farcade/hapland/.)

Puzzle fix

Fri, 20 May 2005 00:44:18 GMT

http://web6.midworld.luxadmin.org/game.html

http://www.deviantart.com/view/8666529/

Smartstick adventure

Sun, 08 May 2005 06:57:21 GMT

http://www.hedonistica.com/flash.php?path=/flash/smartstick.swf&w=550&h=400

Today's instructionless puzzle

Tue, 26 Apr 2005 03:12:46 GMT

Both v1 and v3.764 have some fun challenges to offer.

http://nocircles.com/index.php?boyhave=flash

Planetarium

Sat, 23 Apr 2005 06:04:19 GMT

Ever had a TV show that's so well done and suspenseful that you just can't wait for its day of the week to roll around so you can see the next episode (24's first and second seasons were like that for me--it's still good, but not as good)?

Well, Planetarium is like that, only it's an online puzzle. It takes 12 weeks for you to get every installment of the puzzle complete with intriguing revelations along the way, and by then you will hopefully have solved enough of the puzzles to reach the final answer, which is rather artfully chosen. (There are three puzzles each week--one number, one word, and one other one that I don't remember what they call it.)

I played through it back in college (probably 1998), and am considering playing through again. Maybe I'll meet up with you in the xiii Forum.

Hardest simple sliding-block puzzle found!

Fri, 22 Apr 2005 04:59:02 GMT

http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3445734

Today's crop

Thu, 21 Apr 2005 08:51:40 GMT

The Dark Room is a great collection of opaque puzzles of varying difficulty bundled up neatly together over on http://www.woolythinking.com. They even have a save & continue feature that'll work as long as you didn't disable Flash's Local Shared Object store out of fear of supercookies. (I'm a cookie whore--I'm sure I'm set to accept all first-party cookies, and I can't remember the last time I cleared my cookie cache.)

Today's collection of puzzles & games

Mon, 18 Apr 2005 07:24:52 GMT

4d Rubik's cube: http://www.plunk.org/~hatch/MagicCube4dApplet/

Another opaque puzzle (i.e. first, figure out what to do and then do it): http://www.deviantart.com/view/14864502/
I know of at least four solutions.

Fun flash game

Mon, 18 Apr 2005 07:11:58 GMT

http://www.koreus.com/files/200501/proximity.html

Hexagonal grid, numbered tiles, interesting atack-and-defend mechanism. The AI seems good, but beatable with some practice.

Another flash puzzle thingie

Fri, 15 Apr 2005 06:37:09 GMT

http://nlp.fi.muni.cz/~xsvobod4/amanita/samorost/intro.html

Cool little Flash toy

Mon, 31 Jan 2005 22:07:48 GMT

http://www.eyezmaze.com/grow/v3/index.html

My high score after three tries is 9600. I'm going to keep trying until I max them all out, though.