Puzzle Hunters

If you’re a fan of “transport puzzles” like Sokoban or Atomix, or possibly even some of the robot puzzles in Sierra’s classic Dr. Brain series, you might love one of my recent online discoveries: RoboZZle. (You may be prompted to install Silverlight in order to play, but it’s safe, easy, and well worth the download.)

Solving the puzzles is sorta like programming a computer, so those of you with a mathematical or computer science bent will be more likely to enjoy it, but the programming environment is so simple (only “go forward”, “turn right 90 degrees”, “turn left 90 degrees”, and “only do this if the robot’s on a ____ colored square”).

So check it out, and let me know if you find any particular favorite puzzles. I had fun with one called “Tetris”, and I haven’t solved it yet, but I like the idea behind “Reflection”. (Both of those two are by the same author.)

Curtis Chen of Team Snout has posted his recordings of the talks given at Game Control Summit 2009.

Tyler Hinman was crowned champion for the fifth straight year at the annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament held this past weekend in Brooklyn, NY. He narrowly eked out a victory over fellow National Puzzlers’ League members Trip Payne and Francis Heaney in a dramatic final match.

The 12th quasi-annual Microsoft Puzzle Hunt just kicked off. Biggest changes so far are that each team can choose one of two groups to participate in: COMPETITIVE or RECREATIONAL.

Teams who choose to be COMPETITIVE get the experience most like historical hunts:

COMPETITIVE teams will have an experience consistent with past Microsoft Puzzle Hunts. Puzzle Central, however, intends to offer no hints or help to individual COMPETITIVE teams.

On the other hand, teams could choose to have access to unlimited help:

RECREATIONAL teams will have more help available to them- in fact, they’ll have more help than in any past Hunt. A hint database will be available to all RECREATIONAL teams. If a RECREATIONAL team gets stuck on a puzzle, they can request a hint from the automated site. If that hint doesn’t unblock them, they can request another. And another.

Finally, teams have the option to change classes at will, but only in one direction:

Most importantly, any COMPETITIVE team can convert to being a RECREATIONAL team at any time during the event. RECREATIONAL teams, however, cannot become COMPETITIVE.

I’ll provide additional thoughts and analysis here throughout the weekend.

Shinteki has chosen dates for Decathlon 5.

From their announcement:

Shinteki Decathlon, a 12 hour puzzling adventure in the San Francisco Bay Area, returns in 2009 for players of all experience levels. Decathlon 5 will be run on Saturday, May 30 and again on Saturday, June 6. We’ll send out notification when signups go live.

At the NPL convention today, there was an experts panel that spoke about trivia: what makes a good question, how do you research questions, what about pub trivia, trivia in crosswords, and some stories from researching for Who Wants to be a Millionaire. I figured I’d post my notes for those who couldn’t be present to see, and for those who were here to refer back to. You can discuss the notes and ask questions of the panelists and attendees at the Puzzle Hunters forum.

Read the rest of this entry »

Jennifer and I arrived into Denver this afternoon for the annual convention of the National Puzzlers’ League. We missed a picnic hosted by Mike Selinker (or at least he provided the entertainment). I don’t know exactly what the entertainment consisted of, but I know that it was based loosely on a game of his, Link 26.

Once we got to the hotel, we saw most of the usual suspects lurking in the hotel lobby or elsewhere in or near the hotel. We wandered into the League’s hospitality suite, and Jennifer played a brilliant game that was designed by Darren Rigby called Lexagon. I’ll let those who have actually played it fill in the fine details, but the short version is that you’re given a set of hexagonal tiles that you sorta play onto the playing area domino style where instead of matching numbers, you have to name a word that matches all of the properties described by all of the tiles that are adjacent to your current play.

The last League-member invention that I saw this evening was a really slick laser-etched tile set for Roy Leban’s Scrabble-ish game “WIM“.

After all of that, Jennifer and I and several other League members went downstairs to the Inverness Hotel’s Spotted Dog pub for some food and drink.

[Finally, for any of you NPLers who know what Twitter is (or would like to know what Twitter is), go over to http://twitter.com/puzzlers, and follow it for convention dialog and announcements throughout the weekend. I'll start getting the word out on Thursday.]

The June 1 issue of the New York Times included the 11th installment of their twice-annual Op-ed Puzzle. Sort of a miniature paper-based puzzle hunt, you first solve several themed puzzles, and then roll all of their answers together in one final metapuzzle.

The series is produced by the trio of former Games Magazine editors who make up puzzle construction company “Puzzability“, Amy Goldstein, Mike Shenk and Robert Leighton.

Talk about it in the forums at: http://www.puzzlehunters.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=16

I’m happy to see that the forums are still active after the first couple of weeks that this site is in existence. That’s a very good sign.

Go visit the forums now if you haven’t in a while: http://www.puzzlehunters.com/forum/

But there’s still a tremendous amount of work to do before we puzzle-people can sleep easy at night knowing that we know where to go on the Internet to interact with like-minded people!
The keys to building a vibrant community are attracting new people all the time, and keeping people who already know about the community coming back. Right now, it’s easy to visit the site once and never come back.

To that end, I’ve been thinking about where we should take Puzzle Hunters, and I have some ideas that I’d like to run by you.

First, I’d like to develop the blog on the front page into the best source of puzzle-related news that’s available on the entire web. In order to do this, I’d appreciate your help.

Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Send me leads on puzzle news stories.
• If you know of some places on the web that I should check out, post a comment here or start a thread in the forums.
• If you have an upcoming event, however distant, or a review of an existing event, post it (or at least a link to it) in the forums.
• Let me know if we’re missing a forum that we really need.
• Design a better skin for the site than the Wordpress/phpbb deafults.
• Volunteer to be a contributing author on the blog.

Welcome to Puzzle Hunters! This is your place for news, announcements, and discussion on puzzle events everywhere.

Please subscribe to this blog to stay informed, and check out the forums at http://www.puzzlehunters.com/forum.