Thomas Snyder (aka Dr. Sudoku) is a two-time World Sudoku Champion and five-time US Puzzle Champion, as well as the author of several books of puzzles. His puzzles are hand-crafted, with artistic themes, serving as a kind of “cure for the common sudoku.” Each week he posts a new puzzle on his blog, The Art of Puzzles. This week’s prescription deals with Shikaku, a region division puzzle that Doctor Sudoku takes a fresh look at.

Most puzzles go by several names, and some names grow on a puzzle due to different trends. After the sudoku boom (a puzzle that was originally called Number Place), many puzzles started taking on Japanese names such as Cross Sums which became Kakuro in newspapers and elsewhere, probably to try to pass it off as “the next Sudoku” or at least seem more mysterious. I’m sometimes disappointed by the use of some of these names, and I won’t always use a foreign name when an English one will suffice, but in the rare case of Shikaku (sometimes called “Rectangles” or “Divide by Rectangles” which are rather bland) I actually prefer the name Nikoli uses which is where I see most of these puzzles.

What I tend to not like about Shikaku, however, is how easy and similar the puzzles usually are. The concept is basic: to divide each grid into rectangles, each containing exactly one numbered circle that indicates the area of that rectangle. After learning a few strategies, you can intuit how a lot of these puzzles will solve, such as in the first easy but cute puzzle below.

This week I wanted to experiment with a new variant that slightly perturbs the concept of Shikaku to hopefully unlock more potential in the type. I’ve shaded some cells in the grid gray, and while these must be contained by a rectangle as usual, they do not count towards the rectangle’s area. Thus, as in the example, a 2×5 rectangle can now contain a 9 circle, provided it also contains one gray cell. I made a first example and would gladly welcome your comments on if this variant is worth exploring further. I also have yet to settle on a name for this variant, so suggestions are welcome. Enjoy!

Regular Rules:
Divide the grid below into rectangles so that all cells belong to one rectangle and so that each rectangle contains one numbered circle. The numbered circle must indicate the area of the rectangle.

Altered Rules:
As above, but the number circle now indicates the area of the rectangle without counting any of the gray cells, as seen in the following example.

Now that you’ve solved our Inception-themed Penrose staircase to get deep into the dream world, solve Cory Calhoun’s multilevel crossword to get out. Start in the deepest level, hop to the next when you’re done, and expect all sorts of insanity along the way.

A Way Home, by Cory Calhoun
A Way Home, Level 1
A Way Home, Level 2
A Way Home, Level 3
A Way Home, Level 4
A Way Home, Level 5
A Way Home, Level 6
A Way Home, Answers

The authors of the children’s book Clock Without a Face buried twelve jewel-studded numbers at highway rest areas across the country, and then hid clues to the locations inside the pages of their book. ARGNet staff writer Michelle Senderhauf recounts her experience decoding one of the locations. Interested treasure seekers can still join the hunt for the final number.

All images from Clock Without a Face reprinted with permission from McSweeneys.

By Michelle Senderhauf, originally posted at ARGNet

The race is on to find the final emerald-studded number from the treasure hunt children’s book, Clock Without a Face.  Over the past seven months, treasure seekers have found eleven of the twelve numbers buried at highway rest areas across the United States.  And the final hidden number, the twelve, is rumored to be more valuable than all the other numbers combined.

Each of the numbers was once a part of a priceless (and rumored cursed) clock named the Emerald Khroniker.  According to legend, the clock was built by a pirate named Friendly Jerome.  The greedy pirate looted twelve different cities in twelve different countries, and stripped a jeweled number from each city’s grandest clock for the Emerald Khroniker.  The most valuable number, the twelve, is thought to have been stolen from the tomb of an Egyptian king.  It wasn’t long before thieves stole this valuable clock from Friendly Jerome.   The clock was then stolen again and again, until it ended up in the hands of its most recent owner, Bevel Ternky.  The Emerald Khroniker was not stolen from Ternky; instead thieves ingeniously pried off the numbers and buried each one in a separate location.

Within a month of the book’s release, treasure hunters deciphered the clues that led them to eight of the numbers in eight different states – Florida, Washington, Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Connecticut and California.  Since then, three more have been found, but the number twelve is still buried in the ground somewhere, waiting to be found.

On May 25th, I found one of the numbers myself, an emerald-studded silver beauty.  I had read the book several times with my daughter, but the puzzle-cracking grind was a bit too much for a seven-year-old.  She cheered me on and hoped that I would find her lucky number seven.  With help from a group of treasure hunters from Unfiction.com, I pinpointed the location of the number seven to just 30 miles from my home in Indiana.

Continue Reading “Unearthing Buried Treasure at a Highway Rest Stop with Clock Without a Face” »

Thomas Snyder (aka Dr. Sudoku) is a two-time World Sudoku Champion and five-time US Puzzle Champion, as well as the author of several books of puzzles. His puzzles are hand-crafted, with artistic themes, serving as a kind of “cure for the common sudoku.” Each week he posts a new puzzle on his blog, The Art of Puzzles. This week’s prescription deals with Star Battle, an object placement puzzle that is truly out of this world.

Participating in international puzzle events like the World Puzzle Championship introduces one to a wide world of logic puzzles. Or, in the case of this puzzle, something out of this world. Unfortunately, there are no lasers or space ships in Star Battle puzzles, which was certainly my first thought when I ran into the puzzle’s name many years ago.

Star Battle is an object placement puzzle (with some familiar features from more common puzzles like Sudoku and Battleships) that has its own intriguing logic to deduce. This week I’ve made two Star Battle puzzles for you to enjoy. What I’d call the “SB” star battle is easy, while the “4J” puzzle is a little bit trickier (but hardly impossible).

Rules: Place stars into some cells in the grid so that each row, column, and region contains exactly two stars (in the example, just one star). Stars cannot be placed in adjacent cells, not even diagonally.

Example:

Puzzles:

Frank W. Lewis, courtesy of The Nation

It’s a sad year for legendary puzzlemakers in their 90s. Following on the heels of the death of 95-year-old puzzle genius Martin Gardner earlier in the year, last month brought the passing of Frank W. Lewis, the World War II cryptanalyst who followed up his wartime exploits with a whopping 62 years as the puzzlemaker at The Nation. He died Nov. 18 at the age of 98.

Lewis had the kind of career puzzlemakers dream about. In a dead-end job in the Civil Service in 1939, he complained to the personnel department that the job didn’t challenge him. The next day he found himself facing a battery of questions: did he (a) play bridge, (b) play chess, (c) solve crosswords, (d) like problem-solving, (e) want to go to the Munitions Building and meet someone named Col. William Friedman? After affirmatively answering these questions, he went to work for Col. Friedman, one of the century’s greatest cryptanalysts.

“He worked for the War Department, and this was the days before computers,” said Judith Long, Lewis’s editor at The Nation for 28 years. “They put these wacky oddballs in a room and gave them the codes to crack. He’ll say — or he used to say — ‘We didn’t know that this was impossible so we just went ahead and solved them.’ His greatest accomplishment was that he broke the Japanese shipping code. Because of knowing this, the war was greatly shortened.”

Lewis served in the War Department (later the Defense Department) for 30 years, gaining the Exceptional Civilian Service, the Outstanding Civilian Service, and Bletchley Parks Service medals.

But he is better known for his highly public sidelight. In 1947, The Nation had a sudden need for a cryptic crossword setter, as their original creator, Jack Barrett, had died suddenly. A fan of British-style cryptics from his days in England, Lewis viewed Barrett’s puzzles as the only ones worth solving in the United States. So he entered a competition to replace Barrett, pitting himself against a mysterious opponent named “Mr. X.” Per the magazine’s report, “in the opinion of three-fifths of our readers, (Lewis) attained a technique and flavor approximate to the master’s.” Starting with his first puzzle on October 18, 1947 (reprinted here, courtesy of The Nation), he rewarded the voters for more than six decades, until his retirement last year.

If you’d like help figuring out what’s going on in this puzzle, read Lewis’s genteel guide to solving cryptics. There are lots more of Lewis’s cryptics on The Nation’s site.

Decoder Ring is a column about the clever stuff the world serves up for our enterptainment. As always if you come across some topical puzzles or wordplay, send them to decodewired@gmail.com.

Happy Hanukkah, from a galaxy far, far away:
Irvin Kershner, the director of The Empire Strikes Back, passed away on Saturday at the age of 87. The director of what many fans regard as the finest Star Wars film was Jewish, and it’s the first day of Hanukkah. So it seems a fine time to share these mashups by me and Corey Macourek, my Loonbucket Brigade co-conspirator. We both found the lack of geeky Hanukkah offerings to be borderline criminal, so we made these. Enjoy, feel free to share, and RIP, Irvin Kershner.

Things I will light a candle for this week:

• Also passing away this weekend was comedy giant Leslie Nielsen, who held a special place in puzzlers’ hearts. His name was composed of just five different letters, those in LINES. This type of puzzle has been dubbed a “letter bank” by National Puzzlers League historian Will Shortz in 1980. After Nielsen’s death, The Puzzling World of Winston Breen author Eric Berlin also noted that Leslie Nielsen’s name was also made up of the letters used in the word SILLINESS. Can’t be a better epitaph than that. (Though I did note, as did Reddit commenter RobAnybody, that the headline Leslie Nielsen’s final film, ‘The Waterman Movie,’ remains in limbo, says the director sparks the following obvious exchange: “Leslie Nielsen’s final film remains in limbo.” “What is it?” “It’s a place where souls go after death, but that’s not important right now.”)
• Doubtlessly you’ve been bombarded with the news that the Beatles are now on iTunes, ending a three-decade (!) fight over who got to use the Apple logo. (Answer: Both, when they realized they could make hundreds of millions working together.) The Apples, in stereo, revived one of the greatest legal phrases of all time: “a moron in a hurry.” In a 1978 case in England, Chancery Justice Foster coined this phrase to describe when two items bearing similar names are so different that only a moron in hurry couldn’t tell them apart. In 2003, Apple (the computer people) declared that the Apple (the Beatles people) claim of infringement was so slight that only morons in a hurry couldn’t distinguish the two companies’ offerings, and so the phrase continued into a new millennium.
• This was a good week in the NFL for puzzling coincidences: the Colts played the Bolts (a.k.a., the San Diego Chargers); Kansas City Chiefs QB Matt Cassel dueled a fellow gunslinger whose name shares 9 of its first 10 letters, Seattle Seahawks QB Matt Hasselbeck; and Atlanta Falcons QB Matt Ryan saw the game won by his kicker and near namesake Matt Bryant. Thanks also to Decoder Ring reader Dave Noonan for pointing out this incredible Deadspin graphic showing the parity of each NFL team beating another in a ring. Think how important that Cleveland win over New Orleans seems now.
• I didn’t think there was much possibility of a headline more bizarre than this year’s Chad Ochocinco’s cereal box features phone-sex hotline and Tila Tequila suffers cuts, but escapes juggalos attack, but Dressed as elf, Yankees GM to rappel 22 stories makes a valid case for it.

This week’s Noodler:
No one got last week’s Noodler, so I’ll add a clue to it. I want to know what all of these have in common: the Web, DRM, design, Bionicle, missile defense, the album, the TV, the TiVo box, the Viper, the Police Interceptor, WiFi, eDonkey, and Devo. Here’s the hint: It has to do with how these things were covered in the news. If you’re the first to send what those have in common to decodewired@gmail.com, you’ll be a Ringer too.

Where the geeks are this week:
In Daytona Beach, Fl., collecting letters at local businesses in this weekend’s Scramble Ramble puzzle game. Honestly, I have no idea what this event is, but I just wanted an excuse to type the words “Scramble Ramble.”

NaNoWriMi update:
Wired’s National Novel Writing Minute challenge reached the end of its lifecycle for this year, and we’re busily reviewing the entries. More on the results soon!

Mike Selinker is a game and puzzle designer who heads the Seattle-area studio Lone Shark Games. He also writes a blog about non-puzzly stuff called The Most Beautiful Things.

Thomas Snyder (aka Dr. Sudoku) is a two-time World Sudoku Champion and five-time US Puzzle Champion, as well as the author of several books of puzzles. His puzzles are hand-crafted, with artistic themes, serving as a kind of “cure for the common sudoku.” Each week he posts a new puzzle on his blog, The Art of Puzzles. This week’s prescription deals with Tetris Sudoku, a sudoku variation that involves fitting a set of tetrominoes into the grid much like the computer game Tetris.

For this week’s puzzle prescription, I thought I’d revisit one of my favorite ideas from the past year, which was the last puzzle in my book Sudoku Masterpieces, co-written with Wei-Hwa Huang. While brainstorming new ideas for that book, I really wanted to create a kind of jigsaw/sudoku hybrid where figuring out how to fit together a set of small pieces would build the solution. The result was Tetris Sudoku, and I’ve written a fresh version of this style for today’s puzzle. And for those counting at home, this is now my 12th smiley face puzzle, a theme I use way too often, but then this is Thanksgiving and there is a lot to be happy about. Enjoy!

Rules: A set of labeled tetrominoes is given below a sudoku grid. These represent a set of pieces that must be placed into the grid in order, falling from above the top of the grid and making down/left/right movements as well as rotations to fit into place, in a similar fashion to the computer game Tetris. The pieces will never extend beyond the left or right boundaries of the grid. After all tetrominoes are placed, the grid will be completely full with no empty cells and will form a valid sudoku solution, meaning the digits 1 to 9 will appear a single time in each row, column, and bold region.

The Flynn Lives alternate reality game has been offering tantalizing glimpses into the Tron universe for over a year. And as the December 17th movie premiere draws near, a series of puzzles reveals more about the Flynn family along with some truly groan-worthy classic video game puns.

By Robbie Smith, originally posted at ARGNet

It has been a busy two months for Flynn Lives, which has been a nice change of pace for players who had been growing anxious for activity following the two month lull post San Diego Comic Con. In early October players noticed a new puzzle on the Flynn Lives Facebook page that, once cracked, led to tickets for a screening of twenty minutes from Tron: Legacy in IMAX 3D in theaters across the country for Tron Night, October 28th.

Ordinarily such a screening would be prize enough for most players but Flynn Lives did not stop there. Just days before the Tron Night screening, the Flynn Lives website updated, letting players know that the game was back with a vengeance and that the endgame had begun. Players began frantically searching the site for updates, and it was quickly discovered that Zack’s popular Arcade Aid puzzle game from months past had been updated with new titles of classic video games.

Players worked together and beat the updated game, earning new achievement badges within just a few short hours, but it was the message with the final achievement badge that left the forums buzzing. Titled End Game, the unlocked achievement let players know that something was coming in the mail soon from Flynn Lives.  A screening and swag? Players speculated that this was surely the Endgame hinted at on the Flynn Lives main page and as Tron Night came and went, everyone anxiously awaited their package, their final parting gift from Flynn Lives.

Continue Reading “Tron ARG Hints at Movie Backstory Through Video Game Puns” »

Decoder Ring moves to earlier in the week to make way for Thomas Snyder’s new Dr. Sudoku blog on Fridays. As always if you come across some topical puzzles or wordplay, send them to decodewired@gmail.com.

Nerd of the week: Daniel Radcliffe
How many geek bonus points did Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows star Daniel Radcliffe get for singing Tom Lehrer’s brilliant song “The Elements” on The Graham Norton Show. All of them, says I. Here’s the clip as posted on the BBC’s channel on YouTube.

The image of a wizard singing a Tom Lehrer song makes me wonder if Lehrer would write a version using all the fictional elements and compounds we have today. Perhaps something like this (and you get some of Radcliffe’s nerd bonus points if you can ID them all without clicking the links):

There’s isogen and necrogen and mithril and vibranium,
And arcanite and kryptonite and also unobtanium,
There’s latinum, gundanium, jumbonium, chelonium,
And carbonite and corbomite and scrith and wonderflonium,
There’s energon and metatron and flubber and shazamium,
Naquadria and claudia and also adamantium,
Mordite, morphite, nethicite, uru, and monopasium,
And tylium and trinium and xen and upsidaisium.
I could make up some others, but I do not think I ought’re…
Cuz they’ll become J.K. Rowling’s if they’re sung by Harry Potter.

Things I likely will forget to give thanks for this week:

• A commission in Guinea declared Alpha Conde the winner in last week’s presidential election. Conde joins Burmese Prime Minister U Nu, Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, and British Labour MP Chi Onwurah in the group of political bigwigs whose names are Greek letters. Sadly, there’s no word on whether Catherine Zeta-Jones plans to run for anything.
• Things don’t look too sunny for Heisman Trophy candidate Cam Newton, who is dogged by rumors of payoff requests to commit to Mississippi State University before signing with Auburn. A centerpiece of this case is a text sent between former football players Kenny Rogers to Bill Bell allegedly outlining a payment plan. That led to this lovely sentence on Bleacher Report: “In another lawyer related development, the attorney for Kenny Rogers, the man alleged to have made contact with the Bulldogs’ football program, said his client made a ‘Stupid decision’ to send the text containing a payment plan for Newton to Bill Bell from his phone.” With “Bull,” “ball,” “Bill,” and “Bell” all in that sentence, one has to wonder whether Mississippi State’s researchers on the effects of the boll weevil are involved.
• With the Transportation Security Administration having a bad week over pat-downs and invasive scanners, did anyone in the Obama administration consider the PR effect of having a TSA head whose name means “handgun” in German?
• Minnesota Vikings coach Brad Childress got fired this week for mismanaging a player revolt and football game plans, but team owner Zygi Wilf clearly underappreciated Childress’s ability to read upside-down text.

This week’s Noodler:
New Decoder Ring of Honor member John Owens was the first reader to send in the name of the band Montgomery Gentry, the CMA_nominated act whose first name contains all the letters of the act’s last name. (Other guesses included singer Kellie Pickler, who has all the letters but just not enough of them, and musician Mac McAnally, who has it the other way round.) This week, I want to know what all of these have in common: the Web, DRM, design, Bionicle, missile defense, the album, the TV, the TiVo box, the Viper, the Police Interceptor, WiFi, eDonkey, and Devo. If you’re the first to send what those have in common to decodewired@gmail.com, you’ll be a Ringer too.

Where the geeks are this week:
In Langley, Va., attempting (once again) to solve the Kryptos sculpture at the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency. In Saturday’s New York Times, for the sculpture’s 20th anniversary, artist Jim Sanborn revealed that the word “BERLIN” translated to “NYPVTT” (not a typo), sending hopeful decrypters into a frenzy. Somebody solve this, for Pete’s sake. We need something else to decode in the next 20 years.

NaNoWriMi update:
Wired’s National Novel Writing Minute challenge has almost 100 entries. You can write one by posting on the original NaNoWriMi post. Here’s my favorite this week, from Charisp:
A Dearth to Waking Up
Bang. The light hitting your eyes may as well be the equivalent of a bullet to the brain, it’s shocking enough to your system that nothing will coax you back to sleep. Not a chocolate butter biscuit.

Mike Selinker is a game and puzzle designer who heads the Seattle-area studio Lone Shark Games. He also writes a blog about non-puzzly stuff called The Most Beautiful Things.

Power to the Pixel, a conference dedicated to exploring the craft of transmedia production, has came and went. But with every passing week, new videos from panels, pitches, and keynotes are released at The Pixel Report. Read on for a summary of a small selection of the conference content, freely available online.

By Michael Andersen, originally posted at ARGNet

Unless you’ve presented a slide deck to potential production partners and financiers, the process of pitching a transmedia property probably seems like a foreign concept. Since 2007, Power to the Pixel’s Cross-Media Forum has sought to make this process more transparent. The centerpiece of the conference was The Pixel Pitch, where nine transmedia projects were pitched in an open forum before a jury of decision-makers, commissioners, and industry executives with a £6,000 prize on the line.

Michel Reilhac, the Executive Director of ARTE France Cinéma, gave the first of two keynotes kicking off Power to the Pixel’s Cross-Media Forum on October 12, discussing The Game-ification of Life. In his keynote, Reilhac recognized that the ubiquity of gaming culture is a reality that cannot be ignored in storytelling and experience design.

Reilhac traces the gamification of life through cash incentive, loyalty, and status reward systems. He notes that in gaming culture, the status / bragging mechanic is the most powerful tool for interaction, citing the prestige of having a platinum airline mileage card, earning Foursquare badges, and gaining social equity through Twitter followers as examples. Just as players turn to games to satisfy different motivations, transmedia participants seek different methods of interacting with stories. Specifically addressing alternate reality games, Reihlac celebrates the genre’s ability to empower players, not through an avatar, but as themselves. Alternate reality games engender trust that extends beyond the game and into the real world.

The second keynote was delivered by Campfire Media’s Mike Monello with the alliterative title Babies, Buns and Buzzers, a historical look at the last century of experiential entertainment told through the framework of Coney Island, and running through an ARGFest-spawned obsession with tiki bars (along with a brief mention of Campfire’s work, including the multi-platform viral campaign leading up to author Andrea Cremer’s Nightshade).

Continue Reading “Power to the Pixel Teaches the Art of the Pitch” »