A Continental Flight
Goodbye, 2025
Happy 2026! Before we get too far into the new year, I’m thinking back on some of the highlights from 2025:
- I launched Raddle, my daily word transformation game. Starting on February 25th, I released a new Raddle every day of the year (!) and enjoyed some great buzz about it. We're seeing upwards of 9000 daily players, and I regularly get reports of people seeing strangers play it on the train. I even hosted a Raddle-themed game at the Midwest Crossword Tournament.
- I created a new tabletop game called Tales From The Crypto, about a company of vampires launching a new cryptocurrency, BiteCoin. (Looking for corporate team-building? Smash that reply button! Or use this form.)
- I wrote a puzzle hunt for Zach King, star of YouTube and TikTok and maker of magic and visual illusion videos. A few thousand folks solved the puzzles, which were woven into his videos, in a chance to win $10,000. It was a real treat to work with his production team, helping them design videos that had puzzles secretly woven in.
- I collaborated with my friends at Field Notes to build a murder mystery puzzle into their Halloween promotion. We wrote a 46-line poem and printed it line by line on the bottom margins of the notebook, which they dubbed the Halloween Murder Book. Here’s the solution if you missed out.
- I had several guest spots on the world's finest riddle-themed podcast, Hey Riddle Riddle. You can find all the episodes featuring me here.
- I made two bespoke private hunts: one in downtown Chicago, themed around the family’s favorite TV show The Magicians, and one on a golf course in Kenosha, WI.
- I put on my Search for a Superhero game as part of the Room Escape Artists tour in the Midwest.
- And, for the 9th year in a row, I taught my Transmedia Puzzle Design and Performance class at the University of Chicago, with some awesome students who produced some really imaginative and creative puzzles.
If you were part of any of the above projects, thank you! I'm grateful to be puzzling alongside you and look forward to another year of fun and discovery.
Latest Puzzler
Every month I post a new bite-sized puzzle. Here's the latest one:
I took a flight between two cities in continental Europe. I noticed that my boarding pass showed my departure and arrival city names as normal, but also — unexpectedly — it showed the name of my arrivalcountry in all-caps letters. Which two cities was I traveling between?
Submit your answer here 🗳2025 Connections
As a nod to the year we just left behind, Thomas Colthurst made this behemoth game of connection finding. There are 45 sets of 45 terms, though you can find and submit them one at a time. Reports from friends indicate this could take you a full day to complete. You've been warned.
Unch Magazine: Crosswords in Print
If you spend most of your waking hours in front of a screen, solving a puzzle with paper and pencil might be just the quaintly anachronistic activity you need to sooth your overstimulated brain. The new Unch magazine is a beautiful new publication for cryptic crosswords. Right now, the second edition is on pre-order, but when it goes to print, which should be soon, you can have it shipped anywhere in the world.
Narrative String Theory
Shawn Gilmore
Are there really that many shows that feature a Pepe Silvia-type evidence board, connected by red string? The Vault of Culture is tracking every one that does. It’s fun to peruse the page and find your favorite shows and films, but you can also use it as a how-to manual for assembling your very own string wall. Use it to track the string walls you see on TV!
Thinky Dailies
Thinky Games has a curated database of great reasoning games submitted by designers, many of which are free. Now, Thinky is releasing Thinky Dailies, a daily logic puzzle. Each day's puzzle is a new type. You'll need to sign up for the preview pass to get the Dailies; the pass is free, though it requires that you solve a puzzle for access. Which is only fair.
Ribbit by Puzzmo
I really like this new daily word puzzle on Puzzmo. (Only available to Puzzmo subscribers, for now.) It's a word search, but the set of words is limited due to the set of given paths. As you find all possible connections between pairs of letters, the paths between them disappear. Ditto with the letters themselves. It's very satisfying to watch the puzzle give you feedback in real time about how close you are to completing it.
Raddle Mystery #5
The Mystery League
Our spiciest Raddle Mystery Theme yet is finishing up today, though the submission form will be open through this weekend. So far we have about 50 solves. Can you crack it? Stay tuned to future Raddle themes by signing up for the Raddle newsletter.
Solution to the October Puzzler
Think of an album from 2020 from a massive pop star. Remove an “R”, anagram the rest, and you'll get a name of a caffeinated drink. Then, by removing something from the drink, you’ll get a massive pop hit from 2024. What are the album, drink and song?