Bob Jectiony
Balatro, Watsky wrap-up, Lone Shark kickstarter, Strands game, new Mystery.
Hello puzzle people. Writing you a few hours after seeing a hole open up in the sky where the sun used to be, and I'd be lying if I didn't tell you I feel a little bit closer to my true vampiric self after witnessing the totality. Truly an uncanny experience. Hope your eclipse moment was as good as it could be, free of clouds and retinal scarring.
Sometimes it feels like the phases of my life can be defined by what games I'm obsessed with. Currently it's the video game Balatro, which #iykyk — but for those who don't, it's best described a poker roguelike, where you're min-maxing your way to bigger and bigger pots of chips. Most of your power comes from modified cards called Jokers, which buff your hand based on their own special rule. Here's a screenshot of someone flush-ing their way to over 7 million chips, in a peak Balatro moment. Truly living the dream.
I play it on Switch, but it's available on Steam and other platforms. You've been warned; it's the kind of game that gets its hooks in you.
Watsky ARG wrap-up
The ARG we built for Watsky has finally come to an end, and George put together a really thoughtful, detailed video explaining the whole thing from conception to execution to finale. He goes into a lot more than just puzzles here, talking about his creative process, why he wanted to build something like this, and ultimately, where he's going from here. The whole video is worth your time, but if you don't have 40 minutes, you can jump to 19:45 (direct link), when I get introduced and start explaining the puzzle process.
Hunting of the Shark Kickstarter
Lone Shark Games has put out hundreds of puzzle hunts, ARGs, and individual puzzles over the years, and now they're compiling them all together into one big book. I personally know and adore many of the puzzle writers featured in this book. $66 gets you a hard copy – and, for a book containing 300 puzzles, just considering raw puzzle-to-dollar ratio, this is an exceedingly good value. I'm a backer. The campaign ends in a couple of days, and has already met its goal.
April Puzzler
Every month I offer a new bite-sized puzzle. Here's the latest one:
Think of the full name of an actor who was big in the ‘90s, and is still working today. Remove the first letter and last letter, and what remains will phonetically sound like a phrase heard in a courtroom. Who is it?
Submit your answer here 🗳Mystery #17: March Madness
Here's the next Mystery, inspired by the NCAA basketball tournies. I promise you that you need to know nothing about basketball to solve this, other than how to read a bracket.
Sandy Weisz
This is probably the fourth puzzle I've made in my life that involves a bracket-style design. I'm just a sucker for structure, I guess. Good luck! As always, hints are available for Boosters.
Strands
A new New York Times game has entered the chat: Strands. It's a themed word search: the grid features 7 or so words of a theme, along with a word or phrase that describes the theme. The theme phrase always stretches from one side to the opposite site, which is why they call it a … deep breath … spangram. It was right there for the taking, and they took it.
Solution to the February Puzzler
The last five letters of what US state can be anagrammed to make the largest city in another US state?