Gonzo Bongo Condo
Gift guides, AVCX crosswords, Midwest escape tour, & a new Mystery
Happy Thanksgiving, y'all. I'm ever thankful that you've chosen to be a member of this community, and that you support my work. I love publishing these letters, writing puzzles for you, and especially hearing back from all y'all. Here's to more mystery in the coming year.
If you're looking for topics to entertain your family around the Thanksgiving table, you might enjoy these four sets of mystery trivia questions I posted for my Boosters a couple years ago. I've opened them up so the hints and answers are viewable by everyone. Happy Holidays.
Holiday gift guides
Several trusted sources of mirth and merriment have come out with their holiday gift guides. Lots of good stuff on these!
Jenn Mendenhall
David Spira
gmdirect
I published a Signals gift guide last year and I still stand by every item in it. You can find it here:
Sandy Weisz
November Puzzler
Every month I offer a new bite-sized puzzle. Here's the latest one:
Think of an Asian capital in 5 letters. Shift the 1st and 4th letters forward in the alphabet by 3 positions to get the name of an African country. Shift them forward again 5 more positions to get a different Asian capital. What places are these?
Submit your answer here 🗳AVCX subscription drive
The AVCX, an independent publisher of crosswords, is aiming to get 1,000 new subscribers by January 1. As a member, every week you get:
- Two midi-sized puzzles
- One classic themed/themeless puzzle
- A cryptic or themeless puzzle, alternating weeks
- Trivia quizzes with a meta theme, usually bi-weekly
I love their work and I'm a happy member. You can subscribe here, or sign up for a two-month trial here.
2025 Crossword Calendar
Adam Aaronson is publishing a 12-part calendar-shaped crossword (or is it a crossword-themed calendar?) for 2025.
Buy one for $20.25 (natch) here.
REA Midwest Tour, featuring CU Adventures & The Mystery League
Lisa Spira
One of our favorite escape room companies is CU Adventures in Champaign-Urbana, in downstate Illinois. They have a massive complex with six rooms, each a beautiful exploration of the art form, each immersive and thoughtful and hella fun — but they take a bit of planning to travel to if you’re not from the area. The folks at Room Escape Artist are organizing a tour in April so you can play a bunch of these rooms at one time, and not even worry about how the heck you're getting to Champaign-Urbana (answer: you're flying into O'Hare and REA is chartering a bus).
In addition, tour-goers will get to play 2 games at 60 to Escape in Schaumburg (also great), and my Search for a Superhero, a two-hour escape game-at-a-table. I'll be there, running my games for all players.
The initial set of dates sold out almost immediately, so they’ve added a second set of dates. Tickets cost $1099. You can get them here.
Puzzle Boat 11 starts Saturday
Puzzle Boat 11 is finally here. I can think of few better ways to spend your holiday weekend than cranking through 100 word and logic puzzles from all-star constructor Foggy Brume.
Mystery #20: The Ones That I Want
I've published a new Mystery: The Ones That I Want. It's free for anyone to solve. Hints and a submission form are available to Boosters.
Sandy Weisz
This one was inspired by A Very Long Integer from the recent Enchanted Castle puzzle hunt, which was just as it sounds: one extremely long integer. Puzzles like this, with just a string of numbers or letters, are one of my favorite genres, probably because they often benefit from spreadsheet jockeying, which is one of my favorite pastimes. This puzzle (like that one) appears complex, but also very parse-able once you break it open. I hope you enjoy it.
Sandor's Bluesky Link
If you're part of the mass exodus from Twitter to Bluesky, welcome! You can follow me here:
(Props if you noticed the supervocalic headline.)
Solution to the October Puzzler
Think of a hit song from 1992. Remove all of the first word except the first two letters and the result will be a hit song from 1993. Both were released by bands, and both bands have the same number of letters in their names. Which songs are these?