Masterpiece Museum
February Puzzler; Letter Brew; ARG forum rises from the dead; Found wordplay; Westwords Tourney
Hello. Running a puzzle newsletter in times like this — waves hands all around — can feel trivial. I struggle to post goofs and puzzles and newsletters when there's an actual coup happening that jeopardizes the rights and lives of so many. But I know that many of you are struggling too, and I believe moments of play and community matter more than ever — not as a way to ignore what's happening, but as a necessary respite and a way to connect with each other.
Over the last couple weeks I've hosted a few Solving Sessions for Signals Boosters. We've gotten together and solved puzzles from this year's MIT Mystery Hunt. It's been a balm for me to connect with some of you and solve together. I'm going to continue hosting these weekly. The next one is this Wednesday evening. Please join if you can!
Meanwhile, if you're in the US and looking for more resources on how to cope, resist, and respond to what's happening, I recommend this list of Some Actions That Are Not Protesting or Voting and this resource for calling elected representatives. I also appreciate the work that Kottke.org is doing in collecting resources about how to understand our current national nightmare.
Thanks for reading and being here,
-Sandy
February Puzzler
Every month I offer a new bite-sized puzzle. Here's the latest one:
Think of a word that means "treasure," and another word for a container that that treasure typically comes in. Both words also name parts of the body. What words are these?
Submit your answer here 🗳Daily Akari
Akari, also known as Light Up, is a logic puzzle where you place light bulbs on a grid to illuminate every square. It was created by prolific logic puzzle inventors Nikoli (the folks behind Sudoku). Now there's Daily Akari, a stunningly gorgeous and playful implementation by Singfisher Games. It serves up a fresh Akari puzzle every 24 hours, and, as is convention in the daily puzzle genre, the puzzles get harder as the week goes on. Today's is very small and simple (see above). Be sure to turn your sound on too.
The Unforum is undead
After 7 years offline, the Unforum is back. From 2002-2017, this forum was a hub for chatter about ARGs (Alternate Reality Games), immersive puzzle experiences that blend fiction and reality across multiple platforms. Sean Stacey created it during the golden age of ARGs like The Beast (the promo for the movie AI) and Lockjaw, and it grew to nearly 40,000 users sharing clues and discussing game design. Then a server crash took it down in 2017, and it's been down ever since. Thanks to a collaboration between Laura E. Hall, Brian Enigma, and Stacey, the entire archive is now back online at forums.unfiction.com. While you can't post there anymore, having this record of early internet storytelling preserved is a huge win for anyone interested in the history of this art form.
To support more of this kind of work, you can back The Center for Immersive Arts on Patreon.
I'm Letter Brewing this week
I've been writing puzzles for Letter Brew, the new daily wordplay game by TED. You can find mine on the site for most of this week, starting today.
Wordplay Sought & Found
Sometimes I find wordplay in the wild. And sometimes I think of a particular wordplay that must be in a headline somewhere, and I search Google for it. And sometimes, it hits. Read the screenshotted 2014 headline below and see if you can find what's interesting about it. (Hint: you'll need to remove a couple spaces.) For the answer, click through to the Bluesky post, where I posted a follow-up with the reveal.
Westwords: June 22, 2025
Westwords is coming back to Berkeley on June 22nd. After a successful debut last year that drew ~300 solvers (half of whom were tournament first-timers!), the event returns with both in-person and online divisions. If you've been curious about competitive solving but intimidated by the bigger tournaments, this is a perfect entry point. You can register here.
Solution to the January Puzzler
Think of a two-word phrase that means “a secret mission”. Move the last letter of the 1st word to be the first letter of the 2nd word, and you’ll end up with two words that are synonyms. What are they?