Teragram & Stewart
NPL Con, NPR puzzle, Sondheim's love of puzzles, Minute Cryptic, T. Swift
I just returned from the 184th convention of the National Puzzlers' League, in Dallas, TX. The organization dates back to 1883, though I've only been a member since 2017, when I attended my first Con. The league is a lovely group of similarly minded puzzle nerds, and Con is our annual chance to hang out with each other, solve puzzles, play games, do local escape rooms, and showcase our latest creations. This year we had about two dozen first-time attendees, including someone who'd been a member for decades but never made it to Con, someone who'd never done a puzzle hunt before, and our youngest attendee, a 13-year-old kid who solved like he was a grizzled puzzle veteran. If you're looking to dive deeper into the community of puzzlers, I encourage you to join! Next year's Con will be in July 2025 in Minneapolis. You can learn more info at puzzlers.org.
The highlight of Con for me is always showcasing my latest tabletop game. This year I put on Robots, Inc., a new game just off the presses, for about 80 attendees. I'm so impressed and grateful for all the games that people bring to Con, and I'm so happy to be able to contribute a little bit with my own game.
July Puzzler
The following puzzle was just featured on NPR's Sunday Puzzle this week, which you can listen to — and enter — here.
Think of a famous actor and a famous actress who co-starred in a classic movie of the past. The actress's first name, when reversed, and the actor’s last name, spelled forward, are similar romantic gifts. Who are these film stars?
Submit your answer here 🗳Almost all my Puzzlers come to me by noticing some accidental wordplay, but this one was different. I was on a very long airplane ride, watching a comfort movie I’d seen many times before. Afterwards, with nothing to do, I challenged myself to make a puzzle out of the movie … somehow. I was shocked and pleased to discover this fun connection. Did anyone involved in the movie notice this coincidence at the time of filming? Or in any of the years since?
The games that inspired Sondheim
You might know that Stephen Sondheim was an avid puzzle solver and maker. He's even credited with helping popularize cryptic-style crosswords in America. After his recent death, some of his possessions, including a massive collection of GAMES magazines, went up for auction. Now, Barry Joseph is poring through the entire collection and writing a book about it and posting interesting finds at @matchingmindswithsondheim on Instagram. The posts are a curious mix of biographical inquiry and detective work, and as a fan of both Sondehim and puzzles, I'm here for it.
Minute Cryptic
Speaking of cryptics and Instagram: Minute Cryptic is a fairly popular Instagram account (150k+ followers) that walks through a single cryptic clue every day. There's a companion website (linked above) where you can solve tomorrow's clue. I've played along for a few days now, and I've found they're just the right difficulty for a clue that you need to solve without any crossed letters. The host (whose name has proven hard to find) clearly walks you through each solve, including some possible misdirects and ambiguities. It's a great way to slowly ramp up to cryptic fluency.
Taylor Swift Loves Puzzles More Than You
Michael Andersen
Michael Anderson at ARGNet takes a deep dive into the ongoing ARG that Taylor Swift has built around her lyrics, release dates, stage productions, social media profiles, promotional images, award speeches, and anything else she has creative control over. As a parent of a teenage Swiftie, I was aware of some of these things but definitely not all. I loved building this kind of thing for Watsky last year; if anyone has Taylor's number and wants to put us in touch, you have my permission.
A Crossword Puzzle
Is it neat or obnoxious that I guessed the gimmick in this XKCD crossword puzzle before solving a clue? Probably a little of both. Very well done, Mr. Munroe. As always. (That's a hint.)
Mystery #19: ShotDeck posters
Earlier this year we were hired by the website shotdeck.com to build out a small hunt. The puzzles featured famous movie posters that had been manipulated into puzzles. Each answer led solvers to specific tagged movie shot in the ShotDeck collection. While that aspect of the puzzle is no longer accessible, the underlying puzzles are solvable on their own. They're also a nice mixture of different levels of difficulty. They're all collected on one page here:
Sandy Weisz
Each one yields its own answer, which you can check using the link below each poster. Good luck!
Solution to the May Puzzler
Think of a six-letter nut. Change the first and last letters to get something that is often nut-adjacent. What two words are these?
I got a lot of submissions for "CASHEW / RASHES". I suppose the two words are related, but "nut-adjacent" isn't how I'd describe a rash. Here's the correct answer: