What's mentioned in all these books?
NEW GAME. I’m putting the finishing touches on my new table-based puzzle game, The Unknown Islands, and I’m running a couple final playtests this Thursday and next at the Chicago Design Museum. Buy tickets here. Or keep reading to win a couple of them for half-off…
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PUZZLE OF THE WEEK. What is mentioned…
- 55 times in Wuthering Heights,
- 35 times in Dracula,
- 3 times in Through the Looking-Glass,
- once in Anna Karenina,
- and never in War and Peace?
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CONTEST. Submit your answer here to the above puzzle by the end of day today. Two randomly chosen (correct) entries will win a pair of half-price tickets to either of the upcoming Unknown Islands games mentioned above.
Head Hunters: The 2018 MIT Mystery Hunt
The organizers of this year’s MIT Mystery Hunt have released all 150-some puzzles. Most you can do from home; a few involve physical props that were custom-made for the hunt. Some recommendations below…
Wolf in the Fold
Of the puzzles a) that I worked on and b) that are possible to do from home and c) don’t require information from other solved puzzles, this was one of my favorites.
Joyful Songs
Another favorite. To best emulate our solving experience on this one, do this at 3 in the morning, with a friend, out loud, as you try to suss out what the heck is going on.
Face Your Fears
A great example of a puzzle that nicely combines a little bit of internet research, a little bit of insight, and a fun theme.
Shoal Patrol
This one is a beast, but pure heaven if you’re a nut for logic puzzles. It’s a combination submarine puzzle / Slitherlink / Minesweeper. And there’s 7 of them. When you finish them, definitely don’t move onto Submarine Patrol, which is the same kind of puzzle, but in 3D. That latter one took a cohort of 6 people over 9 hours to solve. I worked on some of them for just a few minutes before handing them off to teammates, but I have deep appreciation of the form.
AMA with members of Life & Order, the writing team for the 2018 Mystery Hunt
Lots of good stuff in here about how L&O put on this year’s hunt.