Category — Uncategorized

In my never-ending quest to find more ways to reach more Puzzleheads, I set up a Facebook group for us to connect and proudly share our puzzleheaded-status. Click the link on the top of the right sidebar to join!

What makes a puzzle worth solving? I don’t have a good answer that would apply to all people. But I do have an idea for what I feel makes me feel that a puzzle was worth the time I invested in solving it:

• It was neither too hard nor too easy. If it was too easy, I wouldn’t have tried to solve it. If it was too hard, I would have given up. I know this property is entirely dependent upon the individual’s experiences and preferences, so there’s no one puzzle that will make everyone feel that way.
• It used a puzzle technique I had not seen before. Obviously, the more puzzles you solve, the less new stuff there is to see. But puzzle constructors never cease to amaze me – they either create new puzzle ideas altogether or they synthesize a new idea out of many existing ideas.
• If it was a series of smaller puzzles, the puzzles grew incrementally more difficult. This all goes back to the need to feel like I’m making progress. Similarly, mountain climbers don’t climb until they reach the top, they break the climb up into various stages and focus on one stage at a time. Without mini-goals, the challenge seems to daunting. (Crossword puzzles are extreme in this regard – solving each across or down clue is its own mini-goal.)
• I felt like I had really accomplished something. All puzzles require work, and the “aha!” moment of when the puzzle solution becomes clear should come right when I’ve had to work for it for a while.
• I felt the puzzle was fair. Puzzle constructors should not let would-be solvers wander down intentionally-constructed dead ends for too long, or they risk eroding the feeling of accomplishment (see previous item).

I’ve started a new category of links on the right side of this page – Puzzles Worth Solving. I’ve included them on the list either because I did solve them and I thought they met the criteria I described above, or because I haven’t solved them and I believe that they will.

My first entry there is a link to a bookmark list on Geocaching.com of puzzle caches I think are worthy of your attention. These are all solve-at-your-desk puzzles, which means that you can solve them no matter where you live even if you’re not a geocacher.

If you know of any links to other specific puzzles of any sort that you feel are worth solving, please send email to me or let us know in the Puzzlehead forums.

I’ve added a set of phpBB forums to this site. There’s now a link in the header of this page, or if you’re too lazy for that you can just click here.

If you want to post there, you’ll need to register. Users can self-activate their accounts as long as they supply valid email addresses.

The WordPress site (this blog) and phpBB site (those forums) user lists are independent and are not synchronized. If you registered on the blog, you’ll have to register again with the forums. (I have not yet found a plugin that bridges their user lists in a way that makes me feel comfortable that I won’t have to spend a lot of time debugging it and fixing it.)

If you have any problems with the forums, let me know. Click on my profile and send me a message using whatever feedback mechanism helps you relax.

Have fun!

-eP

Can you find it with Bing?

Use Bing Maps to navigate New York City and answer four questions. If you’re spot-on, you’ll be entered to win a $100 gift card!

Microsoft has completed its beta test period of Bing Maps, and to generate some buzz it’s set forth the Bing Maps Challenge.

The challenge requires you to download and install the player for Microsoft Silverlight, which is a web application gizmo kinda sorta like Adobe Flash. The download is free.

Good luck!

I added a few new links to the site that I stumbled across today. Check them out in the right-hand nav bar over there –>

• Events > MIT Mystery Hunt – I have talked about this in a recent post, but the event has a consistent URL every year.
• Publications – New category! I added:
  • Games Magazine
  • Puzzle & Answer Magazine

Just discovered your site, and it’s a good one. I’m sure I’ll be back. BTW, here’s another Sudoku puzzle-cache:

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=d9951c51-4999-4018-84a0-297f305d3c88

I was poking around on puzzle blogs recently looking for news and fun information to recycle share with you, and I came across something that intrigued me – the annual Mensa Mind Games event. This year, the event will be held April 16-18 in San Diego, California. At this event, Mensa members get together and play the newest board games non-stop for an entire weekend. As you play the games, you’re required to evaluate each game on a variety of factors, and at the end the top-scoring games get certified as winners by Mensa. Pretty cool, eh?

The only downside to this is that you must be a member of Mensa to play and evaluate the games. Becoming a member of Mensa isn’t hard – you just have to pass an IQ test and score in the top 2% (along with registering and paying the membership fee, of course).

To help you prepare for the test, Mensa created a free and fun online exam called the Mensa Workout. Even if you have no plans to join a worldwide social network of smarty-pantsy people (oh, wait – you read this blog, so you already have! GOTCHA!), the Mensa Workout is a fun collection of brainteasers and logic problems to ponder.

The site Geochecker.com – which provides solution verification services for puzzle caches – seems to be having database problems. When you submit a guess, you get the following error message:

Warning: mysql_query() [function.mysql-query]: Unable to save result set in /home/simusi/public_html/index.php on line 1064
Logging query #1 failed : Table ‘gc3_pointcloud’ is marked as crashed and should be repaired

I sent a note to Goldenhawk, the site operator, to let him know about the issue. But just in case its issues are fatal, here are links to some other free verification services:

• Certitude
• Evince
• GeoCheck

Of these three, I think I like GeoCheck the best … so much, in fact, that I think I may switch all of my puzzles over to it. Among its many virtues:

Custom response

If a user inputs the correct coordinates, you can design a custom response page including user-defined text and images. You may also include additional waypoints in the form of nearby parking, trailheads etc. All coordinates can be downloaded as GPS/LOC files or sent directly to Garmin GPS receivers.

As the cache-owner, you decide if the users must enter the coordinates exactly or if a ‘fuzzy’ solution is allowed choosing between ±3 meters, 10, 30, or even user-defined distances.

Sub-coordinates

Account page

Statistics Page

IP Statistics Page

RSS feed for your cache list