I was happy to back this new Kickstarter campaign by PZLR reader Jason Murphy:
Do you like knots, dilemmas, secrets, lock-and-keys, mazes, brainteasers, anomalies, queries, intricacy, perplexity, or riddles?
What about knowingness, obscurity, why, inscrutabilities, enigmata, puzzles, double meaning bewilderments, mysteries, representationalisms, runes, or conundrum?
If so, you will like this book. It is what I call a mega-puzzle. A mega-puzzle uses a large variety of ciphers, codes, and clues in various puzzles to total up to one single answer.
He’s looking for a meager $1,000, and it only takes a $13 pledge to get a copy of the book. Let’s make this happen.
This Bright River and me
Tomorrow is the release date for This Bright River, the new novel by Chicago author Patrick Somerville. It is a ceaselessly engaging book, often brutally so. It wears its Midwestern roots and themes proudly, taking place mostly in rural Wisconsin and featuring characters returning home to understand their own lives and the lives of their family. I’ve read it, and I loved it. And I’m not just saying that because I helped write it.
Well, I wrote one page of it.
Puzzles play a big part in the book and in the life of the protagonist Ben. He used to make them, and during the book he spends much of his time unravelling a real-life one. I worked with Patrick to compose an original puzzle that appears halfway through the book. It’s a good one. And because Patrick is a bastard, he gives no answer, leaving it up to you to solve it. So far, he tells me, no one has come close.
Anyway, don’t take my word for it. Here’s what some really smart critics have to say:
“A remarkable achievement…[This Bright River] is a stellar, bruising book about how place forms character and our capacity to transform ourselves.”
- Chicago Tribune
Part love story, part murder mystery, part mediation on violence, part exploration of what home can and should mean, this novel roams wide and far, in terms of its story and even its geography.
- O Magazine
Somerville has a gift for spurring dialogue, and the meandering narrative tributaries he explores stoke our curiosity and build suspense
- Booklist
Somerville is after something grand here, using nonlinear storytelling and shifting points of view to investigate elusive truths and to explore the nature of both delusion and evil.
- Time Out New York
There’s a release party for This Bright River tomorrow at the Book Cellar in Chicago. I won’t be there, but some of my puzzles will be — Patrick will be using them to give away a few free copies of the book. Stop by, meet the author, solve a puzzle, and win a book.
(Update: The book is now available on Amazon, Powell’s and lots of other places.)
What is your favorite logic puzzle?
Someone asked that on Quora. One puzzle in particular has been keeping me up at night.
One hundred prisoners have been newly ushered into prison. The warden tells them that starting tomorrow, each of them will be placed in an isolated cell, unable to communicate amongst each other. Each day, the warden will choose one of the prisoners uniformly at random with replacement, and place him in a central interrogation room containing only a light bulb with a toggle switch. The prisoner will be able to observe the current state of the light bulb. If he wishes, he can toggle the light bulb. He also has the option of announcing that he believes all prisoners have visited the interrogation room at some point in time. If this announcement is true, then all prisoners are set free, but if it is false, all prisoners are executed. The warden leaves, and the prisoners huddle together to discuss their fate. Can they agree on a protocol that will guarantee their freedom?
You know when you can sense the solution is there, just out of your grasp, but you’re close? That.
This is NOBOX, which won the 2011 Puzzle Design Competition. “Lock the box, and then unlock it. The starting/unlocked state is with the boxes separate and no loose internal parts. The goal/locked state is with the small box inside the larger box (enclosing the internal space) and again with no loose internal parts.”
Here’s a full list of entrants.
Cut the Rope for the iPhone & iPad. My newest addiction. I’ve burned through the first 80 levels (out of 175!) in the last three days. Beautiful graphics, clever puzzles, and above all a great concept for a multitouch device. Five stars.
Esquire Challenges iPad Owners to the Hardest Puzzle Ever (Mashable)
Esquire has released an iPad app the publication is calling “the hardest puzzle ever.” It is certainly very difficult. The game combines Rubik’s Cube-style puzzles with riddles — including those with and without Google-able answers — of scaling difficulty. After successfully completing each level, users can opt to print out and assemble 3D trophies, a clever addition.
The Master Theorem: A Society of Solvers
As of this writing, I’m currently in 842nd place on the Master List of solvers at TheMasterTheorem.com. This puts me in roughly the 88th percentile. Not bad, I suppose, but that’s 841 solvers who have figured out more than me, and I just can’t let that be.
The Master Theorem is my newest obsession. Some mad genius — who only goes by the name M — has built an intricate, thoughtful, well-designed, and beautifully clever website that lands directly in my puzzle-obsessed wheelhouse. The central element of the site is a series of original puzzles, posted weekly. But unlike, say, this site, where the comments are open and the only reward is the pleasure of knowing you figured it out, The Master Theorem requires sign-up, and tallies your score as you solve. More puzzles you solve, more points you get. More hints you ask for, fewer points you get. And you can track your status against all the other solvers as you go.
A puzzle from the site. One of my favorites.
As you might guess from a site dedicated to puzzling, it’s not all cut and dry. Dozens of puzzles lay hidden across the site, and it’s up to you to find and solve them. Do so, and you’ll be rewarded with points — and seals. Right now I’m up to 18 seals, and that’s out of a possible 41. I’m ashamed to admit how much time I’ve spent clicking around at random shit on the page. Not to mention the time I’ve spend solving the puzzles once I find them.
The new puzzles arrive at midnight on Thursdays. Which means less than 24 hours until the next one. So yeah, I’ve got plans tonight.
Hints for puzzles #63 and #64
The last two puzzles have been doozies. No one has gotten either so far. I knew they’d be tough, but I not so tough they weren’t fun. In the interest of remedying that, here is a hint for each of them:
Puzzle #63: What Comes Next
Hint: There are six items in the series, and I’m asking for the seventh. The key to the puzzle is understanding the connection between each picture and its number position in the series.
Puzzle #64: A Taxing Cipher
Hint: For one, it has nothing to do with taxes. I just said that because it was Tax Day. The key here is noting that the letters in the puzzle are halfway arbitrary. Just not totally arbitrary. Those letters are key to solving the puzzle, but a direct translation of letters into something else isn’t the way to go. It’s actually much simpler.
Feel free to ask questions in the comments to each puzzle and I’ll answer them as I see fit.
MIT Museum puzzle hunt at the Cambridge Science Festival
Solve the MIT Museum’s 2011 puzzle mystery and discover the long-lost secret of MIT founder William Barton Rogers! Bring a team of about 2-6 family or friends (best for middle school students and up), search the galleries for clues and see if you can crack the code. No advance registration needed; come anytime. All teams that complete the puzzle will get a reward (while supplies last!), but the first five teams to solve the mystery will get special goodie bags! Be prepared for a challenge - this hunt is written specially for MIT’s 150th anniversary by members of the National Puzzlers League.
The hunt takes place on April 30th from 11 to 4. Learn more details on the MIT Museum website.
