A week ago, I saw on G+ that a friend of mine was planning a Halloween party. "I should maybe write puzzles for that," I thought. And then an obvious connection between the host's first name and horror clicked in my brain, and I realized I couldn't not write puzzles for it.

I tried to skew the difficulty towards the relatively easy, since I hadn't ( Read more... )

Mister Señor Love Daddy
Brother Elvis
Gator Purify
Zeus Carver
Augustus Eugene Gibbons
Lucius Best
Lorenzo Council
Ninja Ninja
Octopus

For the heck of it, here's (a revised form of) a meta that went with a proposed 2010 MIT Hunt theme that didn't get picked, and which can't really be used in an actual hunt anymore for reasons that will become obvious upon solving.

BLIZZARD
CHARGE
DRILL
FLASH
GUTS
HARD
ICE
METAL
NAPALM
RING
TOMAHAWK
TOP

The 2011 CiSRA Puzzle Competition happened last week. Teams were limited to four people or fewer, which meant that several of our usual Plugh crew had to splinter off and form Xyzzy, a second team.

It went... well.

If you missed the competition but are interested in trying some of the puzzles, here're my recommendations (most links go to PDFs):

Art ( Read more... )

12/100, and a third of those I've forgotten enough that I couldn't tell you more than the vaguest plot summary.

( I am a bad geek. )

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I set aside the most recent issue of P&A to serve as in-car entertainment during the long road trip down from Seattle to San Francisco for jedusor's 21st birthday party. What I failed to mention was that I'd slipped these into the packet for her to discover:
( Logic puzzles! )

This bit of puzzle design philosophy popped into my head during a conversation with thatwesguy  this weekend, and I wanted to get it down so I wouldn't forget it:

All things equal, a puzzle that is reasonably solvable without Internet research is more satisfying than one that isn't.

( Local man finds answer by solving just 14 weird puzzles. Click to find out how! )

( Spoilers within. )

I'm semi-miraculously up earlier than necessary for P&A Issue 31, which gives me some time to post my log of Issue 30.

( Happy Two-Months-or-So Anniversary, Issue 30! )