Puzzlement

[purplemuse]

Ooh, yes.  Games Magazine is wonderful.  I love the 'World's Most Ornery Crossword', the cryptic crosswords, and the outrageous things that Bob Stigger comes up with. 

In the early days of Games Magazine each issue included a fake ad.  A classic was the ad in the 1980s  for the combination word and food processor. 'We won't mince any words talking about our product,  but we could'.  Finding the fake ad was part of the Games Magazine experience.

I mostly get World of Puzzles these days, but I do remember the fake ad, and I was so disappointed when I found out they weren't doing it anymore.

[Camarynne]

I love Games magazine and one time at a yard sale I scored a whole box of back issues, we're talking years of magazines, none of the puzzles done, for $5. I still have them but they're not so pristine anymore--I do the puzzles!

[Bijou]

Thanks for starting this thread.  I LOVE Cryptograms.  I especially love the sort of short ones, because they are
harder than the longer ones.  I don't like the real long ones.  They just become less an excursion and more just an exercise in writing letters in.

[Bijou]

I love that Variety Puzzles is making a spiral bound magazine.  It is such a pleasure to work the puzzles in a flat magazine! 
Pencils....I have a pencil question:
I use number 2 pencils but why is it some are lighter than others and hard to see on the not quite white puzzle page?
Tip:
On Cryptograms I like to run a line of invisible tape over the areas where I will be writing.  It's easy to erase and leaves the puzzle clear to read. 

[Bijou]

Yay!  I just discovered that I LOVE acrostics!  I've only been doing them for a few days, but think my cryptogram experience is helping me somewhat.  I have all these books in which I didn't do the acrostics because I didn't know I liked them.  Now I won't have to buy a book for a long time. 

[Thipu1]

Yes, acrostics are great fun because they're three puzzles in one. 

It's especially nice when the quotation turns out to be from a book you've read.

[guihong]

I have scads of logic problem books-puzzles set up like Thipu, Bijou, Guihong and Purplemuse go out to lunch.  One gets the fish, one gets the roast beef, one gets the chicken...and so on.  Your aim is to find out which diner got which meal, and sat at which seat, wearing what color hat  .  The easiest way to do this is to construct a big grid and solve by elimination.

Besides that, I like crosswords.  I read somewhere that they keep your mind active .

[Thipu1]

I have scads of logic problem books-puzzles set up like Thipu, Bijou, Guihong and Purplemuse go out to lunch.  One gets the fish, one gets the roast beef, one gets the chicken...and so on.  Your aim is to find out which diner got which meal, and sat at which seat, wearing what color hat  .  The easiest way to do this is to construct a big grid and solve by elimination.

Besides that, I like crosswords.  I read somewhere that they keep your mind active .

Oh yes.  'Diagramless' crosswords, variety cryptic puzzles and logic problems require access to a pad of graph paper. 

My favorite logic problem came from a Dell magazine in the 1980s.  It involved a three story shopping center with four shops on each floor.  The solver had to figure out the location of each shop, the name of the owner, what the shops sold and the color of the sign outside each shop.  That required several pages of graph paper taped together but it was great fun.

[Sirius]

I have scads of logic problem books-puzzles set up like Thipu, Bijou, Guihong and Purplemuse go out to lunch.  One gets the fish, one gets the roast beef, one gets the chicken...and so on.  Your aim is to find out which diner got which meal, and sat at which seat, wearing what color hat  .  The easiest way to do this is to construct a big grid and solve by elimination.

Besides that, I like crosswords.  I read somewhere that they keep your mind active .

That's probably why Mr. Sirius is so smart.  He does logic puzzles and crosswords and hard sudokus and all kinds of things like that.  The only time I have to help him with crosswords is when the clue is for something esoteric having to do with astronomy.   He once came out to the kitchen where I was baking a cake and said, "Got one for you.  The clue is 'astronomy's Sandage'"  (The answer is "Allan", after Allan Sandage, a prominent astronomer.)

[Thipu1]

I've heard that too but, I've also heard about studies that show puzzles make no difference. They say that any hobby or interest can help keep people sharp as they age.

One thing I can say is that working British style puzzles and tricky American setters like Elizabeth Gorski make you approach problems from several different angles.  That can be very useful in many situations.

[MandiC76]

Kakuro.
Never caught on very big, so hard to find books now, but I do have an app that I like.
( I guess sudoku crossword would be one way to describe.  Laid out like a crossword with intersecting points, like sudoku you use 1-9 up to once per line, but you have to add up to a number given by the puzzle on the side of each line.  I assume the math part is why it didn't catch on ( and it is highly embarrassing the number of simple math mistakes I make at times)).

I love Kakuro, too. Dell/PennyPress publishes books of cross sums (the "American" version of Kakuro - and I think there's debate about which came first), if that helps you find some puzzles!

[JennJenn68]

Kakuro and its ilk are the Holy Grail to me!  I can never get enough.  Also in the same vein is Killer Sudoku (sometimes called Sum-Doku, I think...)  Regular Sudoku I find boring, now, since even the five-stars don't challenge me.  (Not that I'm talented or anything; if you do anything intensely for long enough, you can't help but get good at it, and there were entire weeks when I would do nothing but Sudoku.)

I like anything with numbers where you actually have to do math.  KenKen is also one of my vices.  I'm kind of ashamed to admit that I probably have about a hundred different puzzle books and magazines at varying stages of completeness scattered all over my basement and stuffed in my bedside table.  I'm a lousy housekeeper to begin with, and this certainly doesn't make keeping things tidy any easier!   

[Bijou]

Kakuro and its ilk are the Holy Grail to me!  I can never get enough.  Also in the same vein is Killer Sudoku (sometimes called Sum-Doku, I think...)  Regular Sudoku I find boring, now, since even the five-stars don't challenge me.  (Not that I'm talented or anything; if you do anything intensely for long enough, you can't help but get good at it, and there were entire weeks when I would do nothing but Sudoku.)

I like anything with numbers where you actually have to do math.  KenKen is also one of my vices.  I'm kind of ashamed to admit that I probably have about a hundred different puzzle books and magazines at varying stages of completeness scattered all over my basement and stuffed in my bedside table.  I'm a lousy housekeeper to begin with, and this certainly doesn't make keeping things tidy any easier!   

Thank heavens!  So I don't hold the world record for the most in progress puzzle books. 

[Mental Magpie]

I have scads of logic problem books-puzzles set up like Thipu, Bijou, Guihong and Purplemuse go out to lunch.  One gets the fish, one gets the roast beef, one gets the chicken...and so on.  Your aim is to find out which diner got which meal, and sat at which seat, wearing what color hat  .  The easiest way to do this is to construct a big grid and solve by elimination.

Besides that, I like crosswords.  I read somewhere that they keep your mind active .

Those.  Every year I go to Penny Puzzles and buy last year's puzzles in bulk for a discounted price.  When I can't always take the magazines with me, I peruse the apps on my phone for logic puzzles.

I fly through Sudoku in minutes.

Dell Variety Puzzles?  Have loads of 'em.

It's good to know I have competition out there for most progress in puzzle books

[Seraphia]

I have scads of logic problem books-puzzles set up like Thipu, Bijou, Guihong and Purplemuse go out to lunch.  One gets the fish, one gets the roast beef, one gets the chicken...and so on.  Your aim is to find out which diner got which meal, and sat at which seat, wearing what color hat  .  The easiest way to do this is to construct a big grid and solve by elimination.

Besides that, I like crosswords.  I read somewhere that they keep your mind active .

Does that kind of puzzle have a definitive name? I got a free pack of them for my Kindle, and that was called "Grid Detective," but saying "grid puzzles" usually requires further explanation when I'm looking for a book of them.