Thirteen Orphans posted:

When I was a kid I had a book of cryptographic puzzles (think like letter cyphers or Zodiac Killer/The Riddler stuff) that were individual puzzles that also had a meta puzzle that could only be solved by analyzing all the completed puzzles and little side puzzles in the margins. I know there’s no way you all would know that particular book but does anybody know anything that would scratch that itch?

Flint_Paper posted:

If the cryptic chat has got you curious about cryptics, I'm about to stream today's Guardian cryptic crossword over on my twitch.

Mondays are generally the easiest of the week, and I make sure to explain the thought process behind all my answers. It's a nice chill time! (With some silliness)

https://twitch.tv/brainmage

https://twitch.tv/brainmage

Parahexavoctal posted:

Every now and then, when I've got a deadline, I have to temporarily block myself from visiting Otto Janko's logic puzzle archive (yes, it's in German, but English versions of the instructions are provided also, and Chrome will automatically translate).

Other time sinks include Jim "Krazydad" Bumgardner's puzzle archive (especially the Variety Slitherlinks) and Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzles Collection, which includes small puzzle generators.

sephiRoth IRA posted:

Really great stream man, very entertaining and educational

KleenexCMW posted:

There's a fun book called Maze of Games I received as a gift years ago that blends a story with mazes and multiple types of puzzles, mostly word-based like crosswords and ciphers. I've been working on it off and on for a while and have inserted multiple loose sheets of paper with my scribbles trying to solve all the connected pages. There are multiple sections where you have to complete a maze with movement rules and restrictions to determine the order you complete the puzzles in. Each puzzle then has a letter or word that link together to solve that chunk of the book. I believe the author is also a board game designer.

http://www.lonesharkgames.com/maze/

Parahexavoctal posted:

Other time sinks include Jim "Krazydad" Bumgardner's puzzle archive (especially the Variety Slitherlinks)

somekindofguy posted:

Re: The Maze of Games; Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but one of Mike Selinker's coworkers accused him of some toxic poo poo back in November,so I'm very hesitant to recommend anything he worked on. He has apologized and apparently is taking steps to better himself,but I'll let you folks decide if that's enough.

Parahexavoctal posted:

Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzles Collection

hexwren posted:

hexwren posted:

I was going to post about that one myself - I have dumped an unreasonable number of hours down map, rectangles, light up, net, pattern, and untangle

of the wordle-alikes, I've been playing (alongside the original)

quordle (four wordles at once, 9 guesses)
worldle (geography based on the silhouette of a country or territory - decent, but the game has a massive boner for selecting tiny antarctic islands)
heardle (the new zero-thousand dollar name that tune)
framed (six increasingly-obvious screenshots of a movie, you provide the title)
and I just started waffle, which has the same five-by-five-minus-four grid as squardle, but is based around the letters all starting on the grid and you having 15 moves to swap letter tiles until all six words are in place - every puzzle can be solved in ten moves with perfect play, so your score is 1-5 on any given success)

I am really loving bad at crosswords - when my partner and I used to get games magazine, she'd get the real-deal cryptics and poo poo, I'd get the easy one with the clues in the black squares

but my favorite puzzle in there was always paint by pairs (or, as the puzzle manufacturer calls it on their website, link-a-pix)

where you have to take a grid like this



and fill in lines between matching numbers of the length indicated by the number

to get a picture like this (this is an easier one)

hexwren posted:

quordle (four wordles at once, 9 guesses)

Watermelon Daiquiri posted:

There's also https://www.redactle.com/, which is kinda like semantle except you are trying to guess one of the top 10k wiki articles by guessing words/numbers in the article (like if it was 'College of Cardinals' you'd have to work around to find sentence patterns that can reference time periods, then go on to general people and geography terms, then try things that could relate to that like religion, zero in on catholic and keep trying terms that would fit what you've uncovered. It's rather fun.

Amoeba102 posted:

The rules of the 1000 are such that you dont guess each word but the position of letters. I took 113 guesses.

Flint_Paper posted:

Mid-way through the first lockdown I decided to start streaming cryptic crosswords on twitch as a sort of desperate grab for human contact. I've been doing it every weekday lunchtime for nearly two years now (Christ!), and my love/hate relationship with cryptics hasn't changed.

I was initially drawn to them because I like puns and wordplay. I think there's something really fun about playing about with meaning and subverting expectations. Cryptic crosswords are like that, but turned up to eleven and written by and for bastards.

If you've not seen a cryptic crossword, they're like normal crossword, but set by a smug leather armchair from a gentleman's club in the 1800s.

Regular crosswords have clues where the whole clue is the definition, like "Seats around a table (6)" for chairs, while cryptic crossword clues are dicks. Generally* the first or last part of the clue is the definition, and the rest of the clue is stuff you need to gently caress around with to get there. While the clue may look like a sentence, it's actually a stupid series of codes and instructions, and you need to train yourself to stop reading things like a human being, and pretend to live in a magical place where the concept of meaning is entirely fluid. One of the easiest traps to fall into is to read the clue like a sentence. Don't do that! Mush words together. Ignore punctuation! (Or, do do that, because this time it's an extended cryptic definition, or the punctuation is actually a vital part of the clue).

You see the word flower in a clue? Bet you thought of a plant, didn't you? Like a rose or a daisy. You idiot. You stupid piece of poo poo. It actually means river. You know. Something that flows. A flower. gently caress you. Unless it doesn't. Unless it means flower. In which case also gently caress you.

Supply? Like in economics? NO. That's an anagram indicator. You know. "In a supple way". You know what else is an anagram indicator? Everything. As of this point in this post, I've typed at least sixteen things that could be considered an anagram indicator in a cryptic crossword clue. See if you can find them! It might be fun! (It won't be.)

Sailor? That means "tar". Or maybe "AB". Or maybe "AS". Or maybe a hundred other things. I hope you like Bridge, fucko, because you sure need to know poo poo about that. Church? CH! Because of the Ordnance Survey maps! Or maybe RC, because Roman Catholic. Or maybe COE, because Church of England. WE'RE NOT DONE YET.

Work is OP. Sex is IT. Posh is U. Why? Because gently caress you that's why. (Incidentally, "Y" could mean "unknown", like Variables. X & Y).

Broadcast could well be an anagram clue, but it could also indicate a homophone. You know, like how heir and air sound the same. Also "air" could be a homophone indicator, because when you broadcast something you air it. So could "picked up", "heard", or "announced".

"Reverend" could be an instruction to swap the first letters of two words around, because of this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Archibald_Spooner

Here. Have a huge bastard of a list of things that could be an abbreviation. Or could be something else entirely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossword_abbreviations

"Presides over church with certain appearances (6)" that's right it's "CHAIRS", MOTHERFUCKER. "Presides over" is the definition, "Church" gives "ch" and "certain appearances" gives "airs", as in "airs and graces"

"Remember what, until her rude awakening, Goldilocks didn't have?(4,2,4)" was a clue in the Guardian cryptic a while ago that made me genuinely angry. I mean, i love it, and think it's really clever, but at the same time OH MY GOD.

Answer: It's a double definition. "Remember" and "what, until her rude awakening, Goldilocks didn't have?". "Bear in mind" I love it. I hate it. I love it.

Question marks? Indicate even more fuckery-boutery. Exclamation marks? Maybe it's a pun. Or the setter is feeling extra smug about it.

Sometimes, part of the clue is in the god drat answer itself.

When I solve them, I genuinely exist in a state where I'm both impressed by the cleverness of the setter, but also hate their goddamn guts. It's great fun.

Want to know more? FifteenSquared is a good resource for people who want to get more into cryptics: it's a blog where they break down puzzles from that day's papers, and explain how they work: https://www.fifteensquared.net/

Also, as I said, I stream myself solving them at 1pm UK time most weekdays. It's more fun that it sounds (and I swear I'm less insufferable than this post makes out), so if you want to join me and a lovely and diverse audience of 60 or so people (turns out a whole lot of queer folk enjoy watching a man solve a cryptic crossword. Who knew?), you can do so here: https://twitch.tv/brainmage

https://twitch.tv/brainmage

_{*except, of course, for when it's not}

Leon Sumbitches posted:

Thanks for this post. I'm pretty decent at typical crosswords and can do most Saturday's NYT. Last month I decided to try cryptics and just hit a wall, day after day, where I simply couldn't understand the clues EVEN LOOKING AT THE ANSWERS for many of them. I think these links should be helpful in breaking through, cheers!

Flint_Paper posted:

In other puzzle news, this was a sweet article about "generation puzzles", which I hadn't heard about before: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/04/puzzle-will-outlast-world/629651/

quote:

Jacobs’ Ladder is a physical manifestation of so much of what I love about puzzles. Doing them can make us better thinkers—more creative and more incisive

flavor.flv posted:

That's nothing, I have a puzzle that takes even longer to solve. It's a crossword but the rules say you have to wait for the universe to revert to a singularity and explode again, eventually forming stars, planets, life, and crossword puzzles anew in between each letter

Tunicate posted:

Says the man whose 'puzzle' has a known solution where the only difficult part is how incredibly tedious and time consuming it would be to implement.

Flint_Paper posted:

I have just solved this month's Viz cryptic crossword and I feel like a KING. A rude, rude king.



(For non-UK goons, Viz is a comic/magazine with a base, crass, scatalogical and northern sense of humour, and the cryptic is puerile, gutter-minded, and hard as nails. Plus it takes some definitions/wordplay from it's own glossary of made up rude words, which makes things even harder.)

Captain Hygiene posted:

That sounds both hilarious and terrifying.

Flint_Paper posted:

Stick tongue in, up inside vag on Sunday (4)
Depraved goblin hosed sprite on the bottom (7)
loving good French man (7)
Producing red poo poo, appears nervous (7)