If you dig puzzle suites with meta answers, you’re going to love Patrick Blindauer’s new Las Vegas Puzzlefest. It’s like a casino’s all-you-can-eat buffet, only with puzzles instead of greasy food.
The fastest finisher gets one of the grand prizes (a full set of Patrick’s available puzzle books), while the winners of the other grand prize and the runner-up prizes are drawn from among the people who submit the meta answer by February 8. So maniacal speed-solving is totally optional here, and you can certainly use the full two months if you want to.
Visit Patrick’s site to order the Las Vegas Puzzlefest. $11.11 for 11 crosswords; no added charge for the meta puzzle challenge.
Wowie! Thanks for the splashy picture and kind words!
When I started doing this 4 years ago, I did it through Kickstarter on the heels of Eric Berlin. I had only been working for Sterling for about a year, so it took a lot longer for me to lay out the puzzles than it does now, let me tell you! After the first year, I started a website where I could announce and sell new projects; this allowed me to keep more of the income since Kickstarter and Amazon Marketplace (the $ handlers) weren’t taking their cut (about 20%). My money handler for the last 3 years has been PayPal, and except for the occasional hiccup, it seems to work juuust fine.
That first year, my Holiday Puzzlefest had 189 participants and 100 people correctly solved the meta. The second year, my Summer Puzzlefest “I Know Where I Was Last Summer” had 180 solvers but a mere 14 meta-solvers (I have since added a puzzle to that set to make it more accessible). Last year’s Musical Puzzlefest “Play On!” saw a jump to 208 people, with 67 meta-solvers. As for this year, we just broke 150 and the puzzles aren’t even out yet!
Certainly a response like this (and to things like the AV Crosswords Fun-raiser) shows that people want Quality puzzles, are willing to fork over their hard-earned cash for them, and can get them directly from the source without depending on a newspaper or magazine. It’s “Puzzles to the People” time, puzzle people, and it is a glorious thing.
Thanks for reading my early-morning ramblings. Hope to see you on Saturday, 12/8/12, at 3pm Eastern for the kick-off my Las Vegas Puzzlefest “Strip Teaser!”
Best,
Patrick