You might be waiting for Matt Gaffney’s Weekly Crossword Contest this Friday and every Friday. You might be solving Patrick Blindauer’s Las Vegas Puzzlefest even as we speak (there’s still time! contest deadline is in February). You may be hankering for more hardcore puzzlehunt/puzzle extravaganza action. Good news! There are two more puzzle suites in the works via Kickstarter.com fundraising:
Trip Payne’s Puzzle Extravaganza II puts the emphasis on word puzzles. Unlike the MIT-style puzzlehunt puzzles, Trip’s puzzles will make sense. No lateral-thinking guesswork to figure out what you’re supposed to do—just crosswordy sorts of challenges with a final meta puzzle to crack. I really was going to skip this—I’m pretty puzzled out these days, frankly—but then I saw the added inducements at the $20 supporter level and jumped in. The suite of puzzles plus a 21×21 themeless, plus a 21×21 “Something Different” crossword (wacky fill), plus a 25×25 cryptic? Be still, my heart! Trip is so good at all three of those formats, and those extra puzzles will not be published on his website but I gotta have ’em. For $10, you can opt for just the Extravaganza, no bonus puzzles.
Roy Leban’s team at Puzzazz is creating Unique Puzzles for a Yankee Echo Alfa Romeo, a puzzlehunt. You may need to do things like figure out a code hidden in a photo of pizza, or solve a sudoku/word search mishmash. For me personally, a little puzzlehunt action goes a long way, and my appetite for such challenges is limited. But if you crave puzzles that really work you over, that call all the lobes of your brain into action, check out this Y.E.A.R. of puzzles. (Eric Harshberger’s puzzlehunt pencil might even help you out with all of its handy codes in one place.)