Wired is one of many magazines that has been noticeably suffering from the downturn in the publishing industry, and I had allowed my subscription to lapse a few months ago. This issue, which was guest-edited by J. J. Abrahms, is full of fun little puzzles, and articles about mysterious things, such as the Georgia Guidestones. Even the logo font on the cover has been improved for this issue (I wish they’d keep it!).

Apparently, the puzzles in this issue go a little deeper than they appear on the surface. I imagine the puzzle solvers who visit this website (even those who are not regular Wired readers) will enjoy this issue as well. Check it out!

On a related note, I recently picked up 23 volumes of the Time-Life series, Mysteries of the Unknown, on Ebay, for a song (about a dollar a book). The production values in those old Time-Life books was remarkable, especially when contrasted with the shape the publishing industry is in today.

Enjoy!

All the heavy black areas were knocked off of my Kakuro puzzles. While they are slightly less attractive, I’m told they use up considerably less ink and toner this way, so I guess I’ll keep ‘em. I hope you like the new look.

Meanwhile, I’ll have to figure out something to do with all these odd shaped black pieces I have left over…

Tangram puzzles, anyone?

The effectiveness of magic is greatly reduced when tricks are performed more than once — so try to resist the temptation to view the trick twice. Instead, share it with a friend!

The article amounts to a FAQ, or IAQ (infrequently asked questions) for the puzzle section. There is a little technical information at the end of the article for those attempting to write their own puzzle software.

Puzzle Building and the Creative Mind

Like most small publishers, Ulysses was blindsided when the Sudoku craze hit, and didn’t manage to get any books in the pipeline before the market was glutted with Sudoku books. They were hoping to cash in on the “next Sudoku” and so were a lot of other publishers, including those that had already made a fortune on Sudoku, and were looking for more of the same.

A good place to look for the next Sudoku was Nikoli publishing, the Japanese publisher that popularized Sudoku. Nikoli’s second-most popular puzzle was Kakuro, so this seemed like a good candidate.

So by Christmas of 1996, there were a ton of Kakuro books on the shelves.

So, did the Kakuro gamble pay off?

I’m thinking “no”.

Last year at this time, my local Vroman’s bookstore had a floor to ceiling bookshelf devoted to Sudoku and similar puzzles, with two of those shelves devoted to the glut of Kakuro books that had just come out. There were about an equal number of books devoted to crossword puzzles, and poker was pretty popular too.

This year, however, while the huge number of Sudoku, Poker and Crossword books remains, those two shelves of Kakuro books are gone. In their place are just 5 volumes, mixed in with the Sudoku books. I’ve noticed a similar situation at the local Barnes and Noble as well.

Why is this? Well, there a few things to consider.

1) Sudoku’s popularity was fueled by its regular appearance in major newspapers. In the Los Angeles market, Kakuro does not appear in newspapers, so most local solvers are still unfamiliar with the puzzle. It’s interesting to me that a medium perceived as dying or “in trouble” plays a major role here.

2) The demand for puzzles follows a power curve, one of those “long tail” things, and Kakuro is definitely further down in the tail. Being a second place puzzle doesn’t mean you sell slightly less, it means you sell a lot less. My web logs show that the demand for Sudoku outstrips Kakuro about 10 to 1.

3) It is my belief that the majority of puzzle solvers are what I would call “comfort solvers” – they are not particularly anxious to try new puzzles out. If they find a puzzle they like, they stick to it for a good long while. Most of these solvers prefer easy and intermediate puzzles. Learning a new puzzle amounts to a “hard” puzzle. Comfort food it ain’t.

The Sudoku craze, I believe, will not be repeated for a good long while. Not in the puzzle arena. The last puzzle that achieved that kind of popularity was the venerable crossword.

I sure am liking these Slitherlink puzzles though, I must admit…

Here are some new puzzles I’m working on.

These twelve Slitherlink puzzles use the aperiodic five-fold tiling discovered by Sir Roger Penrose. Not only are the puzzles pretty, but the tiling creates a variety of intersections, which makes the puzzles more interesting.

Download ‘em here…

Thanks to Craig Kaplan for providing the dataset for the tiles!

More importantly, from my point of view, it’s round. Always a good thing in my book.

Click the image to get a larger version.

Update: Here are a couple of new puzzles which use a Penrose tiling grid provided by Craig Kaplan:

Penrose Slitherlink 1

Penrose Slitherlink 2

Now you can find hundreds of free Slitherlink puzzles on my puzzle pages.

If you’re looking for some tactics to help you get started solving these, check out this wikipedia tutorial.

Enjoy!

Thanks to Simon Tatham and Mike Pinna, whose source code I tweaked to generate these puzzles.

For the kids, I’m adding a new collection of mazes in a variety of animal shapes, such as this elephant.

For the non-kids, I’m adding some new logic puzzles, based on my favorites from Nikoli, the Japanese publisher that popularized Sudoku. One of those favorites is Slitherlink, which you can read more about, on Wikipedia.

Some of the software I’m using to generate these puzzles is based on Simon Tatham’s Portable Puzzle Collection, which contains a number of Nikoli puzzles. I modified Mike Pinna’s Slitherlink algorithm to produce symmetrical puzzles, which I prefer, and to minimize the number of clues per puzzle.

Sample Elephant Maze

Sample Slitherlink puzzles.