every day i'm puzzlin
cool girls like puzzles
I love puzzles. I love crossword puzzles, I love number puzzles, I love cryptic clues, I like jigsaw puzzles, I like Sokoban puzzles and Nonograms, I love puzzles I can play on my phone and puzzles I can play at home on the TV. I love, love, love puzzles that require a notebook and pen. I like murder mysteries and horror stories, not because they are scary, but because they are, as I will argue, a puzzle to untangle. I believe all puzzles (yes, even a Sudoku) are in fact tiny narratives in themselves. There’s the establishing scene or set up, followed often by a misdirect or a moment of doubt (you’ll never find the answer!!) and then the beautiful moment of clarity and resolution. That ah-ha moment when all the threads come together. Surely that’s better than any hero’s journey?
Why do I like puzzles so much? I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Puzzles resist entropy which makes them powerful: they reverse the universe’s inevitable descent into uncertainty by turning chaos into order. They create meaning out of so-called randomness. I’m trying to make it sound fancy, but really, I like puzzles because they reassure me that things will be okay. That there is, actually, an answer to every problem and when I find it, it’s like receiving a pat on the head from the cosmos. There you go, puzzles seem to say to me, you are good and clever and things will be okay.
Here are some puzzles I have enjoyed recently:
Puzzmo
Puzzmo, which launched last year, before being acquired by Hearst, aims to recreate the classic newspaper puzzle page but in new and exciting ways. In part masterminded by Zach Gage, a name familiar to many a mobile puzzle fan (Gage is behind such favourites as Flipflop Solitaire, Really Bad Chess and Spell Tower), Puzzmo features various different puzzles. Some are well known such as your standard crossword, some completely new, such as Bongo and Pile-Up Poker which ask its players to look at words and playing cards in different ways. The fun of Puzzmo is that each day there are new puzzles waiting to be completed. Much like Wordle and Connections it aims to create a social aspect to puzzling, with leaderboards and sharable stats. The design is delightful and I especially enjoy its crosswords which aim to introduce a fresh perspective to its clues, often highlighting the interests or cultural background of its setters, allowing for enjoyable and unqiue discoveries.
Lorelei and the Laser Eyes
Made by Simogo, the incredibly cool Swedish indie game studio behind mobile mystery game Device 6 and the joyful rhythmic Sayonara Wild Hearts, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is a puzzle game with a capital P. It tells you so itself in the opening scene when the game demands you grab a pen and paper. And oh boy do you need one. There are word puzzles and number puzzles abound: you’ll need to understand 24-hour time, Roman numerals, astrological charts and strobogrammatic numbers. To unlock its shortcut doors you’ll need to solve an old-school style book of logic puzzles. It delights in esoteric knowledge, otherworldly symbology and asking for a leap of reasoning that seems too far-fetched to be correct… but then it is. And when it works, it’s beautiful. It presents you with a puzzle box in the form of a mysterious hotel with even more mysteries within (including a literal room of puzzle boxes). The whole thing is wrapped up in a sublimly stylish neo-noir bow, pairing European architecture and off-beat characters with a thematic story that explores art, memory and the cost of creativity. Go play it and then come talk to me about it.
Trying to Decide What to Have For Dinner
This is an endless puzzle, best played in co-op mode with a partner or friend you can text each evening. The challenge comes in remembering the contents of your fridge and/or freezer and matching this up to the running list of recipes you have in your brain at any one time: from tried and tested recipes passed down through the generations to something you half remember seeing on TikTok four days previously. Alternatively, you can go to Tescos every night on your way home from work and spend all of your money that way. If you solve it correctly this puzzle can turn out spectacularly well, but you do have to start from scratch each day.
Hidden Object Games (various)
These Hidden Object Game puzzles have been particularly fun because I’ve not even been playing them myself. My wife and I lately have really got into watching the streamer Gab Smolders play these HOGs (as they are known) yet the appeal of watching someone else play these games may not at first be obvious. The point-and-click gameplay is incredibly simple, I hesitate to really call them puzzles but they ask the player to find certain objects, combine them with others, to then reveal yet more objects and so on and so on, until whatever incomprehensible story is concluded. The animation in these games is woeful, the characters never more than cardboard cut-outs (literally and emotionally) and yet watching Gab play through them with her light-hearted commentary is incredibly soothing for the soul. Watching her play removes any of the frustration of solving a puzzle for yourself and simply allows the mechanics of the game to unfold before you. This object goes with that object: add the rag to the stick to make a torch and burn away the cobwebs etc. etc. and onto the next screen and the next. Then there are what are known as ‘classic HOG’ screens: static Where’s Wally style challenges that Gab sits back for her viewers to spot for themselves. It’s both captivating and brain-neutralising at the same time. I highly recommend.
Reading the plot of a horror film on Wikipedia
I’m sure I’ve talked about this before. How I can’t watch horror films (too scary!) but that I love to know the plot of horror films, specifically ‘the twist’, by reading about them on Wikipedia. To me, horror is pure plot, its x + y = z. I want to know why the house is haunted and what happens because of it. I think horror stories are actually puzzle stories. In my opinion, the best ones provide an answer to their puzzles: everyone has a secret doppelganger, the orphan is really a crazy woman, the cabin in the woods is part of an eldritch bargain to avoid the end of the world, they were ghosts all along… Because what I want at the end of a good horror/puzzle story is the moment of catharsis. To understand finally. We learn how to solve this particular puzzle and feel better because now it won’t happen to us.
Wilmot Works It Out
I was a little obsessed with Wilmot Works It Out when it was released back in October. The sequel to the equally enjoyable puzzler Wilmot’s Warehouse, Works It Out invites you the player, and Wilmot, to take a break from their warehouse inventory management duties and enjoy some puzzles from the comfort of your own home. In essence, this is a jigsaw puzzle game. But one with such delightful drawings and a cosy Midlands setting, that I played it entirely with a smile on my face. The trick of Works It Out is that the jigsaw pieces are not like regular jigsaw pieces, they are all squares and so as such there are no corner or edge pieces to help guide you, nor do you know what picture you are making. Your only clues are matching colours and shapes to one another, which is easy enough until you realise that you’re given several puzzles at once and there is some clever trickery going on in the pictures to lead you (playfully) astray. All this runs parallel to a charming story of a growing friendship between Wilmot and his postie, Sam, who drops off yet more puzzle pieces each day and tries to encourage Wilmot to join her on her various hikes and holidays. Puzzle perfection.
For more puzzle goodness sign up to Puzzmo or check out the Thinky Games website.