Ten Words / Bart Bonte Games

My friend Max Woghiren has posted a web game called Ten Words.

The goal is to fill a five-by-five word grid one letter at a time so that as many rows and columns of the completed word grid contain a word of at least three letters. You have two letter placement options at each turn but don’t know about upcoming letters, so you have to be strategic about your choices. You can play one game per day for leaderboard consideration and additional games in a “practice” mode. I love the press-your-luck element to the game, though I tend to set up an ambitious letter skeleton and then crash and burn in a spate of vowels. Give it a try, and see if you have better luck than me.

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Eric Berlin recently turned me on to the app games of Bart Bonte. I’ve downloaded and completed What’s Inside the Box, Yellow, and Red. Each game comprises a series of puzzle “quickies” that involve pattern induction, logical sequencing, spatial reasoning, and occasional wordplay. None of the puzzles have instructions, but you can request hints. “Lights Out” variants are a bit overused, but the overall puzzle collections are clever and the aesthetics are very attractive.

 

Vote for Puzzah!

USA Today 10 Best Readers’ Choice has included Puzzah! in the 2018 Best Escape Room category. This wonderful honor is due to a nomination process involving dozens of escape room reviewers, but I want to give a special shout out to Dan Kaplan and the Denver team of Esc Room Addict. The ERA team has been a huge supporter of Puzzah! and provided valuable feedback for our experiences.

Please support Puzzah! with by voting here. Voting is free and requires no registration. You can vote from each device once a day through October 2. Thanks!

Las Vegas Minicon X

The tenth Las Vegas minicon was held last weekend at the Embassy Suites east of the Strip. Michael Coleman who proposed the first minicon back in 2009 was unable to attend this year, so I guess I now have the distinction of being the only person to attend every minicon to date. I’m sure I can cash in that achievement for a personal sized can of Pringles at some point in the future.

First-timers at this years minicon included Alison Muratore, Barbara Thompson, and Wally Firlit. I knew Alison from NPL cons but enjoyed the opportunity to talk with her about work and art and life, and even brainstorm some ideas for a puzzle hunt she is writing for her work team. Barbara I met for the first time, though in conversation I discovered that we had met before at a DASH event in Denver. She and her friend David are bright and funny and both easily settled into the minicon groove. Wally stayed off-site and I only saw him at a group dinner and some of the escape rooms. I don’t recall interacting with him in the past but he recognized me from crossword tournaments in LA. I was inspired by his enthusiasm for solving puzzles.

The puzzle centerpiece of the minicon is typically the Mark Halpin Labor Day extravaganza. The eight of us staying at the Embassy Suites formed one large solving team this year’s ganza titled “It Takes Two.” It’s an excellent set of puzzles that can be downloaded here. We deduced the gimmick of the extravaganza fairly early and still struggled to make progress. We had about half the solutions by Saturday afternoon when we suspended solving for a late lunch. We didn’t resume until Sunday morning when we finally exchanged puzzles from the previous day, made some breakthroughs, and rallied to the finish.

We enjoyed some other puzzles and games around happy hour. Trip Payne presented a very fun Jeopardy! game that I hope he brings to a future event. Dave Tuller quizzed us with some pub trivia. I led some rounds of Sporculation. I got to play Decrypto, partnered with Alison in one game and Tanis O’Connor in another. Trip got annoyed with some of the clues that came up in my partnership with Tanis. I used “Uno” to clue FISH and she used “Francis” for PIG. These examples probably cross the boundaries of what some would consider ethical cluing, but we were always able to explain the semantic relationship the other intended.

I played three escape rooms over the weekend. The best of the three was Playtime, the second chapter in Lost Games’ Solitude Heights series (we played the first chapter last year). The scenic design was excellent (and creepy) and the puzzles challenging. I had some trouble coping with the dim lighting and we had a largish solving group so I opted to watch from the sidelines most of the time. Red Riding Hood at Number 1 Escape Room and The Lair of the Puzzlemaster at Trapped were fair to middling. Both had attractive fabrication but a lot of puzzle cliches. Lair had an interesting narrative branch point: A group that makes a wrong guess on the final puzzle receives a “consolation” puzzle that must be solved in four minutes. Hinting becomes progressively generous during the four minutes so most groups can complete the puzzle and, while not eligible for the leader board, end the mission with a feeling of success.

We hit several of my favorite dining establishments like Bouchon and Firefly. Based on a recommendation from Michael, we tried José Andrés’ Bazaar Meat at SLS casino hotel. We sat at the bar (which I love) and ordered mainly small plates from the Bar Centro menu, including cotton candy foie gras, deep-fried chicken croquettes, and beef and parmesan grissini. I would definitely go back. For drinks, Tanis found Bound at the Cromwell. I liked the drinks though the bar was close enough to the casino floor to lose some ambience. On Sunday night we ended up at Peppermill in the wee hours and I made the mistake of joining in on a Scorpion cocktail. I must remember not to drink anything served in a container bigger than my head.

Minicon X was on the low-key side, and that was just fine with me. August was a stressful work month and I am taking advantage of all the vacation time I can get. I would have been content lounging poolside, listening to podcasts, and working on a clipboard full of puzzles, but I was happy to put that agenda aside for more social activities with my minicon family!