Friday Cheat Sheet

Okay, so just like last week we had two puzzles. One without any words and another consisting entirely of words. Also, my very first acrostic which I think I mentioned before how obscenely long it took me to make it. I wish I could find a way to better present those kind of puzzles online, because really if you wanted to solve it, you'd really have to print out both the clues and puzzle picture and do it by hand, and my God people we live in the twenty-first century! You should be able to solve acrostics on your laptop while you zip through the air in your fully automated flying car as your personal robot butler massages your feet. Well, one out of three ain't bad. Anyway, the answers to all of your questions, including life the universe and everything (42) after the jump!

Question Mark? Period-ical.

So I've got another image puzzle for you folks. Below is a series of twenty covers from contemporary magazines all of which should be able to be picked up at any standard periodical retailer. Of course, just like last time, I've removed the titles to each. How many can you name? I'll give you a hint: Hustler isn't one of them. Neither is The National Review. I didn't want to be offensive.

Cheat Sheet

I hear your tormented cries. "Answers!" you scream through your gritted teeth as you dance in pain and fury, "We demand answers!!" and while I don't have answers for everything, I do have answers for the two puzzles I posted earlier this week. So if you wanna spoil yourself, just continue reading this post!!

And the word of the day is...

Here is a Sudoku puzzle for you featuring letters instead of numbers!

And on a completely unrelated note, here is a funny joke.

Crosswords - The Pick Up Artist

Hey, beautiful. I couldn't help but notice you standing across the room, looking beautiful and lonely. And I remember thinking that all you needed was an arm around your shoulder and someone to talk to. What are you drinking? Looks tasty. Can I have a... No, no.... You don't have to call over the bouncer. Ha. Ha. I was just joking, see look at me. I'm laughing! You're laughing! Wow, God. It's good to laugh. Ha. Ha. Ha. Wow. You know, it's amazing, I feel like we just met and yet I'm already feeling this connection to you. Like I've already spent time camped outside your bedroom window with binoculars. What? No! No way! No! That must have been someone else driving a red Toyota Camry. Say, let's change the subject, you know I don't mean to be forward but, is it just me or do you seem a bit uncomfortable right now? Hmm? How about we ditch this crazy joint and go back to my place. I've got a pantry full of rip olives and a DVR filled with Hoarder's episodes, huh? How bout it? Or we could swing by here and solve my new crossword puzzle, or we could-- Woah! Woah! Okay, okay! I get the idea! You don't have to spray me with mace in the face twice!

Judging a Book by its Cover

I'm not going to waste time talking about why I haven't updated this blog for a while, since it doesn't really matter. Actually, I hadn't even thought much about this blog until last weekend I published a new crossword puzzle (and there are more on the way!) and it occurred to me that my profile directs people to this website.

So it occurred to me that I might as well give them something to look at, eh? So here's a new visual puzzle. I've taken the covers of 20 classic works of literature and clumsily removed the title and author's name using some free photoshop clone from the Chrome store. Some of these are famous covers. Many are not, but well read and observant puzzle solvers should get most of them. How many can you figure out? I'll post the answers on Friday.

P.S. - Click here if you want to see a larger version of the puzzle.

Four Square

Greetings puzzlers! With all of this Interactive Fiction talk, you might have thought I'd forgotten about you. But the crossword bug rises yet again and today I'm giving you a doozy.

I present to you four separate 5x5 crossword grids. Your job? solve them! I've even given you the middle letter of each grid. But, because I'm being so nice, I've decided to muddy the waters a bit. Below you'll find four groups of ten clues each. Each clue is to one of the ten five letter words in each grid. But the clues are in random order. Only on solution (I'm pretty sure) is available for each grid. Also, not only are the clues in random order, but each group of clues is also in random order. So the first group of clues do not necessarily correspond to the first grid. Keep an eye on those middle letters, as they're your only hint as to which group of clues belongs in which grid.

Don't worry, it's not as hard as it sounds... or is it...? I'll have the solution to this puzzle and the movie puzzle on Wednesday! Until then, good luck! I'll start the IF game reviews tomorrow!

Clues after the jump:

Technicolor

As you know, I love making puzzles. But not everybody loves word puzzles. So this one's of a more visual nature. I've taken ten well known movie posters and removed the title from each film. Can you identify the following ten movies from their posters alone? To help you out, all of the movies have something in common.

I know. Too easy, right? Well if you didn't think so, don't worry. I'll have the answers posted this upcoming Wednesday.

The Wednesday Cheat Sheet - September 14 2010

So it's been slightly over a week since I started this blog and you know what? It's been pretty awesome. I've started drawing cartoons again, I get to publish puzzles, life is good. What else was going on in the world? Well... according to the Weekly Review from Harpers: 

In Amarillo, Texas, 23-year-old skateboarder Jacob Isom stole a Koran from David Grisham, director of Repent Amarillo, before Grisham could burn the book. “I snuck up behind and told him, ‘Dude, you have no Koran,’ and took off,” Isom said. ³ Religious leaders held an emergency summit in Washington, D.C., to denounce the “anti-Muslim frenzy.” “We know what it is like when people have attacked us physically, have attacked us verbally, and others have remained silent,“ said Rabbi David Saperstein. ”It cannot happen here in America in 2010.”⁴ The House of Representatives was evacuated after an unidentified white powder was found in the chamber. Some thought the substance was yellow.⁵ Tea Party activists rallied in front of the Capitol. “When we got here last year, at Union Station we could hear the roar,“ said Tea Party supporter Rob Pittman, who traveled from Long Island. ”I’m not hearing the roar this year." ⁶ An invasive species of predatory shrimp, which often leaves its prey uneaten after killing it, was found in the waters off England. 

And more!  But enough of that depressing crap! Click on the jump for the answers to last week's puzzles!

Remember to Put on a Condiment

In this puzzle, each line holds three five-letter words, each going from left to right, and running into each other. Once you've answered all of the clues, there will be three related words running down the gray stripes. Have fun! I'll post the solution, along with the answers to last weeks puzzles tomorrow!


1. Bay city of Florida
2. Half of a 60's quartet
3. Sideways
4. Give the slip
5. Belief system of Benjamin Franklin
6. Scent
7. Puccini opera
8. Prickly plants
9. Give 10% to, say
10. Persian Gulf country
11. "Little Miss Sunshine" Oscar winner
12. Early Peruvian
13. Yellow tropical fruit
14. Gentleman's gentleman
15. Old-time anesthetic
16. Synagogue scroll
17. In the lead
18. Grown up
19. Nether world
20. County near London
21. An American in Paris, maybe

Crypto-Crossword

My interests in crosswords is somewhat recent, compared to my general love of puzzles. When I was a kid, I got a subscription to Games Magazine and even though I loved the puzzles, I would pretty much entirely avoid the crosswords. Logic puzzles? Check. General word puzzles? Check. I liked those, because they involved less of having to know bits of trivia, and more on being able to see a pattern. And my favorite puzzles were cryptograms, those puzzles where you have a passage or a list, except each letter of the alphabet has been substituted with a different letter. If you'd like a literary example check out one of my favorite Sherlock Holmes stories: The Adventure of the Dancing Men.

So it's really no surprise that my first attempts at crosswords were with "Coded Crosswords", crosswords that didn't have any clues, but where each little white square had a random number between one and twenty-six, and each number corresponded with a letter of the alphabet. They're basically cryptograms crosswords. And I love them. They're still among my favorite puzzles to solve, though, if you're pretty good at cryptograms like I am, they can be a bit too easy.

Anyway, here's a small little cryptogram crossword that I whipped up. I've given you two letters to start out with. Have fun! I'll post the solution sometime soon...ish!