Thursday, December 12, 2024
Well, it had to happen eventually. I set a puzzle that was too hard. In the past I was sure so many times I’d constructed something with so many twists and turns that no one would solve it–but each time you-all surprised me, and I received at least a dozen correct solutions, sometimes within hours of posting.
This time, however, it took five excruciating days for the first solution to come in–and it turned out to be the only correct solution. Joe N has definitely earned his copy of Rummy-o–as soon as he sends me his mailing address.
The first part of the challenge was to find all twenty-five boardgame titles in the grid, word-search style. The next part was probably the bridge too far for most people, which was to sort them into five sets of five games, each one having a common theme. This was fun for me to construct, because I wanted to make sure as many games as possible could theoretically belong to as many of the categories as possible. But clearly I made it too difficult. For the record, here are the categories each with their quintet of games:
Games Designed by Alexander Pfister
Pirate Games
Games Whose Names are Cities
Games That Start With “C”
Games Set in the Roman Empire
The final challenge was the riddle posed by the leftover letters in the grid. Instead of spelling out a message, they compose a final list of five:
These are the names of five of our First Nations here in North America, which was meant to suggest the 2014 game Five Tribes, designed by Bruno Cathala.
Honorable Mention goes to Anna D, who found all the games and figured out the final riddle, but whose groupings were incorrect. If I had another game to give away right now, I would gift her with it–but alas, she will have to content herself with Internet Glory instead.
That concludes our fifth(!) annual Non-Denominational Holiday Contest. Watch out for our other annual puzzly giveaway, the Halfway Day Contest, at the beginning of July.
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