This blog needs to take a little hiatus, but we’ll back as soon as we can. Thank you to our loyal readers. But hey, instead of reading about puzzles, you can solve puzzles, every single day at Daily Pop Crosswords and Daily Pop Word Search ..read more

At the intersection of game-show geekery and puzzle nerddom is a group of very happy people: The Genius is back! If you’re not familiar with The Genius… well, why would you be? The game show has never aired in the United States or in any English-speaking country. It originated in South Korea, where it ran for four seasons — the last of these concluding in 2015. The revived show, which debuted three weeks ago, is airing on a network based in The Netherlands. We freely admit that for most Americans, this show is on the obscure side. But it is well worth the effort to find the subtitled episodes ..read more

Crossword puzzles, once solely the domain of pencil and paper, are shouldering their way further and further into the Internet age. Many solvers forgo pencils entirely — they solve strictly on their computer or via an app, the better to maintain their beloved daily streak. “Crossword Twitter” is a fast-moving conversation between hundreds of people comparing their times on the daily New York Times puzzle and chiming in enthusiastically whenever there is any crossword-related controversy. And are there any crossword tournaments now that don’t have an online component? It was, perhaps, only a ma ..read more

Boswords, the crossword competition that started in Boston but is now held online four times a year, is back with its Fall Themeless League! If you want a great themeless crossword every week, and furthermore want to see how you stack up against other crossword lovers, jump over to the Boswords site and sign up quick — the first puzzle of the weekly tournament will be released this coming Monday, October 3. (You don’t have to solve the puzzle that very day; just find time to sit with at some point during the week.) As with previous iterations of the league, when you register, you choose which ..read more

As part of his exploration of the world of puzzles for his excellent book The Puzzler, author A.J. Jacobs set out on a rather quirky mission: He wanted to commission the world’s most challenging puzzle. The job ultimately went to puzzle constructing legend Oskar van Deventer, and the result is a device called the Jacobs’ Ladder. How difficult is this puzzle? Let’s back up a moment. Did you ever download a puzzle app for your phone or tablet, and find that you are encouraged not only to solve each level but to do so in a minimum number of moves? Yes, you can slide the doohickey into the whateve ..read more

Sudoku has become such a mainstay puzzle, a common find in newspapers and magazines, that it’s easy to forget that it wasn’t always this way. While Sudoku got its start as Number Place in the pages of Dell Magazines back in the late 1970s, it wasn’t until mid-2006 that the logic puzzle became an all-consuming worldwide fad, blowing up in a way no puzzle had since the crossword in the 1920s. The fad has subsided a bit, but Sudoku is still with us, exercising the minds of millions of solvers. But for lovers of logic puzzles, Sudoku’s greatest impact is in how it inspired dozens if not hundreds o ..read more

The Curious Correspondence Club creates all manner of unusual, immersive puzzle experiences — a bit like if escape rooms could fit in your mailbox. These folks love puzzles, and as such, for the past few years they have decided that the month we are now in should be called Puzzletember. And what better way to celebrate Puzzletember than by turning the spotlight on a different online puzzle company for each day of the month? They’ve gotten thirty different puzzlemakers (full disclosure: your friendly PuzzleNation correspondent is one of them) to create an Instagram-friendly puzzle. Already we ..read more

Hello there, PuzzleNationers! We’re happy to be back in blogging mode! Let’s kick things off with a look at what’s going on in the world of crosswords. First up, it’s the return of Lollapuzzoola! After two pandemic-afflicted years where the freewheeling crossword tournament was forced online, Lollapuzzoola was back in its New York City home for a live event. (And also online — a virtual tournament was held in parallel.) Solvers were treated not only to crosswords by top-tier constructors like Will Nediger and Francis Heaney, but also a ton of extras, including a multi-crossword meta suite, an ..read more

Greetings, puzzlers, gamers, and PuzzleNationers! We hope you’re staying cool out there, and taking plenty of time to kick back and relax with your favorite tabletop roleplaying games, jigsaw puzzles, Sudoku collections, or crossword puzzle and wordseek apps :)! While winter is traditionally the hibernation season, we’ve decided to switch things up, and our blog and social media presence are going into hibernation for the rest of the summer. (Heat is bad for computers, after all.) Never fear—Daily POP Crosswords and Daily POP Word Search will continue to update on a daily basis. We ..read more

With Wordle’s surging popularity earlier this year came a slew of derivatives like Nerdle, Queerdle, and Trekle, all fighting for second place in the guessing game spotlight. Heardle, it seems, was the real breakthrough hit. Launched in February by product designer Glenn Angelo, Heardle gives listeners six tries to figure out a song’s identity, based on increasingly lengthy clips from the song’s intro. Angelo’s initial inspiration was just the pun of the name, though the concept can be traced back to the television game show Name That Tune,or to its radio-based predecessor, Stop the Music. Li ..read more