Puzzles Puzzles Everywhere
Thu, Oct. 9th, 2025 01:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spiraliciousOne of my goals is to use my phone less. To that end, one of the things I'm doing is trying to transition my daily puzzles from online to IRL.
On my phone, I was doing 13 puzzles a day:
Murdle: This is a daily murder mystery puzzle. It's clearly inspired by Clue and Agatha Christie esque detective novels. They give you cards with details about the suspects, weapons, and locations, a list of clues, and a grid to figure things out. Your goal is to figure out the murderer, murder weapon, and location of the crime scene. Each day of the week the puzzles get progressively harder, with Saturday being the most difficult puzzle and Sunday being the largest. I still do these online sometimes. I love the world building. There are three volumes of Murdle puzzle books, a children's version book, and a new puzzle book I can't find the name of, now available. I have no idea why I haven't bought them.
Dungeon: A daily dungeon crawler inspired puzzle modeled after Wordle. I also still do this one sometimes. They intentionally only give you two of the rules to start with and you figure the rest out as you play more. It starts out as pure guessing, but the more you play, the more you can strategize. You can only play once a day though and there really isn't an IRL/analog equivalent.
Buzzfeed Arcade (trivia, pyramid scheme, lil snacks): This is a group of six daily games available on Buzzfeed and we're the first I stopped doing completely. Trivia is a daily five question quiz. Each day has it's own theme with Sunday being a wildcard day. I've been having trouble figuring out a trivia quiz equivalent to do IRL without joining the brewery's or library's monthly trivia nights. Sometimes I do trivia online at Mental Floss. Pyramid Scheme is a word search in a triangle shape. The letters go all directions kind of like Boggle. You don't know how many words you're looking for until you find them and there is a jumbo puzzle on Sundays. Lil Snacks is a group of four mini games with the same theme, like Chinese food or weather. There are either six or eight kinds of puzzle games they cycle through so you never know which four you are getting any particular day.
Connections: I played this on the archive site, not the NYT site, so I could play multiple games a day if I wanted. Basically, you get a grid of 16 words. You have to group them into four groups of four related words and you can only guess wrong, I think, five times.
Strands: I also played this through the archive site, not the NYT site. Unfortunately, the puzzles were often broken. It's a word search type game. You are given a theme and told how many words there are to find and you try to find them all. The words do not connect in straight lines.
Zorse game: Another NYT game played on it's archive site. This one is a little difficult to explain. You are given a clue and blank squares grouped into word formations and you guess what letters go in the square to make a phrase. The answer is usually a mash up of popular sayings or pop culture references, like, "don't make a mountain out of a hill of beans."
Waffle: This is a letter swap game. You get a six word grid that is "waffle" shaped and you swap the letters around until you've made the six correct words, but you are limited in how many swaps you can make. I love how if you finish, they have the dictionary definition and silly example sentences for the words in the puzzles.
OneWordSearch: Another word search game. You are given a grid full of letters, somewhere in that grid is one word. You find it and those letters disappear, the ones left behind shift, and new letters drop in. You do this ten times to finish and it's timed. I have no clue how to access this game except via the Waffle game.
Now I'm averaging about 3 puzzles/activity book pages a day. The irl/analog puzzles just take longer, so doing more most days isn't reasonable. While I have other puzzle/activity books, these are the ones I'm currently working through:
Fall Seasonal Scratch Art: it's a set of six scratch art pages. Three are illustrated with camping scenes and three are blank. It came with a scratching stick and an on theme stencil. I am a little disappointed that under the scratch off stuff on the blank pages, it's metallic not rainbow.
The Golden Girls Search & Color book (by dreamtivity): The odd numbered pages are word searches themed on characters and episodes of the show. The even numbered pages are coloring pages, which are either stills from the show or quotes.
Deadpool & Wolverine Variety Puzzles volume 1 of 2 (by Kappa Books/Braintainment): I was pleasantly surprised by this one. It includes multiple types of mazes, spot the difference, word searches, sudoku, finish the picture, crossword, mad libs, Deadpool vs Wolverine quiz, fill-a-pix, & cryptograms. Yes, I also have volume 2.
Word Search Puzzle Book Volume 1 (by Bendon): It's a very basic word search book, but the puzzles are very large.
Kawaii Sticker Fun Halloween Activity Book: To be fair, this book is meant for ages 5+. It's Halloween scenes that you finish and give faces to the characters with the stickers it comes with. It was from Dollar Tree.
National Parks Advanced Coloring Book (by Bendon): I'm still not sure how I feel about this one. Each page is an illustrated poster for a national park. Instead of the usual white page with lines drawn you fill in, it's detailed pictures in grayscale you color over. The pages are nice and thick, so you can use wet medium like markers or paint.
On my phone, I was doing 13 puzzles a day:
Murdle: This is a daily murder mystery puzzle. It's clearly inspired by Clue and Agatha Christie esque detective novels. They give you cards with details about the suspects, weapons, and locations, a list of clues, and a grid to figure things out. Your goal is to figure out the murderer, murder weapon, and location of the crime scene. Each day of the week the puzzles get progressively harder, with Saturday being the most difficult puzzle and Sunday being the largest. I still do these online sometimes. I love the world building. There are three volumes of Murdle puzzle books, a children's version book, and a new puzzle book I can't find the name of, now available. I have no idea why I haven't bought them.
Dungeon: A daily dungeon crawler inspired puzzle modeled after Wordle. I also still do this one sometimes. They intentionally only give you two of the rules to start with and you figure the rest out as you play more. It starts out as pure guessing, but the more you play, the more you can strategize. You can only play once a day though and there really isn't an IRL/analog equivalent.
Buzzfeed Arcade (trivia, pyramid scheme, lil snacks): This is a group of six daily games available on Buzzfeed and we're the first I stopped doing completely. Trivia is a daily five question quiz. Each day has it's own theme with Sunday being a wildcard day. I've been having trouble figuring out a trivia quiz equivalent to do IRL without joining the brewery's or library's monthly trivia nights. Sometimes I do trivia online at Mental Floss. Pyramid Scheme is a word search in a triangle shape. The letters go all directions kind of like Boggle. You don't know how many words you're looking for until you find them and there is a jumbo puzzle on Sundays. Lil Snacks is a group of four mini games with the same theme, like Chinese food or weather. There are either six or eight kinds of puzzle games they cycle through so you never know which four you are getting any particular day.
Connections: I played this on the archive site, not the NYT site, so I could play multiple games a day if I wanted. Basically, you get a grid of 16 words. You have to group them into four groups of four related words and you can only guess wrong, I think, five times.
Strands: I also played this through the archive site, not the NYT site. Unfortunately, the puzzles were often broken. It's a word search type game. You are given a theme and told how many words there are to find and you try to find them all. The words do not connect in straight lines.
Zorse game: Another NYT game played on it's archive site. This one is a little difficult to explain. You are given a clue and blank squares grouped into word formations and you guess what letters go in the square to make a phrase. The answer is usually a mash up of popular sayings or pop culture references, like, "don't make a mountain out of a hill of beans."
Waffle: This is a letter swap game. You get a six word grid that is "waffle" shaped and you swap the letters around until you've made the six correct words, but you are limited in how many swaps you can make. I love how if you finish, they have the dictionary definition and silly example sentences for the words in the puzzles.
OneWordSearch: Another word search game. You are given a grid full of letters, somewhere in that grid is one word. You find it and those letters disappear, the ones left behind shift, and new letters drop in. You do this ten times to finish and it's timed. I have no clue how to access this game except via the Waffle game.
Now I'm averaging about 3 puzzles/activity book pages a day. The irl/analog puzzles just take longer, so doing more most days isn't reasonable. While I have other puzzle/activity books, these are the ones I'm currently working through:
Fall Seasonal Scratch Art: it's a set of six scratch art pages. Three are illustrated with camping scenes and three are blank. It came with a scratching stick and an on theme stencil. I am a little disappointed that under the scratch off stuff on the blank pages, it's metallic not rainbow.
The Golden Girls Search & Color book (by dreamtivity): The odd numbered pages are word searches themed on characters and episodes of the show. The even numbered pages are coloring pages, which are either stills from the show or quotes.
Deadpool & Wolverine Variety Puzzles volume 1 of 2 (by Kappa Books/Braintainment): I was pleasantly surprised by this one. It includes multiple types of mazes, spot the difference, word searches, sudoku, finish the picture, crossword, mad libs, Deadpool vs Wolverine quiz, fill-a-pix, & cryptograms. Yes, I also have volume 2.
Word Search Puzzle Book Volume 1 (by Bendon): It's a very basic word search book, but the puzzles are very large.
Kawaii Sticker Fun Halloween Activity Book: To be fair, this book is meant for ages 5+. It's Halloween scenes that you finish and give faces to the characters with the stickers it comes with. It was from Dollar Tree.
National Parks Advanced Coloring Book (by Bendon): I'm still not sure how I feel about this one. Each page is an illustrated poster for a national park. Instead of the usual white page with lines drawn you fill in, it's detailed pictures in grayscale you color over. The pages are nice and thick, so you can use wet medium like markers or paint.
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Date: 2025-10-13 05:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2025-10-15 05:00 am (UTC)