80. Hasta La Vista, SCI-DOKU

The last Scientific American SCI-DOKU will run Tuesday, March 4th, ending the puzzle’s 15 month run. It will then “march forth” no more.

78. Super Bowl Puzzles

An Across Lite version of my Sports Illustrated Super Bowl crossword can be found here: SUPER BOWL. It’s an easy 13×13 puzzle that appeared the week prior to the event.

This additional trivia challenge can be solved when you look at the answer grid (link below) and unscramble the letters in the tan squares (WARNING! The 2-word answer is directly below the crossword answer grid — scroll down carefully):

What team with a winning Super Bowl record has been outscored by its opponents 148-107?

The crossword answer and two other, tougher Super Bowl puzzles (an acrostic and word search) can be found here: S.I. PUZZLES

75. SI Puzzles

For puzzle-solving sports fans, I’ve got a Super Bowl crossword in this week’s issue of Sports Illustrated (the Super Bowl XLII issue pictured here). I haven’t seen the final layout or the magazine itself, but I hear it will be on newsstands today, Thursday (no online version).

Monday afternoon, they also asked me to put together two bonus Super Bowl puzzles for their website (an acrostic and word search), and those went up Wednesday morning. They can be found here — BUT BE WARNED, the answer grid to the magazine’s crossword appears big as day right below the download link: Sports Illustrated bonus puzzles

63. Puzzles for the Kids

Here are 3 good puzzle books for the kids (and only one is mine):

1. Picture Clue Crosswords by Patrick Merrell
(ages 4-8 • $3.95 • 64 pages • 8×10)
click here for a mini-sized sample puzzle
Puzzles set up like adult crosswords, except with pictures for clues.
2. Clever Crosswords for Kids by Trip Payne
(ages 9-12 • $5.95 • 96 pages • 5×8)
These are well-made, fun puzzles. There’s a whole series; my daughter loved this one several years ago at the age of 12.
3. The Puzzling World of Winston Breen by Eric Berlin
(ages 9-12 • $16.99 or less • 224 pages • hardcover)
An intriguing, page-turning mystery with a nice variety of puzzles woven into the story.

62. Turn your computer upside down

I rummaged through my sketchbook and found these rough drawings, some of my first attempts at ambigrams. The top five (my wife, daughter, wife’s maiden name, and me) read the same when rotated 180 degrees. The bottom two are mirror ambigrams, which read the same left to right and right to left. I’ve added in the Will Shortz ambigram here because it was one of the “client” ambigrams I did at the time that worked out well.

If you want to make your own ambigram, here’s a site that’ll generate one for you. It’s not perfect, but it’s fun, and it’ll help give you a feel for how to do it: Ambigram.matic

And here are a couple of others I made in recent years:

all ambigrams ©2007 Patrick Merrell

46. Coffee Cam

Click on the image to enlarge it.
This entry has been brought to you by COFFEE TIME,
a palm-size, 320-page book of coffee puzzles and trivia.

44. Beginning Crosswords

You’re never too young to start solving crosswords. That’s the premise behind Picture Clue Crosswords (8×10, $3.95, new today). The puzzles are for beginning solvers, but they’re set up just like adult crosswords with consistent grid sizes, themes, and picture clues in Across and Down columns.

The book’s 20 puzzles include some twists: 5 have a what doesn’t belong feature; 2 have full-page clue scenes; and 2 have mystery themes. [CLICK HERE] for more info. Click on the mini-size puzzle sample below to download it.

43. Asimov SCI-DOKU

This week’s Scientific American SCI-DOKU puzzle involves Isaac Asimov, whom I happened to meet years ago at a Mohonk Mountain House mystery weekend. He was very funny and personable with no lack of self-confidence, as his business card title below proves (personal info altered).

The photo is one I captured of him and his wife, Janet, while strolling through NY’s Central Park several years later. His response, after I sent him a print, was: “We’ve never seen ourselves from behind in this manner — and in such an affectionate pose, too. It seems to me that we should be an inspiration to sexagenarian lovers everywhere.”

32. R.L. Stine Puzzles

Two new creations of mine, a kid’s puzzle feature and a comic strip, debuted this week on R.L. STINE’S WEB SITE. The puzzles pages (one is a visual maze and the other consists of 2 word puzzles) can be downloaded and printed out.

Although R.L. Stine is best known for the zillions of Goosebumps and Fear Street books he sold in the pre-Harry Potter days, he’s still going strong with his current Rotten School and upcoming Goosebumps Horrorland series. Interestingly both R.L. Stine and J.K. Rowling’s pen names came about the same way. Bob used his initials so as not to turn off girl readers and she did likewise, fearing boys wouldn’t read a book written by a woman.

I should point out that R.L. (known as Jovial Bob Stine in his early years) is mostly responsible for the script in the comic strip.

16. Paper Route

Another quickie brainteaser from the pages of MAD Kids.

Puzzle by Patrick Merrell ©copyright 2006 by E.C.Publications, Inc.

3. SCI-DOKU

If you’re into sudoku, you might want to try a variation that appears weekly (free) on Scientific American’s Web site called SCI-DOKU [click here]. The puzzles use letters instead of numbers and, when completed, one row or column spells out an answer to a science-related clue.

1. MAD Kids

Does a magazine called MAD Kids sound redundant? The fact is, MAD’s average reader is about 24, whereas MAD Kids yearns to warp the minds of kids less than half that age. If you’ve got a child you’d like to see grow up just like you, you can learn more about the magazine by clicking here. (Actually, it’s mostly just a cheap subscription come-on.)

Puzzle by Patrick Merrell ©copyright 2006 by E.C.Publications, Inc.