The Puzzler

Currently Reading

Journey of the Pharaohs

Clive Cussler

Today I’m going to talk about puzzles, since this is one area of this challenge where I’m hoping I can help people. As a natural born social distancer, I’m quite familiar (and comfortable) spending a great deal of time sitting and working on puzzles or brain games of all kinds.

While there is nothing quite like taking pen to a logic puzzle grid in one of those Penny or Dell puzzle magazines, this is 2020, there’s an app for that.

And in the spirit of my develop.cheap newsletter, I’m going to provide suggestions that don’t cost anything.

• Boy Howdy Games — this isn’t a specific app but a company that makes a large number of apps, all of which are free. They have ads, but not the intrusive full screen ones, just little ones at the bottom of the screen. They also tend to be free of timers and competition, so they are great for low stress brain stimulation. These are for iOS, so you will have to keep looking for other platforms.
  • Crossword Jewels — one of my favorite of their games. Also known as clueless crosswords, all you know is which letters are the same, and you must deduce the words. If you need a bit of help, you can use a tool I wrote: Cryptoquote Helper.
  • Pipe Jewels — rotate pieces of pipe to complete the flow. Crazy addictive.
  • They have many more: sudoku, various card games, etc.
• Boatload Puzzles — regular crossword puzzles. It is a web app, but with very good mobile support. As far as crosswords go, fairly easy, doesn’t require a great deal of pop culture knowledge, etc.

I think there are some others I could dig up, but I’ll save those for another day.

As for today, I am grateful for the following:

• Netflix
• That my family and friends are healthy
• Getting an hour of uninterrupted time to myself

Stay healthy everyone.