https://tinyurl.com/fm5b33ye

https://tinyurl.com/mrxxc4n9

The two dot colors are logically equivalent in this next puzzle. But to fully celebrate Cephalopod Week, make sure you click the Color Up button in the interface from time to time.

https://tinyurl.com/yppyxmr4

And finally, a variant, which I’ll call Tentaisho (Fillomino) for lack of an established term.

Divide the grid into regions of orthogonally connected cells. Each region must contain exactly one circle and have 180° rotational symmetry around it.

Also, no two orthogonally adjacent regions may be of the same size.

https://tinyurl.com/46xst39t

Thanks for your patience while I sort this glitch out!

Quick Notes

• In looking over the completion data for 18Escape games this month, I can’t help but notice that Jen C blasted through eleven of the games this month, with particularly good results in The Turkey Trial and The Leprechaun Larceny. Fantastic work!

• I attended Protospiel Michigan in July, and as usual did a quick write-up of the interesting prototypes I played and tested.

• I’m hard at work on the next 18Escape game! I can’t fully reveal things right now, but keep an eye out for the Grand Gamers Guild newsletter next week, or this space next month. But I can talk about…

Endangered Rescue: Chambered Nautilus

I have the great honor to not only design most of the Holiday Hijinks games using the 18Escape framework, but also to be the line editor for other designers contributing to the system. This includes the fabulous Ace & Anna Ellett, who (not coincidentally) indirectly inspired some of the 18Escape concepts with their Mr. Hincks games.

Their latest entry is Endangered Rescue: Chambered Nautilus, which is being published in partnership with Science Friday, celebrating Cephalopod Week!

This latest game features all the clever and twisty puzzle types you’ve come to expect from Ace & Anna, and I’m proud to be associated with it. Get solving!

This Month in Pathologic

In Let’s Play news, I am wrapping up a short series on The Ratline, a detective adventure in the vein of Return of the Obra Dinn and The Roottrees Are Dead. I’ve also resumed my journey through Emuurom, and some big developments are coming in that series.

But mornings continue unabated with puzzle tutorials at 8am Eastern every day! If you haven’t yet, please check it out (and subscribe, if you are willing) for lots of great free puzzling content.

Watch Pathologic

What I’ve Been Playing

Honestly, the game I keep thinking about is last month’s Here Lies! But to highlight another great game for you…

Vast got to the table recently for the first time in years, and was such a treat. The crew involved went on to be known for larger commercial successes, notably Root, but Vast is the one that’s dear to my heart.

Vast is an aggressively asymmetric game. Players each embody a different fantasy trope (Knight, Dragon, Goblins… and the Cave itself), with their own goals, components, and systems that bear little resemblance to one another. And yet the systems interact in logical and delightful ways.

With the right group, it really sings. Give it a shot if you have half a chance!

Your Monthly Puzzle Treat

To celebrate the release of Chambered Nautilus, let’s have some Tentaisho puzzles, also known as Spiral Galaxies.

The rules:

Divide the grid into regions of orthogonally connected cells. Each region must contain exactly one circle and have 180° rotational symmetry around it.

An example, from Pathologic:

And here are my puzzles for you, starting small:

Tentaisho 1

Tentaisho 2

The two dot colors are logically equivalent in this next puzzle. But to fully celebrate Cephalopod Week, make sure you click the Color Up button in the interface from time to time.

Tentaisho 3

And finally, a variant, which I’ll call Tentaisho (Fillomino) for lack of an established term.

Divide the grid into regions of orthogonally connected cells. Each region must contain exactly one circle and have 180° rotational symmetry around it.

Also, no two orthogonally adjacent regions may be of the same size.

Tentaisho (Fillomino)

More Puzzles

If you’re hungry for more, I’ve got you covered! Join the Discord server where I’m posting puzzles of all sorts every few days. It’s also a great place to get hints, and to discuss games, puzzles, and anything else that strikes your fancy.

Happy puzzling!

Quick Notes

• I was not surprised to see Lauren Bello’s name on the leaderboard this month for multiple titles. Most impressive was a blazing time on The Groundhog Gambit. Well done!

• This month you can help me out with a thumbs-up on the BoardGameGeek Gen Con Preview, where four 18Escape titles are featured.

This month in Pathologic

Thank you to everyone who contributed puzzles to the YouTube channel! I was able to feature five of your creations before returning to our daily tutorials. Please keep them coming for a future volume!

I reached a pause in my Emuurom Let’s Play, and it will return soon. But in the meantime I just uploaded a two-part series where I solve 20 Small Mazes. I think you’ll agree it is worth your time!

Watch Pathologic

What I’ve Been Playing

My one and only purchase at Origins Game Fair was a 2025 release called Here Lies.

Design collective Jasper Beatrix first wowed me with the simplicity and compactness of Typeset, and here they’ve done it again in the genre of mystery solving. One player is the Lead Investigator and has the answer to a mystery, and must work with the remaining players to communicate that answer for a cooperative win.

But the process of uncovering clues is where the game shines. Mystery games tend to go one of two routes: Either the game is about logical deduction of a discrete set of options (the Clue model), or it is a prose narrative broken into chunks that are delivered piece by piece (the Consulting Detective model).

Here Lies breaks the mold by being almost totally freeform. The Lead Investigator responds to a wide array of clever prompts from the others: they might be allowed to indicate the colors of relevant items, or to draw some clues, or play a game of Hangman to reveal a key word. And these prompts are chosen and sequenced by the players, so each case feels unique without requiring a ton of reading.

It’s a gem; check it out!

Your Monthly Puzzle Treat

In this issue we’ll be solving some Sheep and Wolves puzzles, but first we need a refresher on how Slitherlink works.

Connect some pairs of orthogonally adjacent dots to form a single non-intersecting loop. To be clear, all line segments are horizontal or vertical, not diagonal. Clues represent the number of edges drawn surrounding the clue (up to four).

Here I am solving a recent example on Pathologic:

Here’s a warmup for you:

Solve Puzzle 1

Introducing the mammals

Now that we’ve got our snakes covered, let’s talk about Sheep and Wolves.

Connect some pairs of orthogonally adjacent dots to form a single non-intersecting loop. To be clear, all line segments are horizontal or vertical, not diagonal. Number clues represent the number of edges drawn surrounding the clue (up to four).

All sheep must be inside the loop. All wolves must be outside the loop.

Solve Puzzle 2

And now a couple more puzzles, with both types of clues included.

Solve Puzzle 3

Solve Puzzle 4

More Puzzles

If you’re hungry for more, I’ve got you covered! Join the Discord server where I’m posting puzzles of all sorts every few days. It’s also a great place to get hints, and to discuss games, puzzles, and anything else that strikes your fancy.

Happy puzzling!

Quick Notes

• Are you going to Origins? Find me there! I’ll be in the Liminal Hawk booth, or hanging out with Grand Gamers Guild, or generally out and about. If you want to connect and play a game, reach out on Discord!

• I’d really appreciate a thumbs-up on my games on the BGG Origins Preview, if you would be so kind. The visibility makes a huge difference.

• Congratulations this month go to Wesley Mead for a great solve of The Leprechaun Larceny, kicking off a marathon session of four cases. Great job!

• Did you see? Asmodee announced a set of partner publishers making games set in Middle-earth™.

Playtesting Time

Apropos of nothing, it’s time for me to put out a call for escape room playtesters! Most of the tests of this title will be held in person, so online testing slots are limited. Participants must be willing to sign a brief non-disclosure agreement, as this game is based on a third-party IP. If you’re interested, sign up below!

Join a Playtest

This month in Pathologic

There is, of course, a full month of new logic puzzle tutorials for you on YouTube! After this volume, I plan to slot in a set of viewer submissions, so if you are a puzzle creator, get those to me soon. The link to the submission form is in the description of every video.

And in the past few days, I launched a new Let’s Play for a brand new release. Emuurom is a nonviolent “Metroidbrainia” puzzle platformer, and it’s filled with secrets. I’m hooked!

Watch Pathologic

What I’ve Been Playing

This month has brought me several plays of Dice Realms.

Normally I devote this section to strong recommendations. This one is a little different; it’s just a game I’ve been thinking about a lot. It brings the feel of a deck-builder to a dice game in a more visceral way than earlier attempts such as Quarriors. This is accomplished through customizable dice, which allow you to swap out the faces.

And you’ll do this a lot. It’s a great feature of the game that play is largely simultaneous. The result, however, is that the bulk of the game time and the cleanup time is devoted to popping off and replacing the plastic faces. Deciding which faces to replace and with what is the most fun part of the game; actually doing the labor is the least. This is one to check out for sure! Just not positive whether it’s a keeper or not.

Your Monthly Puzzle Treat

This issue, I offer you a set of Square Jam puzzles. This is a member of the category known as “tatami puzzles” which observe the traditional restrictions on how to tile a floor with such mats. Here are the rules:

Divide the grid into square regions of orthogonally connected cells. A number indicates the side length of the square it’s in. Region borders may not form any four-way intersections.

If you want more detail, watch me solve an example over on Pathologic:

I’ve set four puzzles for you; I think the final one is quite tricky.

Square Jam 1

Square Jam 2

Square Jam 3

Square Jam 4

More Puzzles

If you’re hungry for more, I’ve got you covered! Join the Discord server where I’m posting puzzles of all sorts every few days. It’s also a great place to get hints, and to discuss games, puzzles, and anything else that strikes your fancy.

Happy puzzling!

These will go on sale via the website and retail stores very soon.

Shop Holiday Hijinks

Congratulations are due this month to Dandelion for the best score and time in The Leprechaun Larceny. How lucky!

This month in Pathologic

I finished up my Return to Dark Castle playthrough on the channel; what a joy! No new Let’s Play for a bit as I take care of some other projects, but morning puzzle tutorial videos continue unabated.

Do you have logic puzzles of your own that you’d like to share? I would love to feature them on the channel! Look in the description of every video for a link to the submission form

Watch Pathologic

Convention Season

Summer brings many things; among them, game conventions! If you are attending Origins Game Fair I will hope to run into you. I will primarily be in the Ludoliminal, Pink Hawk, and Grand Gamers Guild booths, or wandering about. Reach out in the Discord if you’d like to meet up and play a game!

You can also help me out big time by giving a thumbs-up to the Holiday Hijinks Master Detective Collection on the UK Games Expo preview. Next month I’ll likely be asking the same for Origins!

What I’ve Been Playing

This month I want to highlight my friend Emily’s latest release, Pirates of the High Teas.

This is an entry-level worker-placement game, in which up to four rival pirate crews work to impress the captain with lavish feasts, paired correctly with the appropriate tea service. The theme is rich, decisions are relaxed but meaningful, and there is opportunity for more exploration through optional modules. Check it out!

Your Monthly Puzzle Treat

I’ve got a fresh batch of Tents puzzles for you this month. Here are the rules:

For each tree in the grid, place a tent in an empty orthogonally adjacent cell, connecting to it. Tents may not touch one another, not even diagonally. A clue given outside the grid represents the number of tents in the corresponding row or column.

If you want more detail, watch me solve an example over on Pathologic:

As usual, I will be giving you a set of puzzles very roughly increasing in difficulty. The last two have some additional rules!

Tents Puzzle 1

Tents Puzzle 2

Tents Puzzle 3

Now it’s variant time! In the interface for these two puzzles, the answer checker will only verify you have followed the constraints above. The special rule is something you’ll need to check yourself.

Anti-Knight
No two tents may be a chess knight’s move apart from one another.

Anti-Knight Tents

No Divide
The empty cells (without trees or tents) must form a single orthogonally connected region.

No Divide Tents

More Puzzles

If you’re hungry for more, I’ve got you covered! Join the Discord server where I’m posting puzzles of all sorts every few days. It’s also a great place to get hints, and to discuss games, puzzles, and anything else that strikes your fancy.

Happy puzzling!

But first, congratulations to CJ DeSilvey for a perfect score on Endangered Rescue: Lemur Leaf Frog this month. I am so proud of what Ace & Anna have been doing with their extensions to the 18Escape line; I’ve just tested the next one in the pipeline, and it’s another cracker!

Shop Holiday Hijinks

This month in Pathologic

There are still new logic puzzle videos coming out every day! Invest ten minutes of your time and learn all about a new diversion. Solve alongside me or just watch and chill!

At the end of March I wrapped up a Let’s Play of Strange Horticulture, a cozy puzzle game of occult plant identification. But now I’ve kicked a new adventure into gear! I’m playing Return to Dark Castle, both a remaster and a sequel to a beloved game from my youth.

This puzzle platformer has some Don Bluth-esque humor paired with at times brutal difficulty. I am really curious to see how much of my keyboard-and-mouse muscle memory comes back to me in the new entry. Come watch my ineptitude!

Watch Pathologic

What I’ve Been Playing

I haven’t played much that is brand new this month, but have had several games of an older stalwart, Roll for the Galaxy.

This is my favorite game in the “Puerto Rico family” where players choose actions that everyone performs. Like its direct parent, Race for the Galaxy, choices are simultaneous and play is snappy, but the use of dice to feed the mechanism is tactile and satisfying, and all the tiles players collect for their tableaus are clear and concise. It’s easy to teach with plenty of depth, and I think will always have a place on my shelf.

Your Monthly Puzzle Treat

Discord regulars have been privy to the daily puzzles I created throughout Enigmarch. But it’s AHApril now, which means the rest of you get to feast on a month’s worth of puzzles all at once! Click the link below for a PDF containing all of the puzzles, with some curation advice on difficulty and style up top.

Good luck solving! Find us on Discord if you need assistance.

Get the Enigmarch 2026 Puzzle Collection

More Puzzles

If you’re hungry for more, I’ve got you covered! Join the Discord server where I’m posting puzzles of all sorts every few days. It’s also a great place to get hints, and to discuss games, puzzles, and anything else that strikes your fancy.

Happy puzzling!

Congratulations to Scott Kovatch who posted a blazing time of 36:32 on The Friday Fright this month. What’s that, you ask? Well, the secret has been unveiled and this is entry 13 in the Holiday Hijinks line.

Shop Holiday Hijinks

Enigmarch Is Here

Every day this month, the team at Enigmarch will release a one-word prompt. The challenge: design a puzzle inspired by that word. Participants interpret this in different ways, but personally my goal is to publish the puzzle before the next prompt goes up (and often within a couple hours of its release). This helps me hone my ability to complete things rather than tweak them endlessly.

The word, logic, and codebreaking challenges I create will all be posted on Discord if you’d like to solve along in real time! Or, wait until next month right here where I’ll compile them all in a PDF collection for you.

What I’ve Been Playing

I was recently introduced to Ink, and boy has it got a hold on me!

Ink is a tile-lying game, in which you will be expanding your personal layout of square tiles to produce large regions of single colors. When you do, you may be able to score them and place several of your gorgeous ink bottle tokens on designated spaces.

Where the game sings is the part that comes next. Depending on the value of the objective you score, you will get one of several bonuses (which vary from one game to the next). These powerful actions let you manipulate the tiles and your placed bottles, and often allow you to engineer a domino effect where scoring one objective leads directly to the next. It gives me the amazing dopamine hit I crave from games that offer “big turns.” Check it out!

Your Monthly Puzzle Treat

This month we are revisiting a logic genre I introduced to you a year ago, Heyawake. This was also the very first puzzle type I feature on the YouTube series! It is known for having a slightly unintuitive ruleset, so you might want to first check out that issue for examples, or watch me solve one on Pathologic:

In this issue I’ve constructed four puzzles for you, each a different Heyawake variant. And for each one, you can first solve an example puzzle (as provided by the puzz.link help pages).

Heyawake

Shade some cells so that no two shaded cells are orthogonally adjacent and the remaining unshaded cells form one orthogonally connected area. A line of consecutive unshaded cells may not cross more than one bold border.

Numbered regions must contain the indicated amount of shaded cells.

Heyawake Example

Solve a Heyawake

Ayeheya

Shade some cells so that no two shaded cells are orthogonally adjacent and the remaining unshaded cells form one orthogonally connected area. A line of consecutive unshaded cells may not cross more than one bold border.

Numbered regions must contain the indicated amount of shaded cells.

The shaded cells within each region must have 180° rotational symmetry around the region’s center.

Ayeheya Example

Solve an Ayeheya

Akichiwake

Shade some cells so that no two shaded cells are orthogonally adjacent and the remaining unshaded cells form one orthogonally connected area. A line of consecutive unshaded cells may not cross more than one bold border.

A number indicates the size of the largest group of connected unshaded cells within its region.

Akichiwake Example

Solve an Akichiwake

Sumiwake

Shade some cells so that no two shaded cells are orthogonally adjacent and the remaining unshaded cells form one orthogonally connected area. A line of consecutive unshaded cells may not cross more than one bold border.

An outlined circle overlaps exactly one shaded cell. A filled circle overlaps two shaded cells.

Sumiwake Example

Solve a Sumiwake

More Puzzles

If you’re hungry for more, I’ve got you covered! Join the Discord server where I’m posting puzzles of all sorts every few days. It’s also a great place to get hints, and to discuss games, puzzles, and anything else that strikes your fancy.

Happy puzzling!

I hope everyone is enjoying their copies of the Holiday Hijinks Master Detective Collection, including 12(ish) full escape games! Non-backers can now get their hands on copies by heading over to the Grand Gamers Guild website.

Get the Master Detective Collection

This Month in Pathologic

Pathologic turns one year old today! We just wrapped up Volume 13, featuring viewer-submitted Sudoku variants, and in Volume 14 are now back on our tour of a wide variety of grid logic puzzles. We also went through a full Let’s Play of the logic game LOK Digital! I’m working on lining up the next game to play on the channel; if you have suggestions, leave a comment on any one of the videos and I’ll see it!

What I’ve Been Playing

Lately I’ve been playing a lot of 2024 Spiel des Jahres nominee Captain Flip!

Captain Flip is a light, silly tile-laying game that is supremely accessible while remaining exciting. Players simply draw a tile from a bag and place it in a grid on their personal board, and score points as indicated on the tile. Typical scoring criteria like set collection and positionality determine the winner, as you’d expect.

The wrinkle (and the name of the game) is that all the tiles are double-sided, and when you pull out a tile you have a choice: take the known quantity, and place the character on your pirate ship, or flip the tile over and get stuck with whatever’s on the other side, be it better or worse.

This simple tension leads to some big ups and downs that keep the whole table engaged for the 15-minute playtime. Give it a look!

This Month’s Puzzle Treat

Since we’ve had a long run of logic puzzles, I though it was time to do some wordplay. This month, you get a Cryptic Crossword!

If you are unfamiliar with cryptics, know that they are quite a bit different from American-style crosswords. Each clue contains two halves: a definition of the answer, and wordplay that also leads to that answer. Finding the dividing line and order of these halves is an important step to solving!

To see all the different kinds of wordplay that may be involved, you could look at the Wikipedia page about the topic, or read the two previous newsletters where I covered the subject some years ago.

Also, the interface allows you to ask for hints to words: this will always tell you which kind of wordplay is used in the clue, in case you can’t find the indicator words.

It’s time to solve a puzzle!

Cryptic Crossword

Want More Puzzles?

Join the Discord server where I’m posting puzzles of all sorts every few days. It’s a great place to get hints, and to discuss games, puzzles, and anything else that strikes your fancy.

Happy puzzling!

I am waist-deep in development of another Holiday Hijinks escape room, this time coming to you from the fantastic Danielle Reynolds! The Pride Pursuit is targeting a 1 of 3 difficulty on our scale. This test is a little more technologically demanding than usual, and you will need a way to take screenshots and draw on them in addition to the typical web browser and Zoom link. If this is up your alley, you can sign up at the below link.

Sign up to playtest

What I’ve Been Playing

Normally this is where I highlight one game that has really stuck with me in the past month. But it’s a new year, so it’s time for the annual wrap-up!

The full blog post with breakdowns of the most significant games of the year is over at BoardGameGeek. Here’s the executive summary:

• Bomb Busters is a cooperative, mission-focused deduction game.

• Bouba/Kiki is a cooperative, mission-focused party game.

• The Gang is a cooperative, mission-focused poker game.

• Fellowship of the Ring is a cooperative, mission-focused trick-taking game.

I wonder what has caught my interest this year? I certainly can’t see any patterns.

Check Out the Full Wrapup

…the darker the shadow it cast.

Every month in this newsletter, I create a pack of puzzles for you to solve. This month’s puzzles are a tribute to a video I posted on my channel last month, which was outside my normal wheelhouse but I thought was important. It is a discussion of the song “Hi Ren” which I feel has a message some people will find very helpful, and maybe that’s you.

So this month I am pleased to present a series of Light and Shadow puzzles.

Light and Shadow Rules

Shade some cells on the board to form connected areas of light and shadow, each containing exactly one clue. Clues tell you whether that area is light or shadow, and how large the area is.

If you need a little more of an intro, I’ve got a Pathologic video about it!

Here are this month’s puzzles, from small to large.

Light and Shadow #1

Light and Shadow #2

Light and Shadow #3

Light and Shadow #4

Want More Puzzles?

Join the Discord server where I’m posting puzzles of all sorts every few days. It’s a great place to get hints, and to discuss games, puzzles, and anything else that strikes your fancy.

Happy puzzling!

Lots of you played The Pumpkin Problem during your Halloween celebrations, and readers Tom and Tim posted the best time. Well done!

Games in the Wild

Gamers like you have been getting their hands on Stroop, Bouba/Kiki, and the Holiday Hijinks Master Detective collection lately. Got any photos of them on the table? Share them with me, or better yet add them to the BoardGameGeek gallery for the game! I’d really appreciate it.

What do you think: which of these three pictures is a chachicho?

What I’ve Been Playing

Just this week I got introduced to the new 7 Wonders Dice.

This really impressed me! I have played a ton of 7 Wonders over the years, and this dice adaptation did everything I want out of such an exercise. Players use a central pool of dice to make independent decisions, with minimal but nonzero interaction. Check. Play is quick with meaningful choices. Double check.

But most impressively to me, every mechanism in the game is different from the parent game, but you can always see the parallels. Several times I was able to intuit a rule by analogy to the card game, even though the specifics were totally dissimilar. That’s just great design!

Your Holiday Gift

If you are a long-time subscriber, you know that instead of the normal monthly puzzle set, in December I send you an original print-and-play game. This year, that game is called Crackers!

Crackers! Game and Rules PDF

I hope you have a great time celebrating with friends and family, playing this or any other games that bring you joy!

Want Puzzles?

It’s December, which brings along with it all sorts of thinky fun. A highlight for me every year is Matthew Scroggs’ puzzle Advent calendar, which poses a mathematical challenge every day in the lead-up to Christmas.

You can sate your enigma appetite with me, as well! Join the Discord server where I’m posting puzzles of all sorts every few days. We’ll be discussing that math puzzle hunt there, as well! It’s also a great place to get hints, and to discuss games, puzzles, and anything else that strikes your fancy.

Happy puzzling!

Congratulations to reader Jay Winter for blasting through Endangered Rescue: Lemur Leaf Frog in record time this month! Ace & Anna did another great job putting this 18Escape entry together, and I’m happy gamers around the world are enjoying it.

Bouba/Kiki Sightings

My latest game, Bouba/Kiki, has found its way into friendly local game stores! Please share your stories with me. Or better yet, rate the game on BoardGameGeek! More honest ratings there will go a long, long way toward boosting visibility.

By the way, which of these three pictures is a titchle?

What I’ve Been Playing

Let’s look at a small card game today: Odin by Goh, Hwang, and Kim.

This is a climbing game (think Tichu or Scout) where you are trying to empty your hand of cards. Melds you play can be any set of cards, as long as they share a suit or a number. But whenever you play a meld, you need to add one card from the previous meld into your hand! So the game it one of carefully crafting a better and better hand until someone plays their last card.

It’s simple, it’s snappy, and it’s great fun!

Your Monthly Puzzle Treat

This is officially the November newsletter, but by sending it a day early I can rationalize a thematic puzzle genre: Haunted Mirror Maze.

Monsters have invaded the funhouse! You’ll need to locate their positions in the maze so we can avoid them, but looking inside is confusing because of all the mirrors.

Rules

Place the indicated set of monsters into the maze (this puzzle has five zombies) by entering their letter in a cell. Numbers outside the grid indicate how many monsters can be seen from that edge, looking directly into the grid. Diagonal lines are mirrors that reflect lines of sight by 90° (no monsters can be placed on mirrors).

For the answer checker to work, use lowercase letters for this puzzle.

Mirror Maze 1

Oh no! Vampires are here too!

Rules

As above, plus: Vampires do not have reflections, so can only be seen directly (not in a mirror).

Mirror Maze 2

Jinkies! It’s a g-g-g-ghost!

Rules

As above, plus: Ghosts can only be seen in reflections.

Mirror Maze 3

Now the monsters are working together! And the maze is entirely packed.

Mirror Maze 4

Be forewarned: This last one is tricky.

Mirror Maze 5

More Puzzles

If you’re hungry for more, I’ve got you covered! Join the Discord server where I’m posting puzzles of all sorts every few days. It’s also a great place to get hints, and to discuss games, puzzles, and anything else that strikes your fancy.

Happy puzzling!

Congratulations to reader Keanu for an excellent run through The Leprechaun Larceny. I hope to see many more scores posted for this 18Escape game and all the others coming your way in the Holiday Hijinks Collector’s Edition, real soon now™.

Escape This Podcast

If you haven’t yet, please take a little time to listen to my episodes of Escape This Podcast, where I share an audio escape room for the hosts! You can play along at home, or even download the materials to GM the room for friends and family.

Play along!

This Month in Pathologic

Lots of great new puzzles this month for you to solve with me! In addition, I played through the minigame “FamilyDoku” from The Roottrees are Dead. Check it out!

I am planning on another viewer submission series very soon, so if you are a puzzle creator, head on over to Discord and find out how to get your puzzles featured on the channel!

As always, comments and just clicking the little thumb are fantastic free ways to support me.

Check out the Channel

What I’ve Been Playing

This month I’m featuring Knitting Circle, a new game in the Calico family.

In this game you knit a variety of garments using yarn of different colors, attempting to score for making particular patterns such as symmetry of color or stripes. A blend of personal and public goals make it tricky to find the most effective items to create, but even once you know what you want, getting it can be tricky. Yarn is acquired through a rondel-like draft, and in addition to a color has “knit” or “purl” varieties, which must be strictly alternated as you create your garments.

Where Calico is a brain-melting puzzle, this gives your thinker just the right amount of exercise. And you are left with a nice set of knit goods to admire when all is done!

Your Monthly Puzzle Treat

It’s high time we had a word game here, so I am reviving a format I played with a while back. It’s Mastermind meets Only Connect in some No-Guessing Wordles!

Each puzzle provides three clues, which are the same length as the answer word. The clues have some relationship to the answer, and in addition, the letters have been colored as if they are Wordle guesses: green if the letter is in the right place, yellow if it’s in the answer but not in that position, and gray if it is not in the answer.

Good luck!

Wordle 1

Wordle 2

Wordle 3

Wordle 4

Wordle 5

Wordle 6

Wordle 7

More Puzzles

If you’re hungry for more, I’ve got you covered! Join the Discord server where I’m posting puzzles of all sorts every few days. It’s also a great place to get hints, and to discuss games, puzzles, and anything else that strikes your fancy.

Happy puzzling!

18Escape Game News

This month, Anh Tu Tran posted the best time on Endangered Rescue: Lemur Leaf Frog.

And it’s playtest time again! I will be running The Mutiny Mystery online in mid-September. Click below to get on the list!

Sign up for a playtest

GrandCon

I will be hanging out at GrandCon, and would love to see you. Want to play an upcoming game? Plenty of spaces are available, especially for Word Salad on Saturday and Sunday mornings! If none of the slots work for you, contact me and we can find an alternate time.

I am not sure if there will be copies of Bouba/Kiki and Stroop at retailers in the hall, but if you are a backer with a copy, feel free to bring it along if you want me to personalize (deface) it!

Escape This Podcast

I recently recorded for an upcoming episode of Escape This Podcast. If you’re not familiar: in each episode, players navigate an audio escape room full of puzzles and story. I am GMing the second room in this season’s connected storyline; the first episode is up now, and mine will be released September 3. Be sure to listen and play along at home!

This Month in Pathologic

Alongside our normal puzzle-solving routine, I have also been releasing recordings of my playthrough of the puzzle game Cipher Zero. Give this a watch if you are interested in a journey of discovering new puzzle rules and interactions!

As always, comments and just clicking the little thumb are fantastic free ways to support me.

Check out the Channel

What I’ve Been Playing

It’s time to talk about the 2025 Spiel des Jahres winner, Bomb Busters.

This is a cooperative deduction game, which already piques my interest. Players can see the numbers on a set of wires, but the numbering of other players’ wires is a mystery. You need to correctly predict a number on someone else’s rack, in order to cut those wires at the same time and move toward defusing the bomb!

My first plays were underwhelming as I didn’t yet understand the tools available to move the game away from just luck and toward skilled play. But that path does exist, and the huge array of escalating missions mixes things up more than I expected. Well worth your time to give it a try!

Your Monthly Puzzle Treat

My favorite Sudoku setter, Clover, sent out her monthly Patreon puzzle pack (which is usually fairly difficult) and this time, included a bunch of Sudoku variants where the numbers go from 0 to 8. I was surprised at how much this changed things up, and wanted to give a try at setting some smaller and easier puzzles with that idea in mind.

If you need a primer on Sudoku, check out the Pathologic video:

For all of these puzzles, normal 6x6 Sudoku rules apply, except that the digits to be placed are 0-5. That is, you must place the digits 0-5 once each in every row, column, and 3x2 outlined box. Each puzzle has an additional rule, as well.

V (–) Sudoku

V Sums: Digits separated by a V must sum to 5. All possible Vs are given.

Solve a V (–) Sudoku

Arrow Sudoku

Arrows: The digit in an arrow’s circle is equal to the sum of the digits on the attached arrow. Digits are allowed to repeat along the arrows as normally allowed by other rules.

Solve an Arrow Sudoku

Skyscraper Sudoku

Skyscrapers: Digits in the grid represent skyscrapers, with their values corresponding to their heights. Taller skyscrapers obscure all shorter skyscrapers behind them. Clues outside the grid indicate the number of skyscrapers that can be seen in that row/column, from the line of sight of the clue. Note: 0 cells have no height, so they don't count as skyscrapers!

Solve a Skyscraper Sudoku

Killer Sudoku

Killer Cages: The digits in a cage sum to the value in the top left, if given. Digits cannot repeat in a cage.

Solve a Killer Sudoku

Region Sum Sudoku

Region Sum Lines: Blue lines are split into segments by region borders. Within each individual line, the sum of the digits on each segment is the same. The sum of segments on different lines may or may not be equal.

Solve a Region Sum Sudoku

Parity Sweeper Sudoku

Parity Sweeper: If a digit in a circle is odd, it indicates how many odd digits are in the (up to) 8 surrounding cells. If a digit in a circle is even, it indicates how many even digits, are in the (up to) 8 surrounding cells.

(Because this is a point of confusion for some: yes, 0 is an even number.)

Solve a Parity Sweeper Sudoku

More Puzzles

If you’re hungry for more, I’ve got you covered! Join the Discord server where I’m posting puzzles of all sorts every few days. It’s also a great place to get hints, and to discuss games, puzzles, and anything else that strikes your fancy.

Happy puzzling!

Congratulations

Well done Cass for a brilliant performance in The Independence Incident. Keep at it!

Come See Me!

So many conventions and appearances happening! First off, Protospiel MI was as productive as always, and I’ve recapped it for you. Then, Panelspiel was great and if you missed it, you can catch my smiling face here:

Gen Con is the big news. You’ll be able to find me at Booth 2946 each morning. Pick up copies of Bouba/Kiki, Stroop, and new Holiday Hijinks games. If you are a backer for any of those, they are on the way to you! Those outside the US are already starting to get their copies.

Next month is GrandCon, and there are plenty of opportunities to play my upcoming games there. Please sign up for a free slot!

This Month in Pathologic

Volume 7 brings us a bunch of variants of puzzles we’ve seen before, as our exploration into logic types goes deeper. Much more to come, though!

As always, comments and just clicking the little thumb are fantastic free ways to support me.

Check out the Channel

What I’ve Been Playing

I’ve been really enjoying a 2023 Saashi & Saashi release, Come Sail Away.

Another low-interaction game (which is generally my jam), in which you need to allocate passengers on a cruise ship. Drafted cards give you passengers in a specific sequence, which you need to drop Mancala-style on spaces on your personal board. The puzzle gets tricky to optimize as you try to match the meeples to the same room colors and fill rooms before other players do. Very satisfying!

Your Monthly Puzzle Treat

Many of you will have honed your Minesweeper skills in video game format. Are you aware this is also a pencil logic puzzle?

The rules:

• Place mines into some empty cells so that each clue has the indicated number of mines in its (up to) eight surrounding cells.

• Clued cells cannot be mines, and a ? clue indicates an unknown number of mines.

We’ve seen this on Pathologic back in volume 2, where you can find example puzzles:

Let’s look at some I made. First, a standard version:

Minesweeper

After making that one, I wondered what variants I could construct. Note: The puzz.link interface will not automatically check these, because it doesn’t know the variant rules; use “Check Base Type” to verify that at least the basic Minesweeper rules have been followed.

Symmetry: The mines in the answer must exhibit 180° rotational symmetry.

Minesweeper (Symmetry)

Antiknight: Cells that are a chess knight’s move apart may not both contain mines.

Minesweeper (Antiknight)

Connected: All of the mines must form a single orthogonally-connected region.

Minesweeper (Connected)

More Puzzles

If you’re hungry for more, I’ve got you covered! Join the Discord server where I’m posting puzzles of all sorts every few days. It’s also a great place to get hints, and to discuss games, puzzles, and anything else that strikes your fancy.

Happy puzzling!

Congratulations

This month’s kudos goes to Ambie for an unsurprisingly excellent performance on The Independence Incident. Thanks for your support!

Convention Season

It’s a really busy time of the year! In July alone, you can find me at three conventions. Let’s run down the list!

July 11-13 is Protospiel Michigan, the original version of the venerable playtesting event. If you are in the Detroit area you can swing by to play prototypes from many great designers. I will have several designs on the table, including (at least) a trick-taker, a ladder-climber, a party game, and a word game.

July 18-19 brings Panelspiel, a spinoff of Protospiel Online for game design discussion and professional development. I will be on a Saturday morning panel about how to give great playtest feedback. Watch for free on Twitch!

And finally, July 31-August 3 is Gen Con which needs no description! I will be floating about the Grand Gamers Guild booth with Bouba/Kiki, Stroop, and the three latest Holiday Hijinks titles. While I don’t have scheduled demos, I’d love to play a game with you! Please say hello and we can set something up. And I’d really appreciate thumbs-up for my titles on the BGG Preview!

This Month in Pathologic

As Volume 5 winds to a close, we’ll have a brief interlude; in Volume 6 I’ll be solving puzzles you created for a few days, before jumping back in to our tried and true format. Please come join me!

Every like and comment helps more people find these videos and grow our puzzle community. Thanks for your support!

Check out the Channel

What I’ve Been Playing

The most intriguing game I played this month was Typeset.

This is a push-your-luck, roll-and-write word game. Players add consonants to their words one at a time, with the addition of free vowels. Try to make the longest valid words you can, but there’s a wrinkle, of course. You must commit to getting new consonants in batches of five at a time, and if you are unable to make a word out of what you are given, those letters count against you!

Your Monthly Puzzle Treat

This month we’re going to be solving Stostone puzzles, in which we drop some blocks into a pleasing Tetris-style configuration.

The rules are:

• Shade a single group of orthogonally connected cells in each region.

• A shaded cell in one region cannot share an edge orthogonally with a shaded cell in a different region.

• Regions with numbers must contain the indicated amount of shaded cells.

• If all of the shaded groups were to fall straight down without changing shape, they must completely fill the bottom half of the grid.

Please check out the related Pathologic episode for examples you can watch or solve yourself!

Here are a few of these I cooked up for you! If you are a member of my Discord server, you’ve had a preview of one of these already…

Stostone #1

Stostone #2

Stostone #3

Stostone #4

Stostone #5

More Puzzles

If you’re hungry for more, I’ve got you covered! Join the Discord server where I’m posting puzzles of all sorts every few days. It’s also a great place to get hints, and to discuss games, puzzles, and anything else that strikes your fancy.

Happy puzzling!

Regional Akari

Apologies for the oversight. Enjoy solving!

Congratulations

This month I’d like to recognize Robin CD for their great score and time in Endangered Rescue: Galápagos Penguin! Excellent work, and good luck on the next one!

Board Game Updates

Bouba/Kiki and Stroop are both well into manufacturing, and I’m hopeful that my next update will be that they are being shipped. The big hope is that they arrive before Gen Con for a big marketing push (and that constantly fluctuating tariffs don’t mess with that plan).

The Holiday Hijinks Collection is a couple steps behind these titles, but also nearing reality. I looked over the production samples and they are great! So excited to have these in your hands.

This Month in Pathologic

We are wrapping up Volume 4 of the video series, and doing some harder bonus puzzles. Volume 5 will have some fun new genres in store for us! We’ll have my favorite variant of one of my favorite genres, try to keep wolves away from goats, and make mazes of arrows pointing through a grid. So many new puzzle types!

Every like and comment helps more people find these videos and grow our puzzle community. Thanks for your support!

Check out the Channel

What I’ve Been Playing

This month I cracked the shrinkwrap on a brand new game called Hedge Mage.

In this game you are building a maze out of polyomino tiles, and then navigating the maze your neighbor put together. There are interesting incentives in play when you place the polyominoes: the placement determines how many movement points you get to use on the other board. And typically, getting more movement is at odds with perfectly frustrating your opponent’s maze navigation. Quite a puzzle of a game!

Your Monthly Puzzle Treat

From a puzzle of a game to a puzzle of a puzzle…

This month we are going to look at Akari, a genre we covered here a year back. To get started, let’s look at a little example:

The rules are:

• Place lights in some cells so that every cell is illuminated.

• Lights illuminate the cell they’re in as well as all cells seen in a straight line horizontally or vertically, not obstructed by a black cell.

• Lights may not illuminate each other.

• A clue indicates the number of lights in the cells orthogonally adjacent to it.

If that’s not perfectly clear, or if you want a demonstration or some practice, check out a Pathologic episode on this topic!

Now I’ll present some original Akari puzzles for you, including several variants!

These are using the Kudamono interface, which is good at supporting variants but can be a little non-intuitive to me. The answer checker is subtle, so note the timer stopping when you’ve completed the puzzle.

Akari (Standard)

Akari

Akari (Hex Grid)

Akari (Hex Grid)

Akari (Antiknight)

Normal Akari rules, plus:

• No two lights may be a chess knight’s move apart from each other.

Akari (Antiknight)

Akari (Mirrors)

Normal Akari rules, plus:

• Diagonal lines in the grid represent mirrors. When light hits a mirror, it reflects by 90°.

Akari (Mirrors)

Akari RGB

Normal Akari rules, plus:

• All lights must be marked as Red, Green, or Blue. Lights still may not illuminate one another, regardless of their color.

• Some cells indicate which colors must illuminate them. They must be illuminated by all of these colors of lights, and no others.

Akari RGB

Regional Akari

Normal Akari rules, plus:

• Numbers represent how many lights are in the outlined region.

  

Regional Akari

More Puzzles

If you’re hungry for more, I’ve got you covered! Join the Discord server where I’m posting puzzles of all sorts every few days. It’s also a great place to get hints, and to discuss games, puzzles, and anything else that strikes your fancy.

Happy puzzling!

Congratulations

This month’s escape room performance commendation goes to Sully & Bill for their victory in Endangered Rescue: Galápagos Penguin! I just had the privilege of testing an early draft of the third title in this sub-series of our 18Escape line, and it was spectacular. I’m excited to be able to tell you more soon!

Fun with Politics

As you are no doubt well aware, the wildly fluctuating and super-high tariffs on imports to the US are playing havoc with the game industry just like most others. Several smaller publishers and distributors who were not on solid footing have already gone under as a result, and I expect more will follow if the situation remains this unstable.

At the moment, Grand Gamers Guild (publisher of the bulk of my titles, including the 18Escape/Holiday Hijinks line) is solvent and prepared to weather the storm. However, several of my games are stuck overseas and won’t get into gamer hands until rates get back to semi-normal: Bouba/Kiki, Stroop, four Holiday Hijnks games, and other escape rooms under the 18Escape umbrella.

It is strange to be railing about this when it’s truly the least of my concerns about where our country is going, but this is an area where bipartisan action is actually possible. Congress has failed to act on this so far, but it’s still possible. The spike in the price of all goods is coming, and it won’t result in profits for companies they can use to increase pay accordingly. Talk to your congresscritter if you can.

This Month in Pathologic

Back to the fun stuff! This month saw Volume 3 of Pathologic, a week-long event where I showed you how I contruct logc puzzles for you. If you ever wanted a peek behind the curtain, check it out!

As always, comments are coveted. They help me make the channel better and better as we near 100 videos, and help more people discover these great puzzles from talented constructors around the world!

Check out the Channel

What I’ve Been Playing

Lately I’ve been getting a lot of plays in of a new-to-me game from a couple years back, called Kokopelli.

This game intrigues me because it’s opportunistic rather than strategic, plays quickly, and changes every time with a highly variable setup. Players each manage their own tableau of four columns of cards, playing cards of matching suits from their hand to build up a full set of four and scoring it.

The first wrinkle (and the opportunistic part) is that you can play cards not only on your for columns, but on the nearest two columns of each of your neighbors. And if you finish one of those columns off, you’re the one who scores!

The second (and the variable part) is that each suit is associated with a different power, and in each game you choose a subset of the available suits to include in the deck. Those powers are yours as long as they are showing in your own four columns, so make the best use of them while you have them!

Your Monthly Puzzle Treat

Half a year ago, I posted six 6x6 Sudoku variants in the newsletter. There are so many more styles where those came from, so this month I decided to set six more! The puzzles this month all feature rules that use numbers outside the grid itself.

If you need help with any of these, head over to Discord and the #puzzle-hints forum there! I’d be glad to nudge you in the right direction.

But before we get to the weird stuff, let’s warm up with a Classic Sudoku!

Normal 6x6 Sudoku rules apply: Place the digits 1 through 6 once each in every row, column and bold-outlined region.

Classic Sudoku

Our first variant with outside number clues is a Sandwich Sums Sudoku. I constructed this one with the help of Charles in our office Sudoku club; thanks for the assist!

Normal 6x6 Sudoku rules apply.

Sandwich Sums: Numbers given outside the grid indicate the sum of the digits that are placed in-between the 1 and 6 in that row or column.

Sandwich Sudoku

Next up is one that can be tricky to visualize, but is pretty intuitive when you get going: Skyscrapers.

Normal 6x6 Sudoku rules apply.

Skyscrapers: Digits in the grid represent skyscrapers, with their values corresponding to their heights. Taller skyscrapers obscure all shorter skyscrapers behind them. Clues outside the grid indicate the number of skyscrapers that can be seen in that row/column, from the line of sight of the clue.

Skyscraper Sudoku

Now we have a slightly mathier one, called X-Sums.

Normal 6x6 Sudoku rules apply.

X-Sums: Digits outside the grid indicate the sum of the first n digits, where n is the digit in the closest cell to the clue.

X-Sums Sudoku

Our fifth puzzle will take some thought if you’ve never seen one before, but we have done the non-Sudoku version on Pathologic so you might be familiar from there.

Normal 6x6 Sudoku rules apply.

Numbered Rooms: Clues outside the grid indicate the digit which has to be placed in the nth cell in the corresponding direction, where n is the digit placed in the first cell in that direction.

Numbered Rooms

And finally, one that I think is quite tricky. It was uniquely solvable with about half of the clues, but I found it too difficult by far so I added a bunch more for you.

Normal 6x6 Sudoku rules apply.

First Seen Odd/Even: Clues indicate the first odd or first even digit seen in that row or column, looking from the direction of the clue. For instance, the 1 in row 1 must be the leftmost odd digit in that row.

First Seen Odd/Even Sudoku

Good luck!

More Puzzles

If you’re hungry for more, I’ve got you covered! Join the Discord server where I’m posting puzzles of all sorts every few days. It’s also a great place to get hints, and to discuss games, puzzles, and anything else that strikes your fancy.

Happy puzzling!

Congratulations

This month we give a special shout-out to Isaac Liao for a belated Valentine’s Day victory in The Cupid Crisis. Great job!

Bouba/Kiki and Stroop

Backers will have seen this already, but this week I got to hold real copies of both games in my hands! I’ve finished combing through for any errors and found a small number of needed fixes, but these are now in mass production. It won’t be long until everyone can grab copies!

This Month in Pathologic

Every day I post a new logic puzzle video on YouTube, where I explain the rules to a new logic genre and demonstrate a solution. In March we wrapped up Volume 1 with some more difficult revisited rulesets, and started a new run in Volume 2. This will continue through April, where we’ll be exploring even more!

I would love your feedback! This is still a new project and I’m learning as my go, but already I can see the production getting more consistent and streamlined as I improve audio mixing, pacing, and so on. And of course, subscribing on YouTube is an immense help to me!

Check out the Channel

What I’ve Been Playing

Today I need to talk about the oddly-named Moon Colony Bloodbath by Donald X. Vaccarino, of Dominion fame.

Despite the name, this isn’t an aggressive “take that” game. To me it bears the most resemblance to one of the designer’s previous games, Nefarious. Players simultaneously choose one of a few action choices which gain them resources of different types or allow them to construct buildings. The buildings in turn provide passive benefits when performing other actions.

But the magic here is the shared event deck. Player choices and random events will add cards to this deck, which keeps shuffling and cycling continually. Will you get an action again in time to prepare for that hazard you know is in the deck now? Adapting to the changing probabilities is the key to success (or at least less failure) as you try to stem the tide of more and more lunar disasters.

Your Monthly Puzzle Treat

As I mentioned in the last issue, I once again participated in Enigmarch, a month-long puzzle construction event. Discord members have had the opportunity to solve each puzzle as I created them, but now they are all collected together for you!

Each puzzle includes either an interactive solving interface (for logic puzzles) or a solution checker (for word puzzles). I’ve done my best at organizing the puzzles by difficulty in the index as well, if you want to cherry-pick the ones that are your speed.

Download the Puzzle Pack

But you still might get stuck! I strongly recommend joining us on Discord where I (or your fellow solvers) can give you personalized help in the #puzzle-hints forum without giving the solution away. But If you really really just want the answer, I’ve got you covered there too with an answer key PDF.

More Puzzles

If you’re hungry for more, I’ve got you covered! Join the Discord server where I’m posting puzzles of all sorts every few days. It’s also a great place to get hints, and to discuss games, puzzles, and anything else that strikes your fancy.

Happy puzzling!

Congratulations

This month we give a special shout-out to Tami for a great score on Endangered Rescue: Galápagos Penguin. Great job! The next Endangered Rescue adventure is on the way…

Happy Enigmarch!

Long-time subscribers may remember that last year I dipped my toes into Enigmarch, a month-long puzzle-setting event. Each day the organizers publish a prompt, and participating creators have a day to come up with an original puzzle based on that prompt.

I’ll be taking up the challenge again this year! Each day’s puzzle will be posted to Discord if you want to follow along in real time, or in the April newsletter I’ll compile the results into a tidy package for you. Hope you can join me!

A Month of Pathologic

The experiment I announced last month has been a success! There are now a month’s worth of daily puzzle videos on my YouTube channel, and I’m still going strong. Check in every day for a newly featured puzzle by some of the world’s best constructors, and I’ll break down the rules for you before I solve the puzzle myself. Links are always provided so you can solve yourself.

My hope is that this introduces you to lots of new and fun puzzle types! If you can take the time to leave a comment or just click “like” or “subscribe,” that is a huge help to me and supports the creation of more of these videos.

Check out the Channel

What I’ve Been Playing

Lately I’ve had the pleasure of several plays of a newer game called Let’s Go! To Japan.

This is a “pick and pass” drafting game, like Sushi Go or 7 Wonders. Each turn, all players will choose between a small collection of cards, and pass the rest to their neighbor. After many rounds of this process, you will end up with 18 cards, each of which represents one activity you can take part in during your Japanese holiday.

The cards are played in columns representing the timeline of your trip, and the order here is important: cards offer you experiences of five different categories, and also let you score based on your current totals in those categories at that point in your trip. You’ll also have to juggle transportation between Tokyo and Kyoto and a number of other mutually-contradictory goals.

This is probably a small notch in complexity above 7 Wonders, but the delightful theme and gorgeous presentation helps keep it pretty accessible. If you like dreaming of travels, this might be the game for you!

Your Monthly Puzzle Treat

In a couple days on Pathologic we will cover a polyomino-placement puzzle called LITS. This month, let’s solve a few more of them that I made for you!

The rules of LITS are:

• Shade one tetromino of cells in each region so that all shaded cells form one orthogonally connected area.

• Two tetrominoes of the same shape may not share a bold border, counting rotations and reflections as the same.

• No 2x2 region may be entirely shaded.

You can get a sneak preview of this upcoming episode of Pathologic for a full explanation as well as examples:

Got it? Good! Let’s look at a few LITS puzzles I cooked up for you:

LITS #1

LITS #2

LITS #3

(Note: Tetrominoes are not allowed to cross internal borders within a region.)

LITS #4

More Puzzles

If you’re hungry for more, I’ve got you covered! Join the Discord server where I’m posting puzzles of all sorts every few days. It’s also a great place to get hints, and to discuss games, puzzles, and anything else that strikes your fancy.

Happy puzzling!