Milestones
November 2025
Hello, friends! I’m celebrating big milestones this month. This newsletter now has over 1000 subscribers, and Pathologic has over 500! I love seeing our puzzle community grow day after day. Tell your friends!
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.
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).
Jinkies! It’s a g-g-g-ghost!
Rules
As above, plus: Ghosts can only be seen in reflections.
Now the monsters are working together! And the maze is entirely packed.
Be forewarned: This last one is tricky.
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!