Puzzling Like It's (Windows) '95
August 2025
Early drop for this month’s puzzles! I wanted to make sure to get this out before Gen Con.
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.
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:
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.
Antiknight: Cells that are a chess knight’s move apart may not both contain mines.
Connected: All of the mines must form a single orthogonally-connected region.
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!