Thursday, January 1, 2015

2015 posting schedule

Happy New Year!

I started Magic Word Square in mid 2008—more than 6,000 posts ago—to explore the fun of mixing words, letters and logic. I hope you enjoy solving these puzzles at least as much as I do creating them. As always, I invite your comments—please let me know what you think!

Here’s the 2015 posting schedule.

Daily posting schedule, each week
  • Monday: 6x6 Word Sudoku puzzle
  • Tuesday: 8x8 Word Sudoku puzzle or 8x8 Hidden Word, Takeaway Letter Sudoku puzzle
  • Wednesday: 9x9 Hidden Word, Takeaway Letter Sudoku puzzle
  • Thursday: 9x9 AEIOU Classic Word Sudoku puzzle
  • Friday: 10x10 Word Sudoku puzzle or 10x10 Hidden Word, Takeaway Letter Sudoku puzzle
  • Saturday: Swifty Sudoku
  • Sunday: ‘Punnish’ Word Sudoku puzzles, and sometimes also the Sunday Challenge—12x12 Word Sudoku puzzles

A Swifty Sudoku puzzle spells out a hopefully very bad adverbial pun named after (and loosely based on) the wonderful children’s books about fictional character Tom Swift. The series authors hardly ever used the verb “said” by itself. A Swifty pun takes Tom’s speaking style to the max on the absurd scale, as in:

Parsley, sage, rosemary," said Tom timelessly.

or

Let's go for another gallop," Tom recanted.

Solve the individual Word Sudoku puzzles and place the circled letters in the corresponding numbered quote grid to spell out the pun. Then groan aloud!

A Punnish Word Sudoku puzzle set spells out a more general pun; in 2015, our theme is “Never die” puns—as in:

Old lumberjacks never die, they just split.”

Some Sundays I’ll also include the Sunday Challenge, which for the past six years was a 12x12 Hidden Word Sudoku puzzle, but for 2015, will also be a Takeaway Letter puzzle. Like I’ve been doing every year as I experiment with puzzle making, for 2015 I’ve added another wrinkle to the daily puzzles: every daily puzzle (except Thursdays) is composed of only the distinct letters in "two thousand fifteen" and "twenty fifteen" (i.e., only the letters TWOHUSANDFIEY). Some days—Mondays and some of the time on Tuesdays and Fridays—I'll give you the exact letters; other days I'll only tell you which letters are NOT used, leaving you the extra chore of determining what letters the puzzle uses by taking away the noted ones from the list of possible letters. That’s what I mean by “Takeaway Letter.”

Specific date posting schedule
And finally, I post two series of puzzles based on dates throughout the year.
  • Holidays: I’ll challenge you with extra sets of extra Hidden Word Sudoku puzzles on certain holidays—puzzles using the same letters to spell out different words. Each holiday’s set of letters comes from the holiday’s name.
  • President’s birthdays: On the anniversary birthdates of America’s presidents, I’ll present you a puzzle set to spell out a quote each president made.
  • State Sudoku: On hold for 2015; I'm producing a book of these puzzles this year. I'll tell you all about it when I'm done. 

So in 2015, I’m posting more than 500 Word Sudoku puzzles. I hope you enjoy them! I look forward to your comments: Please let me know what you think.

Thanks,
--Dave

All puzzles and text contained in this blog are copyright © 2008-2015, David H. Thompson. All rights reserved. Please tell your puzzle-loving friends to follow this blog. Thank you!

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