Josh Sokol is on top of the North American Scrabble scene right now. The 30-year-old Montrealer is the reigning National Champion, having won NASPA’s biggest honor, the Scrabble Players Championship (SPC) in July 2023. Including that feat, Josh has w

In this crossword puzzle, the clues appear in the grid itself. Enter the answers in the direction of the pointers.

This robot has its wires all crossed! Can you figure out which cord leads to its heart, so that the robot will work when it is plugged in? ■

Solve this puzzle as you would a regular crossword, except that each space may hold one, two, or three letters. The number of letters in a space is for you to determine, using logic and the crossing of words. The answer to 1-Across, S-CR-IMP, has bee

In this variety cryptic, when clue answers disagree at a given square, resolve the conflict by entering both and adding a third letter such that new entries using all 3 letters (in any order) can be formed in both directions. For example, if CANT and

In this crossword puzzle, the clues appear in the grid itself. Enter the answers in the direction of the pointers.

It’s 2 am, and everyone in town is asleep. Time for a bank heist! Enter the bank through the vent (lower left) and find a safe path to the vault (upper right) without tripping any of the lasers. Lasers always originate from one of the four walls, and

The object of this solitaire challenge is to guess a word before making six incorrect guesses, as in a familiar childhood game. To begin, choose any letter of the alphabet that you think might appear in word I below. Suppose you pick E. Go to the Let

This puzzle turns in two directions. The spiral’s Inward clues yield a sequence of words to be entered counterclockwise in the spaces from 1 to 100. The Outward clues yield a different set of words to be entered clockwise from 100 to 1. Keep track of

This word-eating snake has struck again! The only clues in this puzzle are the letters in the bulges. Each answer consists of three words that share the letters you’ll enter in the empty squares. In the example below, the letters T and N fill the emp

FROM OCTOBER This contest was a mashup of cryptograms and Mixed Doubles. You had to start by decoding the clues, which were translated into a simple cipher alphabet (the same cipher was used throughout the clues). The decoded clues are shown below, a

Each answer in this crossword variation has two clues leading to it, using different meanings of the word. The clues are separated into Across and Down, but are otherwise ordered randomly. When you find two Across or two Down clues that seem to have

Some of the entries in this variety cryptic puzzle are too short to fully span their corresponding grid slots; you’ll need to leave one square blank when entering these answers. Blank squares will only occur at intersections; in each case, the crossi

If we are anything alike, when you send an email you expect it to arrive instantaneously (and expect it to be answered in the blink of an eye). An email can travel halfway around the world in less than 0.2 seconds—literally faster than the blink of a

IF you've been following this column since its start, you've probably become fairly confident with your logic skills. After all, the strategy of determining absolutes, eliminating the impossible, and reducing candidates to determine an answer has ser

The pentominoes are the 12 different shapes that you can make with 5 unit squares. They are often identified by the letters they resemble, as shown at right. In these problems, your goal is to cover the patios with the 12 different pentominoes, so th

ROLL-AND-WRITE BRAVO! DIGITAL EDITION OUTLINE DEVELOPMENT IOS/ANDROID: $4 ($24 TABLETOP) AGE RANGE: 4+ PLAY TIME: 10 MIN. PLAYERS: 1–2 A few years ago, veteran German designers Inka and Markus Brand took another pass at their roll- and write game Enc

PLAY ALONG WITH JOSH! Each of these words was played by Josh in a tournament game. Can you find the highest-scoring play that uses all seven of your tiles? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5XJ12rNMB0 my latest production about crazy Scrabble History

This is a classic logic puzzle, with one important difference: All the information in it is factual rather than fictional. If you already know any of the answers, you’ll have a head start in solving the puzzle—but if you don’t, you should be able to

CARD SCRAM! BEZIER GAMES, $10 ($2 ON IOS/ANDROID) AGE RANGE: 12+ PLAY TIME: 30 MIN. PLAYERS: 3, 4, OR 6 Forest critters have taken over your campsite, and it’s a rush against other campers to see who can drive them out the fastest. That’s a pretty th

WHO: | Ken Ingram, Manager WHERE: College Park. Maryland |https://gamekastle.com/pages/college-park-md One afternoon back in 2001, after watching The Fellowship of the Ring, Ken Ingram entered his first game store, Games Workshop, located in a local

This word search is a bit different than ones you’ve done before, in that it’s missing, well… words. All of the letters have been removed from the grid. Your first job is to determine which words belong in the circled spaces. They all fit a common th

Each clue in a cryptic crossword has two parts: a definition of the answer and an indication of the answer’s literal makeup via wordplay. Either half may come first; finding the dividing point between the two parts is the key to solving. On page 61,

The crossword on this and the next two pages has two independent sets of clues: “Hard” and “Easy.” First, fold this page back on the dashed line so the clues below face the solving grid on page 69. If you use only the Hard Clues (appearing below and

1 Map book 6 Lucky Jim author Kingsley 10 It guarantees bank funds: Abbr. 14 Earthenware vessel 15 Fodder tower 16 Plumb ___ (crazy) 17 Time-traveling Back to the Future guy: 2 wds. 19 Got 100% on a test 20 “Ich bin ___ Berliner” 21 St. Bernard’s com