I contributed a Valentine’s Day puzzle to Scott Kominer’s puzzles-and-games column on Bloomberg News. You can see it here.

1) ✈✈✈ Galactic Trendsetters ✈✈✈ created an extraordinary online world to explore over the course of their Hunt, with Easter eggs and online games and a jillion puzzles to unlock and solve. Any feelings of doubt Hunters may have had about not being able to gather on campus for a “real” hunt were blown away the first time they entered this world and saw a sprawling cartoon version of MIT laid out for everyone’s enjoyment. If the Mystery Hunt continues for another 100 years, people will still be talking about this one.

2) My team, Palindrome, won — we found the coin in a virtual vending machine down the hall from where our real-life HQ has been in past years.

3) And because we won, and therefore have a Hunt of our own to prepare for 2022, I am already far too busy to provide more of a wrap-up than this.

I choose the words that get used in each game of Spaghetti using a random-number generator, first choosing a page from an abridged dictionary and then a word from that page. Sometimes the gods of randomness are merciful: In the last round, three separate players capitalized on the fact that the given words all had repeated letters. (Although the eventual winner, Kevin Wald, went in a completely different direction.)

It’s hard for me to judge whether a given set of random words is easy or hard, but I suspect the gods of randomness are done fooling around. Let’s find out.

Here are the words for a new round of Spaghetti:

EVER
PIT VIPER
ROUSE
SUCCEED
SUPPLY SIDE

As before, you have the option of adding a sixth word to the list if that should prove useful to you.

And of course, even if you can’t see an answer hiding in this list of words, please come back later and Like all the responses you, well, like.

Good luck!

It’s been two years since we last played Spaghetti here on the blog — I completely forgot about running a round or two last year, much to my eventual embarrassment when the game was name-checked in a Mystery Hunt puzzle.

Let’s review, shall we?

In the Mystery Hunt and other such events, players accrue answers by solving puzzles. Those answers generally form a “metapuzzle” — which is to say, those answers form one further puzzle, which when solved usually brings great rewards.

Many years ago I first ran an experiment where I challenged puzzle lovers to solve a metapuzzle that wasn’t a puzzle at all — it was, in fact, a bunch of randomly chosen words. This should have been impossible. It wasn’t. Puzzlers are incredibly adept at spotting patterns that others are likely to miss, and they found all kinds of “answers” in those random words. And they have done so every single time I have run the game. As a group, they have never been stumped. Go read the comments from the last time I did this to see some examples.

So with the new Mystery Hunt coming up this weekend, let’s play at least one round of Spaghetti and see what these crazy puzzleheads come up with this time.

Even if you can’t “solve” the puzzle I am about to present, come back often and read the comments, and press Like for your favorite solutions. (You can vote for as many solutions as you want.) The submission with the most Likes will be the winner.

Here are five randomly chosen words. What’s the answer, and why?

ADJOINING
GOOD
PASTORAL
RUDDY
SMASH

When crafting your answer, you have the option of adding a sixth word to this list — any word you like. Or you can stick with these five.

Good luck and bon appétit!

I’ll have a new Sunday crossword, “Six Pack,” in the New York Times this weekend. I hope you enjoy it. Big shoutout to my friend Dave Shukan for his help in developing the theme for this one.

You know the one thing I wasn’t selling in my Puzzlesnacks store? Puzzlesnacks. I had the tougher Plus puzzles in there, and also the easier kid-friendly puzzle sets, but no collections of my actual weekly Puzzlesnacks puzzles. I finally decided to do something about that.

Puzzlesnacks Party is a set of 50 snack-sized puzzles featuring a wide variety of puzzle types — Labyrinth, Spiral, Gotta Split, and much more. These are mostly puzzles from 2016 and 2017, so unless you were one of my very first subscribers, these will be new to you. Get ’em for yourself to scratch that need-a-quick-puzzle itch, or get them for a new or intermediate solver in your life.

(And while I’m here: Have a happy and safe Thanksgiving!)

This Friday on Puzzlesnacks, I’ll debut a brand-new variety puzzle type — the Jelly Roll! And then this weekend, you’ll see a full-size version in the New York Times Sunday magazine. Thanks to my friend Mark Halpin for helping in the development of this puzzle’s presentation, and for coming up with the perfect name.

Two items:

1. Will Shortz features a puzzle by me on NPR Weekend Edition–it’s the new weekly challenge.
   
2. I’m one of five puzzlemakers presenting puzzly challenges on the next edition of That Word Chat–Tuesday, November 10th, at 4:30 p.m. Eastern. Sign up at the link to join in!

This was released a couple of months ago, and apparently I announced it everywhere but on my own blog. You might know that every week I make a new “snack-sized” variety puzzle, and there’s even a whole book available of my Puzzlesnacks. Well, I asked my audience if they wanted my puzzles in a slightly larger size, and the response was an overwhelming “Yep!” And so I’m pleased to announce (albeit two months late) my first set of Puzzlesnacks Plus: A downloadable packet of twenty larger and more challenging variety puzzles, sure to give you a healthy workout!

The annual convention of the National Puzzlers’ League was cancelled for this year, alas, but a whole bunch of us have gathered online for a weekend of puzzles and games, and naturally I made a puzzle to hand out to one and all. You can solve it, too! Get it here.