It’s Puzzlesnacks Day!

When I was in high school and college, I was a rabid fan of Games magazine. Why? Because I loved turning the pages of a new issue, never sure what I was going to see next.

They had crossword puzzles in there, sure, but I usually ignored these. I was drawn to the more interesting puzzles: Grids where the words performed like acrobats in the circus, flipping around, going in circles, doing all kinds of unpredictable stunts.

I was a big fan of Will Shortz, Patrick Berry, Mike Shenk, Henry Hook, and many others who were not content to rely on the usual assortment of puzzle types. They wanted to give the puzzle-loving audience Something New, and boy, did they ever.

Here’s the thing, though: Those new and different variety puzzles? A lot of them were pretty damn tough. You had to be a devoted puzzle addict to want to tackle them.

There are a lot of people out there who say they like puzzles, but what they mean are easier, casual puzzles. They have no interest in trying to tackle, say, one of Mike Shenk’s Marching Bands, where words go absolutely every-freakin-where. I myself didn’t try a Marching Bands for many years. I was just too intimidated. And those dazzling three-star variety cryptics? Good heavens. Forget it. I knew I was probably missing something good, but I didn’t have a prayer of solving those puzzles.

But those variety puzzle types — the unusual and interesting puzzles that captivated me then and that I continue to adore now — don’t HAVE to be tough and intimidating. If you shrink them down a bit, and avoid obscure words in the grid’s fill — why, anybody can solve them, no matter their level of experience.

That’s what I’ve tried to do over the last few years, first under the name Puzzle Your Kids and then — when it became clear that adults also liked these puzzles — under the new name Puzzlesnacks.

Puzzlesnacks look a lot like those interesting puzzles I was drawn to back when I first started getting Games magazine. The words perform all kinds of stunts, and the puzzles will bend your brain in many new directions. But the puzzles are also much smaller — typically just 16-35 words, and with a vocabulary that pretty much anybody can tackle with confidence.

I’m imagining a door marked Love of Puzzles, you see, and I want to swing that door wide open, for kids and for adults who think the early-week newspaper crossword is the most interesting puzzle available to them.

I’ve been creating these puzzles for the last three years. And today the first full collection of Puzzlesnacks is officially available: 110 puzzles covering nearly 40 different puzzle types. You can find Puzzlesnacks at your favorite bookstore (I hope, anyway), or online at the usual places.

If you buy it, and enjoy it, give it a review on Amazon or Goodreads or your bookstore Web site of choice, wouldja? You wouldn’t believe how big a difference a few good, honest reviews make.

Thanks.