February 4, 2015

I am incredibly excited to write my first blog post! This does not mean my website is A-OK yet; the Millie puzzle looks disgusting and I wanna try and fix that; however, I'm getting started and this wiki looks a little less disgusting than it did in January.

The most common question I've been receiving from the masses when I tell them I'm making a puzzle book is "What Kind of Puzzles?" I wish I had an answer. I really did. I would burn $20 if it meant I could get an answer. But the answer currently is, "I don't know." There are some kinds of puzzles I enjoy making quite a lot. My "specialty" has been Metapuzzles, which are collections of abstract lateral thinking puzzles which together bring a final answer. However, I've made many a logic puzzle, a word-search, a scavenger hunt, a chemistry murder mystery, to know that limiting myself to one type of puzzle would bore and constrict me. As a result, my point of view right now is that I should experiment with as many different styles of puzzles as I can in order to find niches I really enjoy and pursue them more in-depth.

The question I've most wanted to receive from the masses is "What's it like to make a puzzle?" I've never been particularly matronly, but I've always figured that making a puzzle is like cooking. While a cook can turn flour, sugar, and eggs into a cake which is far more valuable than the ingredients were at the start, puzzle-makers turn patterns and connections into something greater and more ascetically pleasing than was there at the start, and hopefully forge mental connections that would not be there if the patterns were given "raw".

I'm most interested in starting with Crossword Puzzles, so future blog posts will likely focus on compiling resources and my struggles and successes in constructing my incipient "Power Grids"