No Internet, LudiQuest slightly delayed

I have just moved. And while I have greatly improved my commute time and more gaming space and that’s quite exciting, I have the downside of having no internet connection at home right now. The cable company came and set it up a week ago, but it is still not working despite several hours on the phone with them and a brand new computer. Hopefully, they will get it working properly when they come to the house tomorrow.

In the meantime, this has definitely made it more difficult to post, as well as to research the next puzzle contest. As a result, I am delaying the posting of LudiQuest #2 (yup, that’s what I’m calling it) until Saturday, January 5th around 11:00 am EST. In fact, for the foreseeable future I plan to post one contest every month on the first Saturday of the month.

Read this if you're a genius

I stumbled across this tool that claims to determine the reading level of any blog you give it. It’s kind of fun to try various blogs and see what you get. What is this blogs rating? “Genius”. I imagine that the algorithm just takes the words in your blog and compares them against a reading-level chart, but it does seem to match up at least somewhat to my impressions of certain sites. Of the sites I’ve tried, this is the only one with a genius rating. For some reason that kind of makes me feel good, though perhaps I should be taking that as a hint that this blog is too hard to read. Comments?

The Solution - Puzzle #1

I thought that those of you who tried your hand at the puzzle contest, might how to see how to solve puzzle #1 (yes, that means there will be a puzzle #2). I asked the winner, Mike Fassio, to send me some brief thoughts on it and here (slightly annotated) is his reply:

“First off I immediately noticed that the code was made up of elements from the periodic table so I spent some time tracking down all of the element names. I didn't see any sort of pattern emerge from the element names like if you took the first letter from each element name or something, so then I found out the atomic number of each element in hopes that there would emerge a pattern from the numbers. At this point I began to think entirely too hard about the numbers that I had written down. I tried breaking the lines of code down into as many combinations of numbers that were less than or equal to 26 (number of letters in the English alphabet). […]

I was beginning to become really frustrated and was certain that it was a more complicated puzzle since you had a 2 month time limit on it. I noticed that the atomic numbers were all primes and I began looking for ways to break prime number codes, particularly those that utilize the RSA algorithm. Then all of a sudden it hit me that the clue to the cipher was in the explanation of the riddle: "A prime example of an elementary cipher." Finally it all made sense, the cipher was 26 prime numbers which corresponded to 26 letters in the English alphabet. From there it was just simple substitution and I arrived at the solution: Email me this answer at jmplummer at aol dot com.”

I think that explains it rather well. I’m planning to post a second puzzle on January 1st, when I’ll be giving away a copy of the game Ra. Stay tuned!

We have a winner!

Congratulations to Mike Fassio, who sent in the solution about 25 minutes ago. I'll be sending him a new copy of Hollywood Blockbuster. I'll be following up with an explanation of the solution within a few days. It was a solved a bit faster than I expected - very impressive.

I'd be interested in hearing comments on whether it was fun, too easy, too hard, etc. I plan on following up with another puzzle for another prize within a couple of weeks so stay tuned!

Where do you find those games?

People who have known me for a bit know that I play boardgames – boardgames that they’ve never heard of, that often have German names, and that they would never be able to find at stores they typically frequent. Generally, when I introduce these games to new players the first question that comes up is “Where do you find/get those games?”. So for anyone who has that question or would like a place to refer anyone that does, I will address it here.

First of all, the games that I’m speaking of are generally called Eurogames (or just Euros), German games, or designer games. This doesn’t mean they’re all from Germany, or even from Europe, but many of them are. You aren’t likely to find many of them at your local Target or Walmart – you’ll have to know where to go.

You may, and probably do, have a FLGS (friendly local game store) in your area. By the way, this particular abbreviation is the common way the gaming community refers to a game store (at least online). If you don’t know where it is, try googling “boardgame” along with your city and state. Chances are you’ll find that there is a game store or gaming club in your area that you don’t even know about. The person who owns that store is someone who knows and loves games (it’s hard to make money selling games, so there’s not another reason to own one). Tell the person working there that you don’t know much about games yet and you’re looking to get your feet wet. They’ll be happy to help you out with some recommendations. Hopefully, the FLGS also has a few tables set up to play games, times set aside for gamers to meet, and information on any local game clubs that exist. If they can’t help you with any of the above and don’t seem to know much about games, you’re in the wrong place. You should find a new FLGS or go to option number two, the internet.

While I prefer to support a local game store (because if no one supports it, it won’t be there long), sometimes you can only get what you want elsewhere. In the case of games, there are plenty of websites that should be able to provide what you’re looking for. I have purchased games at Funagain.com, Thoughthammer.com, and Bouldergames.com and been satisfied with the results each time. I’ve ordered them according to how much I’ve used each one. Tanga.com has a special on something at all times, and these are boardgames about 50% of the time (the special is the only thing you can get, however). If you’re looking for more information on any game before you buy (or you need ideas on what go get), head over to http://www.boardgamegeek.com/ and look it up. I can’t stress that site enough – go visit it right now and bookmark it…I’ll wait. I definitely recommend researching every game before you buy.

Before I end this post, I should mention a few games that a new gamer might enjoy. Transamerica and Ticket to Ride are two games about forming train routes that plenty of neophyte or veterans gamers seem to enjoy. Bohnanza is a card game about bean trading and Lost Cities is two-player card game with a thin archeology theme. If you aren’t looking for a basic “beginner” game but just want to jump in with both feet, I’d suggest Ra or Puerto Rico as nice medium-weight games. Click the appropriate link to learn more and have fun!