Hey folks, I’ve added some new Bridges puzzles to the site. In Japan, Bridges are known as Hashiwokakero which means “Bridge Building”. They are also known here as Hashi.
In these puzzles, you are presented with a collection of numbered circles, which represent islands. You connect the islands with bridges to form a network of roads so that you can reach any island from any other island. The number on each island indicates the number of outgoing bridges. You may only connect islands horizontally or vertically, and you may use one or two bridges to connect islands, but no more than two. Each Bridge puzzle has only one unique solution, which you can find without guessing.
Fans of Bridges will probably also like the Galaxy and Slitherlink puzzles in my collection, which also involve spatial reasoning.
Some weeks back, I used Facebook’s open graph API to read about 1.2 million names from Facebook users. I used it to construct this file, which shows, for each name, the number of times it occurs, the number of times it’s used by males, and the number of times it occurs in females. To keep things simple, I’ve included all locales, although the gender bias does differ a bit depending on locale.
As you can see from the first few names in the list, most first names have a strong male or female bias on Facebook.
Although I’ve always thought of the names “Chris” and “Pat” as being gender-neutral, both names show a strong male bias.
“Chris”,13384,13254,130
“Pat”,869,830,39
The two most popular strongly gender-neutral names on Facebook are Taylor (which skews slightly male) and Casey (which skews slightly female).
“Taylor”,1646,893,753
“Casey”,1814,811,1003
I should point out that this is not a representative random sampling of names (and the name frequency disagrees, for example, with a similar list provided by the US Social Security Administration). Since I trawled these names in ascending order of Facebook id, and Facebook was a service first used by college students, the list represents mostly the names of US college students born in the 1980s. For example, in this group of early Facebook adopters, the name “Sarah” is the most popular female name, while according to the SSA, it is only the #5 name for babies born in the 1980s.
A is for Amazon
B is for Best Buy
C is for Craigslist
D is for Dictionary
E is for EBay
F is for Facebook
G is for Gmail
H is for Hotmail
I is for IKEA
J is for Jet Blue
K is for Kohls
L is for Lowes
M is for MapQuest
N is for Netflix
O is for Orbitz
P is for Pandora
Q is for Quotes
R is for REI
S is for Sears
T is for Target
U is for USPS
V is for Verizon
W is for Weather
X is for Xbox
Y is for Yahoo
Z is for Zillow
These are supposedly personalized for me, but feel quite impersonal. How does your list differ?
The latest addition to my puzzle collection, Galaxies are elegant puzzles in which symmetry forms an essential component.
You are presented with a grid containing circles, in seemingly random positions. You fill in the lines of the grid to form an island, or galaxy around each circle. The galaxy shapes must be rotationally (or 180° or two-fold) symmetric around each circle, like the shapes shown here. They resemble little spiral galaxies, hence the name of the puzzle. When the puzzle is finished, the space is completely filled with galaxies, and every galaxy shape is symmetric. You have wrought order out of chaos!
In Japan, Galaxies puzzles are known as Tentai Show, which has an interesting double meaning. It means both “astronomical show” and “two-fold rotational symmetry”.
Nifty, eh?
I have carefully ordered these puzzles so that they get significantly harder as the book numbers get higher. You’ll also find that the larger (21×21) puzzles are a great deal harder than the smaller (7×7) puzzles. I suggest you start with the smaller, easier puzzles and work your way up.
Eighty-seven year old puzzle constructor Yochanan wrote to tell me he has posted scans of his hand-made crossfigure puzzles. You’ll find 80 puzzles, divided into 4 collections here. I find these puzzles to be excellent. However, because they are scans from a book, it helps to zoom in on each page to make the puzzles legible.
Yochanan has donated these puzzles to my collection, and I intend to transcribe them into a digital format and produce a new set of clean & legible PDFs from them, when I get some free time. If you’re interested in helping out by testing the transcribed puzzles, let me know!
I’ve transcribed the collection! If you’d like to help out by solving one (or more) of these and checking for mistakes, send me a note and I’ll assign you a range. Thanks!
Apparently, “Kennie” was a little too close to “KenKen” for Bob Fuhrer, who sent the following missive this morning:
Dear Mr. Bumgardner,
I am President of Nextoy, LLC and KenKen, LLC, which owns
and controls all rights in the KenKen® and Kendoku® brands
of mathematical logic puzzles. I have recently learned that
you are publishing puzzles under the name KENNIE, which
is an infringement on our registered KenKen® trademark.
KenKen® is a coined term and is thus an inherently
distinctive, strong trademark when used in connection with
Nextoy’s mathematical puzzle games. Your use of the name
KENNIE in the title of your puzzles constitutes passing off
and falsely implies that your puzzles originate from Nextoy or
are otherwise approved, sponsored or endorsed by Nextoy,
the makers of the genuine ‘KENKEN’ puzzles. Accordingly, I
must insist that you immediately cease and desist from all
uses of the designation KENNIE or other use of our distinctive
“KEN” term, and from the manufacture, sale, distribution or
further use of any puzzles or other materials that infringe
Nextoy’s rights.
I trust that your infringement of Nextoy’s rights was
unintentional but as I am sure you can appreciate, the KenKen®
brand is a valuable asset and we must be diligent in ensuring
that our intellectual property rights are protected and maintained.
If your infringement of Nextoy¹s KenKen® brand was indeed
unintentional, your cooperation in immediately ceasing all
infringing activities and complying with the other terms of this
demand will be a significant factor in determining how far
Nextoy decides to press this matter, including its decision to
seek monetary damages, lost profits, equitable remedies, and
other relief as may be proper under the circumstances.
I look forward to your cooperation in remedying this situation
in the most amicable manner possible. If you have any
questions concerning the foregoing, please do not hesitate to
contact me. I look forward to your positive response.
Sincerely,
Robert Fuhrer
KenKen Puzzle, LLC (subsidiary of Nextoy, LLC)
39 Washington Ave.
Pleasantville, NY 10570
So… I am henceforth renaming my Kennies to Inkies.
Apparently, the paltry few KenKen puzzles published in the Times weren’t enough, so a number of you wrote to me asking for KenKen puzzles.
I’m publishing a new kind of puzzle called a Kennie. It’s similar to a KenKen, but has a few minor differences. Kinda like those chocolaty sandwich cookies that aren’t exactly like an Oreo… Kennie puzzles don’t include those cheap freebie squares that make the puzzle easier to get started. Personally I prefer ’em that way, since it makes the puzzle more satisfying to solve. Your opinion may differ.
While waiting around at the local Michael’s, I picked up a 3 dollar copy of the Great Illustrated Classics version of The Time machine by H.G. Wells. I was surprised to open it to an illustration depicting a character from a cheaply made 1950s Sci Fi film — most certainly not a character from Wells’ original novel!
Apparently the publisher asked the adapter, Shirley Bogart, to jazz up the ending. In the chapter “The Golden Age of Science,” our hero transports himself 300 years into his future (approximately the year 2195) and encounters some characters from an Ed Wood movie.
The time traveler is squirted with “Apathy-Gas” and interrogated, before making his escape. The book has a copyright date of 2009, but appears to have been written and illustrated in the early 70s.
You can save 3 bucks, and read most of it on Google.
Hey folks, I’ve added some new Bridges puzzles to the site. In Japan, Bridges are known as Hashiwokakero which means “Bridge Building”. They are also known here as Hashi. 
A is for Amazon
