Stuck at Home? You Need Puzzles

Updated June 10, 2020.

I saw an article the other day that there has been a mad run on jigsaw puzzles. Okay, that’s understandable. They’re good time-killers; they keep the hands busy. But allow me to put in a good word for pencil puzzles. They exercise the brain far better than jigsaws. They come in a million different varieties — your new favorite puzzle is out there, waiting to be discovered. And working together on a word puzzle with a friend or a relative, building on each other’s progress, sharing eureka moments, is a wonderful way to pass the time.

What’s more, you don’t need to rush out to the hobby shop or even leave your house at all: The Internet has hundreds upon hundreds of pencil puzzles, available for free and ready for downloading.

Let’s dive in.

Crosswords

The heavy hitter of the puzzle world. I couldn’t hope to list every possible source of crosswords — there’s just that many. I restricted myself to puzzles that are easily downloadable as pdfs.

Glutton for Pun: Erik Agard is the recently appointed editor of the USA Today crossword, a frequent contributor to the New York Times puzzle, and one of the few constructors in regular rotation the New Yorker. The man knows his puzzles, and his former blog has an archive of over 250 of them, mostly crosswords but a few variety puzzles as well.

Brendan Emmett Quigley: A few days ago, Brendan posted crossword #1247. He’s been doing this a while, is what I’m saying. You’ll find his puzzles in many newspapers and magazines, and he posts new puzzles to his Web site every Monday and Thursday. The archive will keep you busy for a long, long time.

The Bryant Park Crosswords: Mike Shenk is a hall-of-fame caliber constructor — he was an editor at Games magazine through its heyday, and is currently the editor of the Wall Street Journal crossword. He and his colleagues at Puzzability have presented a one-day tournament in NYC’s Bryant Park over these past few years, and now Mike’s puzzles for those tournaments are all available for free.

The Wall Street Journal: Those puzzles Mike edits daily for the Journal? They’re available for free, too. Don’t miss the weekly contest crosswords, and the Saturday variety puzzle is consistently one of my favorite solves of the week.

Tough as Nails: Stella Zawistowski recently came out of retirement as a constructor — you’re going to start seeing her name again here and there, and she has started a new blog that deserves your attention.

Arctan(x)words: Christopher Adams’s crossword blog has been cooking since 2017.

Rossword Puzzles: Ross Trudeau is another experienced constructor showing off his skills, with a new puzzle every week or so.

Indie 500 Tournament Puzzles: The Indie 500 is an annual tournament held in Washington, D.C., put together by a slew of great names from the crossword community. The puzzles are generally superb — and five full years of them are now available for free!

Variety Puzzles

I enjoy crosswords, certainly, but my favorite pencil puzzles are varieties. Forget “Across” and “Down.” Variety puzzles send words flying every which way — zipping around corners, going in circles, zigging and zagging unpredictably. This doesn’t mean they’re harder than regular crosswords, necessarily. It just means you’ll need to think a little more flexibly as you solve.

Puzzlesnacks: If you’re new to variety puzzles, here’s the place to start. A new, snack-sized puzzle is posted each Friday, all of them created by yours truly. (I’m allowed to have my own stuff in this list, right?)

A-Frame Games: There may well be no finer constructor of variety puzzles than Patrick Berry. He contributes dazzling grids to the Wall Street Journal (see the link above), and he has a small but priceless collection of free puzzles at his Web site.

Triple Play Puzzles: I could have just as easily put Trip Payne in the Crossword section above, but his site also has lots of varieties — including his magnificent “Something Different” puzzles, which have to be seen to be believed.

Nathan Curtis: Nathan has a Patreon that supplies challenging variety puzzles (and, oftentimes, logic puzzles) to his subscribers. But he also has a lot of free stuff — click the link and scroll down.

Cryptic Crosswords

Passionately adored by die-hard solvers, cryptic crosswords haven’t really caught on with the mainstream. At first glance, they can be intimidating, with clues that seem to have been imported straight from Bizarroland. They are well worth the effort — and if you’re stuck at home, what better time to start? This article by Joshua Kosman and Henri Picciotto explains the basics.

Kegler’s Kryptics: Lots and lots of cryptics posted over the years by Ron Sweet — including several made specifically for beginners.

Aries Puzzles: Andrew Ries does it all — crosswords, varieties, contest puzzles, and cryptics. I’m only putting him here because this section needs filling out.

Mark Halpin: If you are already an experienced cryptic solver but haven’t yet come across Mark’s “Sondheim” puzzles — boy, are you in for a treat. Each puzzle takes as its inspiration a different work or song by Sondheim. These are real brain burners, but very satisfying.

A-Frame Games: Let me point you back Patrick Berry’s site again. In addition to his free variety puzzles, he offers a bunch of cryptics, including “Middle of the Road” — one of the most astonishing puzzles I’ve ever solved. If you’ve got some cryptic crossword chops, and haven’t yet solved Patrick’s offerings, do not hesitate.

Logic Puzzles

I am forever grateful that sudoku became such a mania fifteen years ago, because that simple number-place puzzle ushered in a galaxy of intriguing logic puzzles. If you enjoy sudoku but have sometimes wondered “What’s next?”, get ready.

Grandmaster Logic Puzzles: Thomas Snyder started Grandmaster Puzzles back in 2013 or so, and while the blog is currently on hiatus, the extensive archive awaits you — hundreds of logic puzzles in dozens of different varieties. Go ahead, click randomly on the puzzle types in the left-hand menu — you’ll see all of the puzzles of that type, each one with a link to its specific rules. And the rules pages, in turn, each have a link to the easiest puzzles of that type. That should get you up and running.

Good places to start:

• Sudoku variants like Thermo-sudoku and Tight Fit Sudoku
• Star Battle
• LITS
• Fillomino
  

The Griddle: A whopping fourteen-year archive of mostly logic puzzles by David Millar, with some word puzzles thrown in as well.

Anything Goes

Some constructors are never content with the standard array of puzzle formats — they are endlessly exploring new ways to challenge solvers. You never know what you’re going to find as you click on the links below.

Shinteki Puzzle of the Month: Shinteki has been making ingenious live puzzle adventures, mainly on the West Coast, since 1994, but for a few years they also featured a Puzzle of the Month on their Web site, with contributions by some of my very favorite constructors. Hint buttons will give less experienced solvers a boost.

Puzzled Pint: Puzzled Pint is a monthly puzzle event hosted at bars and taverns all over the world. It’s a great introduction into the world of puzzle hunts, where the answers to individual puzzles fit together into a concluding “metapuzzle” to provide a satisfying final answer. Some of the more extreme puzzle hunts have dozens of puzzles. Puzzled Pint is content to cap things off at just five or six puzzles per event — and what’s more, the puzzles are purposely designed to be accessible by a wide audience. Sound good? It gets better: An archive dating back to 2010 is sitting there waiting for you. (Psst: the February 2020 puzzles were created by me.)

BAPHL: It’s pronounced like “baffle” and stands for the Boston-Area Puzzle Hunt League. For a while there it was a twice-yearly event: Get a small team together and solve pencil puzzles while walking around Boston. Difficulty-wise, BAPHL puzzles are somewhere between Puzzled Pint (above) and the Mystery Hunt (below). Some of the puzzles might be location-specific, but most should be solvable at home.

Mystery Hunt: You can’t very well have a list of puzzles in an “anything goes” section without including the MIT Mystery Hunt. These puzzles, make no mistake, are H-A-R-D. They’re also extraordinarily creative. You can lose yourself for hours wading through the archive without even solving anything — just click on a random puzzle and then immediately on the solution. Odds are you’ll stand in awe, first that anybody thought to do this, and then that anybody solved it.

New! Pilcrow Bar: An assortment of clever puzzles by Sandor Weisz, in alliance with the Chicago restaurant Alinea. Each puzzle represents a silly pop-up restaurant — Word Salad, Sandwich Castle. None have instructions, so you’re on your own to figure out exactly what you have to do. (Hints are available.) The whole project is heightened by dazzling production values.

New! Palace of Destiny: Explore the many rooms of this puzzle-filled palace, brought to you by the clever folks at the San Francisco escape room facility Palace Games. The puzzles are extremely varied, and are well-calibrated in terms of difficulty — the easy ones at the beginning suck you in, but before too long, you’re actually going to have to think. Click on each room’s Magic Mirror for useful hints.