Table of contents for October 2025 in Games World of Puzzles

EDITOR’S NOTE The “Dripping Faucet” puzzles on page 10 of the September issue were coauthored by Esteban Grinbank, but he was not credited in the byline. Our apologies for this oversight, Esteban. LAUNDRY If a reader finds a significant error or a mistake that affects the play of a game or puzzle, and we agree that the slip needs laundering, we’ll acknowledge the first or most entertaining letter and send the writer a GAMES WORLD OF PUZZLES T-shirt. NOW SHOWING (September cover puzzle) Many solvers, including Louie Varns, spotted the W missing from the marquee on the September cover: “I was surprised to get WAYNE’S WORLD from the cover puzzle even though you had blown away the first W. And here is a puzzle based on the cover.” What movie…

In each puzzle, anagram the given letters to form a 9-letter word, then write that word in the diagram, one letter per square. As a hint, there are inequality signs between the squares: A lesser-than symbol (<) means a letter is before another in the alphabet, the greater-than symbol(>) means a letter is after another in the alphabet, and the equal sign (=) shows that both letters are the same. A < B < C < D < E < F < G < H < I < J < K < L < M < N < O < P < Q < R < S < T < U < V < W < X < Y < Z ANSWERS, PAGE 76 EXAMPLE: AEGMS…

Kakuro puzzles are math crosswords where the clues are given within the grid. Each blank white square is to be filled with a digit from 1 to 9. If a 24 appears in a gray clue square just to the right of a slash, it indicates that the white squares extending to the right of that clue will be filled with digits that add up to 24. Likewise, a 17 in a gray clue square just to the left of a slash indicates that the digits in the blank white squares immediately below the clue will sum to 17. In no such down or across ‘‘word’’ will any digit appear more than once, and no zeros will be included at all. ANSWERS, PAGE 71 PUZZLE 1 PUZZLE 2 PUZZLE 3…

The object of this solitaire challenge is to guess a word before making six incorrect guesses, as in a familiar childhood game. To begin, choose any letter of the alphabet that you think might appear in word I below. Suppose you pick E. Go to the Letter Chart on the facing page and find the number listed in row E of column I (because you are working on word I). The number is 19; you now look at box number 19 in the Position Chart (to the right of the Letter Chart) and find the number 6. This means that the letter E occurs in the sixth position (and nowhere else) in word I. If a letter occurs more than once in a word, the Position Chart will show all…

This puzzle gives you two grids for the price of one. And two sets of clues to go with them, so you can work both crosswords at the same time. What’s the catch? Each clue number is followed by two different clues to two different answers. The puzzle is to figure out which answer goes with which grid. 1-Across has been filled in for you. ANSWERS, PAGE 72 ACROSS 1 2025 March Madness runner-up’s university… …and team name 8 Landscaping tool Mob boss Frank 13 Its capital is Yerevan Not the least bit: 3 wds. 14 Minnesota congresswoman Omar The Cloister and the Hearth novelist Charles 15 Bottom-line deficit: 2 wds. Facets 16 Harold of Ghostbusters Seedling, e.g. 17 Rejections Chinese ideal 18 Goes quickly, old-style Big name in oil…

These eight puzzles feature a unique blend of logic and art. The numbers are all you need to determine which squares should be filled in to form a picture. Here’s how it’s done: The numbers outside each row and column tell you how many groups of black squares there are in that line and, in order, how many consecutive black squares there are in each group. For example, 4 5 9 2 tells you that there will be four groups that will contain, in order, 4, 5, 9, and 2 consecutive black squares. The fact that the numbers are separated tells you that there is at least one empty square between them. (There may also be empty squares at the ends of lines.) The trick is to figure out how…

While exploring an abandoned old house, we discovered 14 pieces of torn paper with text on them. As it turned out, they are the first lines of classic novels and short stories—all of which come from the genres of horror/Gothic fiction. Can you match each excerpt (1–14) with the correct title and author (a–n) on the next page? ANSWERS, PAGE 76 1 3 May. Bistritz.—Left Munich at 8:35 P.M., on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but train was an hour late. 2 You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings. 3 I was sick—sick unto death with that long agony; and when they at length unbound me,…

SHEDDING JUNGO HAPPY CAMPER, $15 AGE RANGE: 8+ PLAY TIME: 15 MIN. PLAYERS: 2–5 This is the third tight little card game from Happy Camper—following Trio and Combo—and each has been a winner, with effective art and interesting twists on familiar tropes. The object of Jungo is to shed all your cards by playing stronger sets than the previous player. The Jungo deck comes with 72 cards: 64 numbered 1 through 8, with eight of each number, and eight with number pairs (1/2, 3/4, etc.). The cards are shuffled together and dealt ten to a player for 2 to 3 players, and eight to a player for 4 to 5. The remaining cards form a stock. Players cannot change the order of the cards in their hand after they are…

Use the words listed below to reconstruct a crisscross puzzle without symmetry. The numbers provided on the grid’s borders indicate the lengths of words in their order of appearance. Make sure there is at least one empty space between each two words, which you can mark with a dot. Note that many rows and columns will also contain single (uncrossed) letters, which belong to words from another direction. ANSWER, PAGE 75 5 LETTERS AGENT CYCLE 6 LETTERS ANORAK RUSTIC SENSES SKATER 7 LETTERS ALGEBRA APPAREL CASHIER ITALICS PSYCHIC 8 LETTERS ANECDOTE AUDACITY CHARISMA EPILOGUE EVALUATE MAHOGANY NOWADAYS OMITTING ROMANTIC SEAT BELT 9 LETTERS BLUE JEANS MALAYSIAN SHOEMAKER 10 LETTERS ABHORRENCE AVANT-GARDE EXPERIMENT FREELANCER MYSTERIOUS OBSERVABLE 11 LETTERS CASE STUDIES ENTERTAINER MICKEY MOUSE 12 LETTERS COHABITATION 13 LETTERS KINETIC ENERGY…

Each clue in the cryptic crossword below contains two parts: a definition of the answer and a second description of it through wordplay. Finding the dividing point between parts is the key to solving. Forms of wordplay you may encounter in the non-definition half of a clue include: anagrams (“changing times” = ITEMS); homophones (“listen to church singers” = QUIRE); hidden words (“parts of the arts” = HEART); charades of two or more words (“auto animal” = CARPET); reversals (“returning stag” = REED); and containers (“bovine holds everything” = CALLOW). Some clues will contain a combination of two or more of these devices. Of course, a definition of the answer will also appear in every clue, either at the beginning or the end (as “Changing Times articles (5)” for ITEMS).…

Each answer in this crossword variation has two clues leading to it, using different meanings of the word. The clues are separated into Across and Down, but are otherwise ordered randomly. When you find two Across or two Down clues that seem to have the same answer, add up their clue numbers to determine the place in the grid at which the answer should be entered. ANSWER, PAGE 71 ACROSS 1 Operating costs 2 Growing Pains star Joanna 3 Toothpaste conveyor 4 Weapons with dual blades 5 Repellent spray 6 Where plantar fasciitis may develop 7 Debatable topic 8 Up above 9 Rush hour headache 10 Situations with both pros and cons 11 Submitted a CV 12 Move like a bocce ball 13 Adjusts the space between characters 14 Lab order?…

In these puzzle grids, alphabet letters are represented by numbers (A = 1, B = 2, etc). However, the numbers in the grids are not the correct numbers! Change the numbers following the steps shown in the decipher key and then print the corresponding letter in the blank grid. If you solve the puzzles correctly, the letters in each grid will spell out five words from a related theme, one after the other. The words are not necessarily five letters long. The first letter in each grid is already solved for you ANSWERS, PAGE 77 1 2 3 4…

Each of the 72 words and phrases listed below has either 5 or 8 letters. Fit them into the grid so that they intersect in standard crossword fashion. Each word should be used exactly once. A high five to you if you can complete this task! STARTING HINT, PAGE 74 5 LETTERS BUMPY CHAFF CHORE COMIC COMMA CSI: NY ELBOW FAX ME GARTH GIADA HAGUE JERZY JFK JR. KAL-EL KEY UP LOW IQ MACY’S MAY WE? MURAL MYRNA NORMA OUT OF PACEM PSHAW QUIPU R AND B RENEW ROREM SEGNI SIC AT SQUAB TWAIN WIDER X’D OUT X-RAYS YOUTH 8 LETTERS AMORETTE ARCHDUKE BABE RUTH BACK HOME BAMM-BAMM B-COMPLEX BEST MATE COKE ZERO DRACONIC EDIT MENU EMERY BAG FRITTATA HORRIFIC INFAMOUS IT CAN’T BE LEGAL MAN LIMEQUAT MAKE A PUN…

This puzzle turns in two directions. The spiral’s Inward clues yield a sequence of words to be entered counterclockwise in the spaces from 1 to 100. The Outward clues yield a different set of words to be entered clockwise from 100 to 1. Keep track of which way you’re going, and have many happy returns. ANSWER, PAGE 71 INWARD 1-7 Write in C++ or Python 8-15 Of minor importance 16-20 Edmonton hockey pro 21-27 Egyptian city where a famous stone was discovered 28-31 Women’s pro links org. 32-36 The Gates of Hell sculptor 37-42 Gives an address 43-47 Big name in hummus 48-54 Words on a missing pet sign 55-61 Lack of good manners: 2 wds. 62-66 Steer clear of 67-71 Sports complex 72-78 Halter alternative: 2 wds. 79-83 Coffee concoction…

The six puzzles on this page are solitaire versions of the classic paper-and-pencil game of Battleships. Each grid represents a section of ocean in which a fleet is hiding. This fleet consists of one battleship (four grid cells in length), two cruisers (three cells each), three destroyers (two cells each), and four submarines (one cell each). The ships may be oriented either horizontally or vertically, and no two ships can occupy adjacent grid cells, not even diagonally. The digits along the grid’s perimeter indicate the number of cells in the corresponding rows and columns that are occupied by vessels. You’ll notice that some “shots” have been taken to start you off. These may show water (indicated by wavy lines), a complete sub (a circle), the bow or stern of a…

Solve this puzzle as you would a regular crossword, except that each space may hold one, two, or three letters. The number of letters in a space is for you to determine, using logic and the crossing of words. The answer to 1-Across, S-IM-PLE, has been filled in as an example. ANSWER, PAGE 73 ACROSS 1 Easy 4 Atomically related chemical compound 8 Whacked hard 12 Caught forty winks 13 Rival of Lipton and Tetley 14 Wannabe lounge singer’s activity 15 2025 Renée Zellweger rom-com that’s fourth in a series: 6 wds. 18 Fits together, as gear teeth 19 Williams who played Potsie on Happy Days 20 Inhaled anesthetic of the past 23 Where spider babies incubate: 2 wds. 27 Ore-digging workers 30 Erudite class of people 32 Enthusiastic about,…

Solve these Sudoku puzzles using the digits 1 through 7 and two letters (B and H for the first puzzle; C and E for the second puzzle). Once solved, the puzzle becomes a maze. Enter the maze where indicated, and make your way to the exit following the shortest possible route. In this puzzle, there are nine bears (B) that just woke up from hibernation and will eat practically anything they see—including lost adventurers! Pass by a honey pot (H) to collect it before passing by a bear. You must feed every bear a pot of honey before escaping the maze. You can retrace your steps, but you can only carry one pot at a time, and you can only use a pot once. In this puzzle, there are nine…

Change each group of 10 words below into a “family” of different words (words or proper names that have something in common) by dropping one letter from each word and then rearranging the remaining letters. For example, given the entries HAUNT, HAIRDO, and ADVANCE, you could drop the N from HAUNT to get UTAH, drop the R from HAIRDO for IDAHO, and drop the C from ADVANCE to get NEVADA, all in the category “U.S. states.” Can you reunite each family by determining the category for each and unscrambling the 10 entries? Answers are all single words. As a hint, a list of the four categories appears on page 71. ANSWERS, PAGE 72 FAMILY ONE FAMILY TWO FAMILY THREE FAMILY FOUR…

Divide each n×n grid into n regions of size n with the condition that the sum of the numbers in each region is equal to the sums given for each problem. For example, a 4×4 grid should be divided into 4 tetrominoes, a 5×5 grid should be divided into 5 pentominoes, and so on. Here are a few solving hints: 1. Consider how to create the smallest and largest possible sums. 2. Pay attention to odd numbers and odd sums. ANSWERS, PAGE 75 EXAMPLE SUMS Puzzle 1 SUMS Puzzle 2 SUMS Puzzle 3 SUMS Puzzle 4 SUMS Puzzle 5 SUMS Puzzle 6 SUMS Puzzle 7 SUMS Puzzle 8 SUMS Puzzle 9 SUMS Puzzle 10 SUMS Puzzle 11 SUMS Puzzle 12 SUMS…

This cryptic crossword is based on the Nobel Prize-winning work of the individual named in the shaded squares. For every entry, either one word in the clue or the clue’s answer must be adjusted in accordance with that work. What did you say? The individual actually won the “Ig Nobel” Prize? Guess I’ll have to self-report myself to Laundry. ANSWERS, PAGE 78 ACROSS 1 Store tosses out the last aluminum bank (5) 6 One who believes a whiff of Tide is absorbed by this shirt (6) 11 Huge NY rats Mel found in potty (3) 12 They’re taught clever tricks to get fed before the beginning of fast (8) 13 Up-and-comer taking on assistant dishwasher? (6) 14 JAGMAC’s latest smash “I.O.U.” (4) 15 Request info about a small yak (3)…

5 | PENCIL POINTERS 1 4 | 52-SKIDDOO 18 | PENCIL POINTERS 2 12 | QUOTE BOXES: MACABRE MUSINGS 1. I sometimes feel that I'm impersonating the dark unconscious of the whole human race. —Vincent Price 2. Horror speaks not only of the monster but of the frailty of the human condition, where fear lies within us all. —Carol Clover 3. Horror fiction shows us that the control we believe we have is purely illusory, and that every moment we teeter on chaos and oblivion. —Clive Barker 16 | BOXING MATCH I. CHANNEL II. SIBLING III. ARUGULA IV. BLUBBER V. COUNTERSPY VI. PIZZERIA VII. FLOTSAM VIII. PROPHECY IX. DOCKSIDE X. CODICIL XI. BIOHAZARD XII. VIBURNUM 51 | DOUBLE CROSS A. ROMANTASY B. INFAMY C. CENTAUR D. HENRY JAMES E. ANNE…

There is one place for each letter of the alphabet in the 26 empty squares of each blank column in the diagram below. Fill in each letter so that a word of at least five letters is formed reading across only. Not all of the letters to the left and right of the empty box are used; it’s up to you to determine which ones are needed to complete familiar words. Some letters may fit in more than one of the empty squares to complete words, but we only came up with one arrangement that would complete a word in each row. Proper names are not allowed. ANSWER, PAGE 70…

This October, we've opened our grimoire to bring you three bits of eldritch lore. To solve, drop the letters from each vertical column—not necessarily in the order in which they appear—into the empty squares below them to spell a quotation reading from left to right, line by line. Words may continue from one line to the next; black squares indicate ends of words. The author of each quote is given above its grid. ANSWERS, PAGE 70 1. VINCENT PRICE 2. CAROL CLOVER 3. CLIVE BARKER…

This puzzle will take you back to the good old days! Get your wheels turning by finding all of the words and phrases listed below in the big wheel. Words appear horizontally, vertically, and diagonally (always in a straight line). When you get to a B or a C, substitute a little wheel. If you find yourself spinning your wheels, make your way over to the answer on page 73. ABBY ACQUIRE AQABA BALANCER BAMBI BANQUET BEER GLASS BLANCH BOCA RATON BOUQUET BRIEF BRIOCHE CABALIST CABLE TV CATCALLING CATCH CHAKA KHAN CHESS DOUBLE CAF E-BLAST EDIBLE FABRIC GOBBLE ICE BLOCK JACOB LET BY LIGHT BULB QUACK RUBIK SKIBOB TEN-LB. YACHT ZACH…

Below are four lists of related words and phrases that have been translated into simple cipher alphabets. The letter substitutions remain constant within any one group of words (for instance, if V represents G in one word, it will represent G in all the words in that list), but change from one list to the next. A tip to new solvers: Start by thinking of answers that might fit one of the categories; then see if any enciphered words in the list have the same letter pattern. The fourth list has been left untitled. Solve the code to determine what the items have in common. ANSWERS, PAGE 72 1. HALLOWEEN BASH Ex.: Masks 2. REALLY TINY COUNTRIES Ex.: Micronesia 3. SITCOMS SET IN NYC Ex.: The King of Queens 4.…

NUMBER PLAY CRYPTARITHMS Below are two cryptarithms or alphametrics. Digits must be substituted for the letters to form a correct addition problem. The substitution code is different for each problem. A hint for each problem appears at the bottom of page 27. —RODOLFO KURCHAN FOR THE RECORD OLD SCHOOL, NEW SCHOOL Remember the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” game? Believe it or not, each of the below actors from the Golden Age of Hollywood is only two degrees away from the actor we’ve paired them with. In other words, there is an actor who has appeared in at least one film with each of them. Can you find the connections? (There may be more than one path.) 1. Marlon Brando Glen Powell 2. Lauren Bacall Barry Keoghan 3. Katharine Hepburn…

One thing I love about the wonderful world of abstract logic puzzles is the sheer variety of puzzle types to be discovered. It doesn’t take a lot of searching to find a new puzzle or variant that piques my interest. My sources for inspiration include the trove of archived tests from the United States Puzzle Championship (wpc.puzzles.com) and the bounty of content in the blogs at Grandmaster Puzzles (gmpuzzles.com). I recently came across Creek puzzles, and felt they would be a perfect fit for this column. The concept is easy to understand, and the solving process is fun and not too taxing. Read the rules and study the example before attempting the puzzles. If you need some solving hints, I’ve provided a few of those as well. And if you…

Card historian David Parlett calls Schnapsen “one of the best two-handers ever devised,” praising its snappy play and tactical subtly. The game likely originated along the Rhine, but found its most popular home in Austria, where it probably took its name from the schnapps liqueur that accompanied its play. Schnapsen falls into a few categories: It’s an Ace-Ten game because those are the two high-scoring cards, meaning some elements will be familiar from games like Pinochle and Briscola. It’s also a Marriage game because it rewards players who hold the King and Queen of the same suit. Marriage-style games first appeared in the early 18th century, with a German book by Gottlieb Sigmund Corvinus describing a game called Mariagen-Spiel in 1715. A number of similar games also have the convention…

Can you score 500 or more points in Word Rummy hands from the card layout at right? HOW TO PLAY Find as many common seven-letter words as you can whose cards form Word Rummy hands. A Word Rummy hand is a seven-letter word whose letters appear on cards that make up one set (three or four cards of a kind, like 7 7 7 or K K K K) and one sequence (three or four cards of the same suit in numerical order, like A 2 3 or 9 10 J Q). Either the set or the sequence may come first, but one of each must be used in each hand, and the two parts must not be mixed together. The letters of a set may be used in any…

Each clue in a cryptic crossword has two parts: a definition of the answer and an indication of the answer’s literal makeup via wordplay. Either half may come first; finding the dividing point between the two parts is the key to solving. On page TK, eight common methods by which hints are given via wordplay are described; any combination of these gimmicks may be used. Expect to see references to abbreviations (doctor for DR, Hawaii for HI, or university for U), chemical symbols (iron for Fe), Roman numerals (five for V), and parts of words (end of year for R, head of cabbage for C, or heart of stone for O). A clue with an exclamation point may be what’s called an & lit. clue, in which the two halves…

In the midst of the 47th American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, which took place from April 4 to 6 in Stamford, Connecticut, Will Shortz, the tournament’s founder, paused to chat with John Lieb of Boswords, who was livestreaming interviews with ACPT constructors and staff. Lieb asked Shortz if he'd ever imagined that the ACPT, which began in 1978, would become such a phenomenon. “I wasn’t even sure about year two,” Shortz jokingly replied. Five decades later, the ACPT is thriving. This year, a record-breaking number of contestants attended—889 to be exact—and another 346 participated virtually. The ACPT is also organized and staffed by a veritable who’s who of the “crossworld,” people like Tracy Bennett, who edits Wordle, and Adrienne Raphel, author of Thinking Inside the Box, a 2020 book about crosswords.…