Notes from the margin
The GridPencil blog
Solving guides, a little puzzle history and plain explanations of how HTML5 games like these are made. Written by the people who built the puzzles.
- ThinkingWhat Makes a Good Logic Puzzle? The Five Tests We UseBefore a puzzle goes into the notebook it has to pass five plain tests. Here they are, with the puzzles that taught us each one.
- Puzzle historyA Short History of Sudoku, and Why Ours Has Only Six RowsSudoku feels ancient and Japanese. It is neither, quite. The real story runs through Indiana, Tokyo and a retired judge in Hong Kong.
- Solving guidesMinesweeper Without the Guessing: Six Patterns Worth LearningMost lost games of Mine Sweep are lost to impatience, not bad luck. These six patterns turn hopeful taps into certain ones.
- How it worksFrom Flash to HTML5 Games: How Browser Puzzles Got HereFor fifteen years, a browser game meant a plugin. Then the plugin died. A plain account of what changed and why puzzles came out ahead.
- ThinkingDo Puzzles Make You Smarter? An Honest AnswerWe run a puzzle site, so we would love to say yes. The evidence says something more modest, and in some ways more useful.
- Solving guidesWorking Backwards: One Trick That Solves Half the NotebookStart at the finish and ask what must have happened just before. It sounds too simple to help. It cracks at least five of our puzzles.
- How it worksHow a Computer Makes a Puzzle With Exactly One AnswerPress "New puzzle" and a fresh board appears in an instant. Behind that button, a small program is setting itself homework and marking it.
- Solving guidesNonograms for Beginners: How to Read the CluesA nonogram looks like a crossword that lost its words. The clues are easier to read than they seem, and a 5 by 5 grid is the ideal place to learn.
- Puzzle historySix Puzzles in This Notebook That Are Older Than the ComputerA riddle from the court of Charlemagne, a square from ancient China, a chess problem from 1848. Some of our puzzles have had very long lives.
- How it worksPlaying HTML5 Games on a Desktop: Keys, Clicks and Full ScreenOur puzzles work on a phone, but a big screen and a real keyboard bring a few extras. A short guide to the ones that are easy to miss.