Puzzling News / Nov 2000


	SCOTT KIM’S PUZZLING NEWS / NOVEMBER 2000 Syndicated Puzzles on the Web

I recently had lunch with long-time colleague Alexey Pajitnov, the fellow who invented Tetris. Alexey told me he was upset that the market for puzzle games is drying up. The types of games we love -- nonviolent puzzle games with intellectual depth -- don't seem to sell.
I see the same trends. My response is to move toward syndicated puzzles on the web -- daily, weekly and monthly -- similar to syndicated puzzles in newspapers and magazines.

Alexey likes this idea too. He observed that puzzles are small bite-sized treats, like cookies. If you ate a whole plateful of cookies in one sitting you'd probably make yourself sick and not want to eat any more for a while. But if you had a couple cookies after a meal, you could keep doing that forever. In the past the economics of software distribution have forced puzzle designers to stuff CD-ROMs full of hundreds of puzzles. The web lets us distribute puzzles in more palatable servings. And as we all know you can end up eating a lot if you keep going back for just a little more.

By the end of 2001 I'd like to have at least one daily, weekly and monthly puzzle on the web. Keep your fingers crossed. Meanwhile, here are some of the syndicated puzzles that are already on the web, and what I've learned from them.

Mind Aerobics. Alexey and team created an ambitious daily puzzle called Mind Aerobics for MSN, then the Zone, which ran for about a year. Every day there were nine new puzzles -- easy, medium and hard puzzles of three varieties: visual, word and logic. The puzzles were excellent, but the game was poorly positioned and few people were able to find it. Mind Aerobics is now off the air, though some of the puzzles live on in the CD-ROM game Pandora's Box. As they say in real estate, location location location.

New York Times Crossword Puzzle. The world's most popular crossword puzzle -- syndicated to over 300 papers -- is also a hit online. Crossword puzzles work well on computer, making good use of limited screen real estate. (In contrast, jigsaw puzzles are cramped on computer screens.) The key idea here is to use a fixed puzzle format with rotating content, instead of a completely different kind of puzzle every day. Most syndicated puzzles do that. Easier for players to understand, and easier for game designers to create. There are lots of crossword puzzle programs: Crossword Wizard helps you compose crossword puzzles, and post them on the web in Java.

Shockwave.com. One of the big hits on Shockwave.com, the content showcase site that recently spun out of Macromedia, is a daily jigsaw puzzle. Not only is there a new puzzle to solve every day, you can also create custom puzzles with your own uploaded pictures. Shockwave just hired a couple veteran puzzle designers from the TV industry to strengthen their puzzle offerings.

UClick. Traditional newspaper syndication firms are now getting into the act. UClick is a web spinoff of United Press Syndicate. Besides their traditional offerings, like Dear Abby and Garfield, they also offer interactive puzzles mostly based on traditional features like word searches and crosswords. The more purely computer-based games come from CleverMedia.

iSyndicate and Screaming Media are content syndication firms aimed specifically at the web. They don't create content, they broker it. iSyndicate in particular license content from over 1000 content providers to nearly 300,000 sites. The interactive games on iSyndicate currently mostly come from ezone, which specializes in making games for the web. When I contacted iSyndicate I was wisely advised to not depend on syndication income to totally support writing a column, at least not initially. So I'm developing material for paying customers first, and will seek syndication later.

Mondo Media. Having been a creator of business presntations, and computer games, Mondo Media has recently morphed into a producer of syndicated cartoon shows, which it calls Mini Shows. For instance, The God and Devil Show is a talk show hosted by chatty deities who grill a different guest celebrity each episode. Short (5 minutes), character-driven and often sharply satiric. Not much interactivity yet. I've been impressed by the power of well-drawn characters.

Good Night Mr. Snoozleberg is the first example I've seen of a cartoon game built for the web. Your goal is to click on objects that will keep the sleepwalking character alive as he wanders the rooftops. Quite compelling, and a good indication of what is possible.

NewMedia, Adobe, Juniornet. I have created three different monthly puzzles on the web. The NewMedia and Adobe puzzles are no more, but JuniorNet continues. My JuniorNet puzzles let kids create their own puzzles and play puzzles created by other kids. The most interesting lesson has been the power of email to drive people to a site. Periodically I send out email puzzles to kids who visit my area of JuniorNet.

WHAT’S NEW NOVEMBER 2000

New game: Mental Workout. Eight new puzzles for an ad campaign for Cambridge Technology Partners. Compete to win prizes.

Inversion of the Month: Figure. Is it a black figure on a white background, or a white figure on a black background? The first inversion I ever created, with the story of how it was created.

NewMedia Puzzler is no more. NewMedia officially shut its doors in October, a victim of the downturn in the stock market for high tech companies. I've created monthly puzzles for NewMedia since 1990, when they started as a paper magazine, and it's been a great ride. You can still check out some of the puzzles I created for NewMedia on my site.

Discover Magazine Boggler. November: This month features three puzzles by my Discover editor Michael Abrams, from his delightful new puzzle book Dr. Broth and Ollie's Brain-Boggling Search for the Lost Language: Across Time and Space in Eighty Puzzles, which he co-authored with Jeffrey Winters. Great puzzles, charming stories. Next month I return as puzzle columnist.

FROM READERS

Michael Naylor at West Washington University has posted a gallery of inversions created in a mathematics class he teaches. Be sure to also check out his gallery of ASCII art.

Robert Maitland has been making a inversions since he was 12. Here's a gallery of his work.

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