( Quickly wrapping up some puzzle hunts past: Ghost Patrol Reconstructed, the Octothorpean Order and the first Puzzled Pint in London. )

Some birthdays are better than others. Last year, on my birthday, we moved house, then went out to the supermarket. It wasn't the best. In contrast, this year was one of the good ones - the really good ones.

( Most of the fun came at the weekend before my birthday. )

There are two online puzzle hunts coming up in November. These are designed to be solved by teams of people from around the world, so you can take part wherever you are. Particularly if you've liked the thought of taking part in a puzzle hunt but they've always been in the wrong place at the wrong time, why not get a team together and take part? ( Read more... )

Probably the least interesting of the world's games with which I am obsessed is the UK's own national lottery game, "Lotto". Players choose six numbers from 1 to 49 and aim to match at least three of the six winning numbers; ideally all six for a share of the jackpot, but there is a bonus prize for matching five out of the six and the bonus ball. ( Read more... )

The Million Second Quiz is a quiz event taking place in the United States on the NBC TV network, online and in person at the moment. It consists of a series of quiz bouts between a champion and a series of challengers, taking place around the clock over the course of a million seconds, or about eleven and a half days ( Read more... )

Three highlights of my involvement in puzzles over the past year have been the UK Puzzle Championship, DASH and the Croco-League. I've written in detail about DASH, an in-person team-competition sequential mostly-word-puzzles hunt held in London and in fourteen US cities. This year I didn't write about the UK Puzzle Championship, an online ( Read more... )

OK, this is geeky even by my standards, but you expect nothing less, right? It's too geeky for my Facebook and Twitter audiences, but I feel safe here ( Read more... )

The US Puzzle Championship is taking place online on June 15th, which is this Saturday; the details will be posted at the USPC 2013 site imminently. US solvers interested in consideration for the perennially-top-contender national team at the World Puzzle Championship need to start solving at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern / 6pm UK time; last year, ( Read more... )

After a spectacular weekend, there's more than a little come-down to come back to a dull week in which the most pressing engagement is to look after your beloved who has sadly been hit by a nasty infection. After a convoluted and exhausting process trying to get out-of-hours care on a Bank Holiday weekend, Meg has the right medication, but even ( Read more... )

Tonight I went out to the local cinema to see the unwieldily titled Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of The Worlds - Alive on Stage! The New Generation. (*) It was a recording of the performance of the show at London's O2 Arena last year. The show is somewhere between a musical and a concert, but there are extended graphic sequences played ( Read more... )