Favorite other puzzle diversions online?

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Hector
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Favorite other puzzle diversions online?

#1

Post by Hector »

I'll start. I also enjoy mathy recreations. Some of my favorite sources are
  1. Alex Bezos's Monday Puzzle in The Guardian. Usually a few thematically related problems in ascending difficulty.
  2. Catriona Shearer's Felt-tip Geometry Problems. The problems are elegant and fun, and it's neat to see in the twitter threads the variety of ingenious approaches people take to solve these.
  3. Fivethirtyeight.com's weekly contest-like (posted Friday, answers due by Sunday night) Riddler, edited by Oliver Roeder, consisting of an "Express" puzzle/problem and a "Classic" that can range from hard to way out there. People (including me) sometimes blog their solutions to the Classics.
  4. The Puzzles category of the Futility Closet blog. Most common are 2-move-mate chess problems, but also other math and logic riddles.
This weekend I'm especially glad that the meta contests went (unusually) quickly for me because the Riddler Classic is an interesting question about the optimal strategy for playing the basketball game H-O-R-S-E (should you take easy shots hoping to hang onto your turn, or hard ones hoping to get your opponent to miss?).
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BrianMac
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#2

Post by BrianMac »

Thanks for these, Hector. They are all new to me, but I will check them out! The fivethirtyeight one sounds particularly good.

Other than the NYT Mini, I don't really have any to add. Spelling Bee and Letter Boxed too, I guess, but those are both behind the NYT paywall.

Also, you should plug your own puzzles, which I found on the website you have in your profile! I haven't tried them yet, myself, but I will give them a go as well. :)
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Hector
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#3

Post by Hector »

Thanks, Brian! Most of the puzzles on that blog site are Riddler ones; only the solutions are mine. (I have, though, authored a couple of the Riddler puzzles over the years.)
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