 |
Merry Christmas, and a Contest!
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
|
Good morning! This is going to be a bit of a hodge-podge posting; please read through to the very end, because this post includes a contest for you to enter, in which you could win a subscription to Quote Puzzler.
First, though, in honor of the Chrismas season, I thought some might enjoy a couple pieces of Christmas writing. One is a very serious and true Christmas story, the other is an amusing series of letters to and from Santa Claus.
Second, I'm working on a new puzzle game for The Problem Site, however, I just got a contract to write a series of 90 math competition problems in the next few weeks, so the game is going to have to wait. Combine Christmas with 90 math problems and doing a wholescale upgrade of Quote Puzzler next weekend, and I'm sure you can imagine, I'm going to disappear from view for awhile!
The Contest
Creating new games and puzzles for The Problem Site is a lot of fun. The greatest challenge is not programming a puzzle, but coming up with a puzzle idea. Do YOU have ideas for educational games/puzzles?
If you do, write up (in detail) how your game/puzzle would work, and explain why it is educational, rather than "just entertaining". Then email it to me at: dtwitchell@virtu-software.com.
The very best game idea will receive a six month free subscription to Quote Puzzler. Other game ideas may (or may not) be awarded free subscriptions, at my sole discretion.
All puzzle ideas submitted will become the property of The Problem Site.
This competition will remain open until January 31st, 2008.
Important Note: Do NOT send your puzzle idea as a file attachment. For security reasons, I do NOT open file attachments from people I don't know! Your puzzle idea MUST be in the main body of your email.Labels: contest, quote-puzzler, theproblemsite, writing
posted by Douglas Twitchell at
|
|
Popular Games
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
|
A couple weeks ago Mike asked for a listing of all Entrapment Puzzles which had never been solved. I had planned to do that, but several other projects got in the way, and by the time I did get to it, the issue had become a moot point, because all the Entrapment Puzzles have now been solved at least once.
Back in August I made the following statement about Entrapment: I suspect that by the time the school year is over, this geometry game is going to prove to be one of the favorites on the site!
My prediction has already turned out to be correct, long before I expected it to. Within the last couple weeks the popularity of this game has skyrocketed, until it has reached the point where more Entrapment games are played each day than any three other games on The Problem Site put together. Several thousand Entrapment games are played each day now.
I was recently asked which are the most popular games on The Problem Site, and that is a slightly different list than the one I posted back before school began. So I thought I would post that list here.
The top games, in order of popularity:
6. One To Ten*
5. Picture Word Game
4. Trio Match
3. Hangman
2. Adders
1. Entrapment
* The popularity of this game fluctuates wildly from week to week depending on what math units elementary school students are studying; whenever schools are studying order of operations, One To Ten becomes one of the most played games on the site.Labels: theproblemsite
posted by Douglas Twitchell at
|
| |
| The Puzzler Blog |
The Puzzler Blog gives information about what's new at Virtu Software's puzzle sites.
You can subscribe to this blog by clicking the syndication icon below.
|
|
