This Is The End Of The Blog As We Know It

Yes, that's right. This blog is now closing. But fear not - although this blog is closing, you can find a new blog to replace it...

With three puzzle sites (plus a puzzle store), it doesn't make sense to maintain multiple blogs, when a single blog could be used to keep people updated on all the Puzzler Sites.

The new blog is located on The Puzzler Store website, at the following URL: http://www.puzzler-store.com/blog/.

If you have subscribed to this blog, you can subscribe to the new blog by clicking here: The Puzzler Sites Blog Feed.

Tile Puzzler Changes

Several changes have been made on the Tile Puzzler site this morning. Let me address each of them.

1. The daily and weekly puzzlers have disappeared. They were very rarely used anyway - most people are happy with coming on the site, selecting a few random puzzles to play, without ever creating a membership account. So for now those puzzles have been removed - perhaps someday they will return, but for now I don't think anyone is going to miss them.

2. A few more "cutesy" icons were added at the bottom of each page, with links to the hardest and easiest puzzles.

3. A new page was added, which contains the Recent Puzzlers - puzzles which were recently created by visitors to the site. This is especially for the repeat visitors; every time you return to the site, you can see which puzzles are new since the last time you visited.

4. The "Under Development" sign has been removed from each page. This does not mean that the site will not undergo any more changes. Just that it is complete enough for regular use.

5. A new puzzle type called the Jeorge Puzzler has been added to the site. This puzzle type is named after Jeorge, the Site Mascot. Here's a sample Jeorge Puzzler:

Average Solve Time

Another new feature was added to the site this morning; now when you complete a puzzle, you receive some feedback (about time, right??) on how you did.

Specifically, you will see a small informational window (marked with the info icon, shown below)



The informational window will tell you the average solve time (of all the people who have ever solved the puzzle, what is the average of all their times) and it will also tell you how long it took you to solve the puzzle.

Also, you will see a line that tells you how many times the puzzle has been solved.

This gives a little more incentive to keep solving puzzles, to see if you can beat the averages!

Have fun!

Drawing A Freestyle Picture Puzzle

I've been enjoying watching the kinds of puzzles people create on this site. Here's an interesting one that was just added:

Primary Happy Man


I think this is interesting, because the puzzle is a cross between a "normal" Tile Puzzler, and Jigsaw Puzzle. The colors used help to create a picture, and you can use those colors to help you figure out where the different pieces should go. For example, the first pieces I put in place were the red ones, which appeared to be a mouth. Having done that, the yellow and blue pieces became more obvious.

I wonder what other kinds of "pictures" people might draw...

Adding A Puzzle To Your Website

A new feature has been added to the Tile Puzzler website. Now, when you create a new puzzle, you will be offered the opportunity to add the puzzle to your own website.

You will see a textbox, with some HTML code. Simply copy this code, and paste it into your own web page, and voila! You have your puzzle right there on your webpage for all your friends to see!

The puzzle (as it appears on your site) will be about half the normal size (which will make it easier for you to fit it onto your page), and at the bottom there will be a link to view the puzzle full size.

Here's a sample of how it looks:

Unconfirmed Membership, Quick Links

Good morning!

New updates have been added to the site. You may have already noticed them, since they were added yesterday.

First, we have the "unconfirmed membership" option. This option is found on the "Join The Fun" page. When a visitor joins the site, they can create an account without using an email address. Visitors who do this don't have all the same rights and priveleges as confirmed members. Specifically, they can't do the daily/weekly puzzlers, and they won't be able to post in the forum. Forum? Forum, you say? Yes, there will be a forum. Coming soon. That'll be an easy addition, since it's mostly going to be a copy/paste job from the Quote Puzzler website.

But that's beside the point. The point is, the "unconfirmed membership" option is designed to help school teachers who want their entire class to sign up, even if they don't have email addresses.

If someone creates an unconfirmed membership account, they can confirm it later by adding an email address. On the membership page there is an email icon they can use for this purpose:



The second new feature added to the site is a set of "Quick Links". These are found at the bottom of each page. They are a series of icons you can use to accomplish common tasks like creating puzzles, solving the daily puzzles, etc. This is what the icons look like:



One final note: I think there are a few pages that don't have the Quick Links. If you happen to spot one of them, please post me a reply here, and I'll fix it!

Puzzle Difficulty: Randomizing Options

Before getting to the main point of this post, let me just say...yes, I am aware that the scoring system seems to be always giving a 10 point accuracy bonus to everyone. Not sure if that's a bug, or if it's just a badly optimized formula for gauging the difficulty of the puzzle.

I'll be looking into that, but it may not change for awhile.

Okay, on to the good stuff!

You may have noticed a new icon on the site - it's the 'Randomizing Options' icon. It appears on your member page. It also appears on the Random Puzzler page.

This feature allows you to optimize the site for your own best experience.

Are you a novice solver? Tell the site you only want to receive Tri Puzzlers and Tetra Puzzlers. Or tell the site that you don't want any puzzles with more than six shapes.

Maybe you're an advanced puzzler. You might want to tell the site never to give you Tri Puzzlers. Or include larger puzzles.

Once you've set up your options, the site will deliver to you the kinds of puzzles you requested!