On #EnigMarch day 13 (prompt: POINT), I found out about Roma puzzles, my new favorite Nikoli puzzle type. And then I couldn't find enough of them online, so I made one myself as an homage to CYOA #17, The Race Forever, a book that has checkpoints where you can keep switching back and forth between two different road races forever unless you reach an ending where you’re disqualified or killed by bandits or something.

Here's the link (rules are in the Help menu): https://puzz.link/p?roma/8/8/efttltdffkkgao6qdteugpnga324e5d51b34a1b4b2a113a31a2d2a1b4a2c2k

It is March and the lovely @enigmarch people have challenged puzzle designers to write a puzzle inspired by today's word: "joker", as in "clown."

Oh no! The USA *clown* President Trump (egged on by his buffoonish adviser Elon Musk) has decided to run the USA like a business. After all, all businessmen know that once you learn how to run one business, you can run anything, sort of like how you might use a Joker to form different poker hands depending on what other cards you have. Alas, Trump never even learned how to run one business, unless you count "ran it into the ground." (How many bankruptcies is he up to now?)

Here are clues to some word pairs. In each pair, the words differ by one letter; we got a to stand in both places. Write the letters that stands for in the two blanks off to the side. But what to write in the very left-hand blank? Look at the table down below. Using the two letters, look up a single letter in the table. We filled in the first row already: hoUse and hoRse have the letters U and R. We look up U and R in the table and get W. (Don't worry; if we swizzled the order and looked up R and U instead, we'd still get W; you can't get that wrong.) When you're done, the letters in that left-most column should spell out a word for "joker".

Full puzzle text, hints, and solution at https://lahosken.san-francisco.ca.us/new/2025/03/14/enigmarch-joker/

Hey ! I forgot to post that I finished to compile every puzzles for #EnigMarch 2024 !!
31 puzzles, with hints and solutions ! Feel free to solve whatever you can !

Link : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_JKGkowr2w-pB21xolld8-SORpLgVsYt/view?usp=drive_link

#EnigMarch Day 27: RULE

Couldn't think of another cryptic clue. Decided to go with something simple today.

Day 2 of #EnigMarch 2024 is FALSE. https://rcveeder.net/enigmarch24/puzzle2.html Here's a lil preview...

Been looking at #EnigMarch and thinking that I like solving (some) puzzles but idk that I'm a person who would make them.

Except... I do have a solver/generator for logic grid puzzles that could be repurposed to help make human-designed ones.

And I've always been curious: what if you had Slitherlink puzzles on free-form cells instead of fixed grids: could they form a picture, like picross/nonograms? And today it dawned on me that if the full set of cell numbers always specifies the solution (does it? math people?) then you can just sort of reverse-solve it, removing clues (making sure the removed clue is derivable from the remaining ones) until you have a puzzle that's hard enough.

So I tried it and I'm going to want to make a tool for easier experimenting, but it seems workable.

So uh... guess I do like the idea of making puzzles. Funny these blind spots we have about ourselves.

With the kind assistance of @passerine I am doing #EnigMarch 2022 in July of 2023! I can do whatever I want!!!

Day 1 of #EnigMarch 2022 was "INITIAL." My puzzle comes in two versions: A stimulating/unfair Mean Version https://rcveeder.net/enigmarch22/puzzle1mean.html and a friendly/boring Nice Version https://rcveeder.net/enigmarch22/puzzle1nice.html Personally I recommend trying the mean version first.

Go right inside the entrance to Wonderland to get larger (4)

It is #EnigMarch, and when they challenge us to design a puzzle, I ask "how high?"

In the three sequences below, you grow words. You start with a two-letter word, then add a letter to get the next word; another letter to get the next-next word, and so on. (Some of these words are proper names and/or foreign, but I hope they're get-able.) There's no anagramming, just inserting a letter.

The circled letters spell out something growth-related that's on my mind lately:
◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯'◯ ◯ ◯ ◯

Disguise using the tops and bottoms of Medusa & Shrek (4)

Who or what else would make for a good pair of costumes for this new disguise?

Boo-boo is secretly effing lit, champ (6)

The images from my #EnigMarch post yesterday (https://puz.fun/@thegriddle/109949192001707410) were made in @inkscape and I used the newish Batch Export feature and slightly-less-new Pages feature to make them. There were a couple things where I had to read the release notes to understand how they worked, but overall it was a very easy experience. I'm very grateful for all of the #Inkscape devs (shout out @doctormo especially!) that continue to improve this fantastic program.

This is the official Mastodon account for EnigMarch, a daily puzzle creation challenge. Every day in March, we'll share a prompt that can be used as inspiration to create any kind of puzzle you like, from cryptograms to mazes to chess problems to those fruit-counting ones you see on Facebook. All skill levels are welcome, from expert puzzlesmiths to absolute beginners.

Increase your puzzle-writing prowess, test yourself, amuse your friends, confound your enemies…it doesn’t make a difference what the purpose is really, as long as you’re having fun. Feel free to share your creations with the hashtag #EnigMarch and we’ll all bask in the puzzly glow together!