Puzzles in Fiction: The Puzzling World of Winston Breen

When I'm looking for puzzles in fiction, I'm looking primarily for puzzles that are intricate to the plot and that can be solved by the viewer/reader. Die Hard with a Vengeance is my favorite example of this: Although somewhat standard puzzles are used, they were solvable and necessary for the plot.

The Puzzling World of Winston Breen has a few puzzles necessary to the plot — a treasure/puzzle hunt written many years ago in a failed attempt of a father to get his children to work together — but also has many many other puzzles thrown in just for fun. The main character just can't seem to stop making puzzles about everything and his friends do the same for him. All these puzzles are in the book to be solved, and if one doesn't like writing in books or is using a borrowed copy, the author has included them on the website, although sans instructions.

Of the puzzles that the plot requires the main characters to solve, the first one is the best (page 98), the second one pretty good (page 122), and the last (pages 155 & 170)... well, is it really a puzzle? Real life puzzle hunters would be through with the father's hunt in about a half hour and the better teams would probably have time for a lunch break during that half hour. In the book, it took them the better part of two days. Of course, part of the problem was tracking down missing pieces so I can cut them some slack.

The problem with the non-plot-related puzzles is that if you take the time to solve them, it distracts from the plot. It's almost better to finish the book and then work on them.

As for the rest of the book, the plot is predictable and pretty much all the characters but Winston's felt one-dimensional. However, I thought the Three Investigators series was the top of literature back in my much younger days, so maybe Eric Berlin has hit his mark square on.

A Fowl Hitchhiker Convergence

After finding out that the library is offering free downloads of certain audiobooks, checkout-style, I've been devouring them. One series I hit upon was the Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colfer. I've quite enjoyed them. But while waiting for the last few to be "returned" by other users, I started listening to the tertiary through quintessential phases of the radio version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Having only read Mostly Harmless once (compared to several million for the other books in the series), hearing the radio play based on it made me look up what it was so... depressing (reason: Adams had a terrible year).

However, I spotted in Wikipedia that Colfer has been given permission to write a new Hitchhiker's novel (whether it's based on Salmon of a Doubt as Adams' was considering, I know not) which will be out later this year. I respect Colfer's writing abilities; he's less prone to some weaknesses that I've come to be frustrated with in other fiction (usually character stupidity). So I'm hoping that And Another Thing... turns out reasonably well. As long as it's better than Mostly Harmless, though, I think I'll be satisfied.

Unexpected Convergence in Researching Game History

Last night, I was continuing my quest for more information about Stephen Sondheim's Halloween Hunt from 1968. A certain Los Angeles Times article quoted in one of his biographies was my goal. At the same time in a separate window, I was reading Larry's entry on a death during a Russian urban hunt. He linked to Pervasive Games as a source. In the original window, I typed in the keywords I was looking for. The first link to come up was, disappointingly, my own blog. But the second link was from Pervasive Games!

Funny coincidence, right? Okay, sure, but the link I pull up is about how The Last of Sheila inspired Don Luskin's Games which inspired Midnight Madness. Hmmmmm...sounds vaguely familiar, almost like I wrote it myself. But it turns out that the people at Pervasive Games wrote a book and had been doing the same research I had at pretty much the same time, getting the Los Angeles Times newspaper clippings from Luskin close to when I got them from Patrick Carlyle. Talk about coincidence.


An idle thought in the back of my mind has been that beyond satisfying my own curiosity, perhaps I could put what research I uncovered into book form. But it looks like the folks at Pervasive Games have already done that, saving me a lot of time, travel, and tests of my limited interviewing abilities.

Puzzles in Fiction: The Rule of Four

After the success of The Da Vinci Code, more than a few books came out trying to mimic its formula to achieve sales. The Rule of Four seems like one of those, but I found it better written with better characters and a more realistic storyline. Where it let me down was in the area of puzzles. One review called it "the ultimate puzzle book", when really it's just four riddles that for the most part cannot be solved by the reader. Quite the opposite of what I look for when looking for puzzles in fiction.

The book deals with Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and some obsessive people who try and find its secret. The ancient text actually does have a real secret: The first letter of each chapter forms an acrostic. The riddles in the book deal with finding the other, fictional hidden messages in the text.

I read this after finishing work on BANG 22 and it wasn't so much the relatively impossible riddles that interested me, as the main character's decent into obsession with solving the book and how it took away from his personal relationships and "real life". It seemed to parallel some of my own experiences, although to quite a lesser degree (I remember to eat and bathe, for example). But the feeling was there and it served as a warning to remember the more important things in my life.

Bye-bye Ender's Game film

A few days ago, in order to refresh my memory after reading Ender in Exile, I started to read the classic Ender's Game. At the same time, the long-in-development-hell screen version of the book was reported scrapped. Coincidence? I think not!

No More Harry Potter

Done.

Thank goodness for clove oil, which deadened my head pain enough for me to read.

The Deathly Hallows is behind me. I can now get back to trying to analyze uncommented PHP code, developing puzzles for the September puzzle hunt, and, most importantly, taking care of my daughter (who, for the record, I hope ends up like Ginny).

I definitely enjoyed the last Harry Potter book, but enjoyed it most when the main characters weren't spending months camping. Those parts were almost as much fun as the "Time passes" response from "z".