To solve this puzzle, you must figure out the names of different musical instruments. Each instrument has its own mini-puzzle, with five different clues. Get the correct answers to each of the five clues, and the instrument will reveal itself with the letters that you’ve used.

The first puzzle has been done for you as an example. Can you figure out the rest?

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There was a fun Internet game that I saw yesterday. What you had to do was write a short plot of a movie if that movie had been watched in reverse. For instance, the plot of Jaws would be “Man-eating shark spits people onto a beach until officials are finally forced to open it”, and the plot of Twister would be “Large whirlwind travels over destroyed areas of the central United States, fixing the damage and gently placing buildings and cows on the ground”.

Someone on that Internet site decided to start doing the same things with video games, and since that was also a success, I’m doing it with tabletop games. Below are 10 backwards plots of games that can be played without a computer. Can you figure out what all of the games are?

1. Blocks assemble themselves into the tallest tower possible, before condensing themselves into a much more stable tower one-by-one.
2. Common words and phrases are spoken, suddenly appearing on cards as phonetically similar words.
3. Several successful entrepeneurs go on a cross-country road trip, losing their children, their spouse, their investments, and their job, before becoming college drop-outs.
4. A nicely organized group of cards separates themselves; some of them go into lines of cards of various sizes, while most travel three-by-three into a much larger group.
5. The ruler of the world, with a huge force of troops in Australia, decides to slowly donate his land to several other conquerors through a series of dice rolls.
6. Two nations are in disarray. The king of one of those nations stands up, and both nations slowly assemble themselves on opposite sides of the country.
7. A small town in France gets smaller and smaller, losing its population before it disappears entirely.
8. Surgeons slowly put bones into the body a red-nosed man until he finds himself in horrible pain.
9. Four big-mouthed pachyderms sit around a table, spitting up marbles.
10. A team of people yell out random words which are then erased from pads of paper that had visual representations of those words on them.

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Bad at figuring out the answers for crossword clues? Then this puzzle is for you, because each word that we’re trying to find is defined three times! For each entry below, there are three different definitions of the exact same word. That word might sound different in some cases or have a capital letter, but the spelling is exactly the same. Can you answer all of the words?

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In this puzzle, I will give you a group of four words. Three of them will have a number that the word “equals”, and based on those answers, you have to figure out what the fourth one equals. For instance:

PARTRIDGE = 1
RINGS = 5
DRUMMERS = 12
FRENCH HENS = ?

The answer is 3 (it’s the number based on the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas”). Think you’ve got what it takes to solve these? (Answers at bottom of post.)

1.
GROUNDHOG = 2
PATRICK = 17
FOOLS = 1
HALLOWS = ?

2.
RED = 1
BLUE = 5
YELLOW = 3
GREEN = ?

3.
NINE = 11
TEN = 9
ELEVEN = 19
TWELVE = ?

4.
CANARY = 2
CRAB = 10
SNAKE = 0
BEETLE = ?

5.
NETWORK = 2
STENCIL = 10
HONESTY = 1
CANINES = ?

6.
JOSHUA = 6
JAMES = 59
JOHN = 43
LUKE = ?

7.
DOUGHNUT = 1
NOSE = 2
BOWLING BALL = 3
FUNNEL = ?

8.
DOVER = 1
TRENTON = 3
JUNEAU = -2
AUSTIN = ?

9.
IAN = 1
VINCENT = 6
MICHAEL = 1099
VALERIE = ?
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I have a box full of used puzzle magazines at home, and I love the challenge of trying completely new types of puzzles. I also enjoy making puzzles, some of which I’ll be showcasing here. Here’s my newest type of puzzle, entitled “Cross-Phrase”.

Unlike most crossword puzzles, which give you clues for each Across and Down entry, in this puzzle, each clue gives you the answer to either a two-word phrase or a compound word. Figure out the answer to a clue, break up the answer into its two natural parts, and place each part on the grid as shown in the clue. For example, if the clue was “1-A 2-D – Geyser in Yellowstone National Park”, the answer would be OLD FAITHFUL, so you’d put OLD at 1-Across and FAITHFUL at 2-Down.

Click the picture below to get a high-resolution version of the picture, then print it out on your home printer. To help with solving, the answers to the clues are in alphabetical order.

Having trouble? Read the rest of this blog entry… a solving hint and the solution will be right there for you.
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