Inside the mind of a puzzle person, bonus Crossclimb-style brain teasers, and a fun development for newspaper crossword solvers

Welcome to Gametime, a weekly newsletter recapping the past week of games on LinkedIn, what’s new in the puzzles space, and more — brought to you by LinkedIn Games Editor Paolo Pasco. Click 'Subscribe' to join the community and be notified of future editions.

For the last few months, the last subway station on my work transit has put up a series of wall-size advertisements for the 2024 BET Awards. The posters, which I pass by every time I go to the office, list the people performing at the show, including Ice Spice, Shaboozey, Glorilla, and Muni Long. I mention this because, on the way to work today, I noticed MUNI LONG is made of two words where, if you change one letter in one word, you get MINI/LONG — a word meaning “short” and a word meaning “not short.”

This has been happening more and more these days, where I see a phrase in the wild, and my brain subconsciously makes a puzzle-relevant connection. I’m used to a similar phenomenon from my life in crosswords; since daily crosswords are fifteen squares by fifteen squares, many crossword constructors have a “spidey-sense” that tells them when a phrase is fifteen letters long (“DAILY CROSSWORDS,” by the way? That's fifteen). 

The same applies to other games; the Tetris Effect originates from descriptions of the tendency of long-time Tetris players to see falling blocks in their dreams, or to see boxes at the supermarket as Tetris blocks. Since learning about that, I’ve been conscious of how I form my habits; if I’m going to spend time playing games, I’d rather they strengthen patterns of thinking that help me in my life. That’s why I’ve found games like Queens to be helpful — by getting into a logical thinking mindset every day, it gets easier to make complicated logical decisions down the line.

As an exercise, I wrote clues for some more examples I’ve seen in my life, either while writing puzzles or noticing phrases in the wild. Like MUNI LONG –> MINI/LONG, you’ll only be changing one letter in the phrase. Unlike Crossclimb, the resulting words may have different lengths. As an aid, I’ll give you the lengths of the related words in parentheses; for example, (4, 5) means the answers are a four-letter word and a five-letter word.

1. What food item is one letter change away from being two world capitals? (4, 4)
2. What fancy food decoration is one letter away from being two metallic chemical elements? (4, 4)
3. What spicy dish that uses poultry instead of beef is one letter change away from being two countries? (6, 5)
4. What term meaning “critical moment for action” is one letter change away from being two U.S. magazines? (2, 4)
5. The last name of what Modern Family actor is one letter change (and an added space) away from being the last names of two multiple-time Best Actress Oscar winners? (5, 6)

(answers at the end of the newsletter)

📌 Pinpoint: The Friday, June 21 puzzle (words that come after “light”) was an interesting one; the average number of clues per successful solve (4.5) was the highest of the week, but the percentage of successful solvers was also higher than the days immediately before and after (70% solve rate, compared to solve rates around 50% in the adjacent days). Comparatively, the Tuesday, June 25 puzzle (things that fly) played gently across the board; the solve rate was over 90%, and solvers only needed 3 clues on average.

On the topic of the “things that fly” puzzle, with clues “Witch,” “Superman,” “Plane,” “Bird,” “Time (when you’re having fun),” I really enjoyed the range of guesses that came in. Over 2,500 people said “superhero” (probably from the first two clues), and just under 2,500 people said “Marvel” (hopefully just after the first clue, otherwise comic book nerds will have your head if they hear about you putting Superman in the Marvel universe).

👉 Play today’s Pinpoint 

🪜 Crossclimb: Just like for Pinpoint, the Tuesday, June 25 puzzle, ending in two different animals used to describe stock market trends (BULL/BEAR) was the easiest of the week, with an average solve time just under 2:30, and a high solve percentage at 86.2%.

In Crossclimb discussion this week, I really enjoyed the continued creative ways people are applying Crossclimb answers; check out this comment, which uses the Crossclimb answers in a delightful way (with a lovely pun at the end).

👉 Play today’s Crossclimb 

👑 Queens: Saturday’s puzzle was the hardest we’ve seen in a while, with the lowest solve rate of the month (69.9%), and an average solve time of 8 minutes and 27 seconds. The puzzle stumped me, too — according to my LinkedIn message history, I needed 6 minutes and 25 seconds to complete the puzzle (most of which were spent staring and slowly marking X’s). 

Thomas Snyder , who wrote that day's puzzle, made a fun joke:

And, yes, the actual Queens puzzle will take more than 0:01 to solve, but it flows pretty quickly once you have the first step. Jiří Nováček explains it well here:

👉 Play today’s Queens

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This week’s topic: I have a puzzle in the New York Times!

I know, I know, shameless self-promotion, but this is a special moment. This was the result of many, many hours of work with my collaborator, and I’m glad it’s out in the world. For commentary on the puzzle, click here.

Do you solve crossword puzzles? If so, what’s your approach to solving the grid as quickly as possible? Let me know in the comments below👇

Answers to the newsletter puzzles:

1. LIMA BEAN (LIMA, BERN)
2. GOLD LEAF (GOLD, LEAD)
3. TURKEY CHILI (TURKEY, CHILE)
4. GO TIME (GQ, TIME)
5. Eric STONESTREET (Emma STONE, Meryl STREEP)

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