Puzzle Day Fun for the Whole Family

Did you know that Jan. 29 is National Puzzle Day? It’s celebrated annually to honor all the great puzzles we love, including Sudoku and crossword puzzles. There’s no better way to celebrate than by taking the whole family to the second annual Silicon Valley Puzzle Day, being held on Sunday, Feb. 3, at the new Morgan Hill Library.

Join us to celebrate word, number and logic puzzles of all kinds for all ages and skill levels. The highlight of the event is tournaments for Sudoku and crossword puzzle enthusiasts.

Youth tournaments

This year, we’ve added a youth division for each tournament, open to kids and teens ages 8 to 15. The youth division Sudoku puzzles are being hand-crafted by US and world Sudoku champion Thomas Snyder. The crossword puzzles for the youth tournament are specially constructed for the event by noted puzzle constructors Mark Diehl and Jan Buckner Walker.

Adult tournaments

Adults aged 16 and older will complete yet-to-be-published crosswords provided by famed New York Times crossword editor Will Shortz and Sudoku. Snyder is providing the adult tournament Sudoku puzzles.

Non-competitive puzzle fun

In addition to the tournaments, a full day of puzzle-themed workshops and presentations are planned, ranging from a crossword warm-up in the morning to a Sudoku tips-and-tricks sharing forum, to workshops about tackling particularly tough crosswords and Killer Sudoku puzzles. A variety of other games and puzzles, including three giant crosswords for people to solve as a group, will be available. Puzzle Day also features a marketplace with local vendors and organizations selling puzzle-related books, toys and offering information about their services. Drinks and light snacks are being sold in the Crossword Café.

About youth tournament puzzle constructors

Mark Diehl has been a staff dentist with the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Palo Alto for the last 30 years. He creates crosswords that have been published in the New York Times, New York Sun, and Los Angeles Times, and has loved reading and wordplay since he was a kid. He lives in San Jose.

Jan Buckner Walker is the President and Executive Editor of Kids Across Parents Down (KADP) and author of a new series of family crossword puzzle books that debuted in July 2007 (Running Press Kids, paperback original, Crazy Critters, ISBN: 978-0762429301 and On the Go, ISBN: 978-0762429318; $4.95 each). Her books feature age-appropriate across clues for children and humorous down hints for grown-ups, the books have been praised by New York Times crossword editor Will Shortz as “simultaneously whimsical and educational.” Conceived in July 1999 by the labor lawyer-turned-puzzle maker, KAPD (dubbed “The Original Crossword Puzzle for Kids and their Favorite Adults”) was first widely published in The Washington Post in April 2003, followed by newspaper syndication via Tribune Media Services (TMS) in September 2003. A year later, Nick Jr. began offering a KAPD puzzle and quickly moved the popular feature to the inside back page of its Noodle insert. The puzzles, which focus on humor and wordplay over traditional intellectual rigor, bring youngsters shoulder-to-shoulder with parents, teachers, mentors and other caring adults. The shoulder-to-shoulder one-on-one time promotes literacy and intergenerational conversation. Today, KAPD puzzles have a total circulation in the millions KAPD and its creator have been featured on TV, radio, magazine and online outlets.

US and world Sudoku champion Thomas Snyder is hand-crafting both adult- and youth-level puzzles for the event’s Sudoku tournament and is presenting a workshop on The Art of Sudoku. Snyder, from Palo Alto, was the winner of the first Philadelphia Inquirer National Sudoku Championship and a member of the six-person U.S. World Sudoku Team that will compete at the Third Annual World Sudoku Championship next year in Goa, India. He is a postdoctoral student in bioengineering at Stanford and has a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Harvard University. He strives to make an artistic statement with his puzzles, and his first book of puzzles, Battleship Sudoku, a new variation that combines elements from existing Battleship and Sudoku puzzle types, will be published by Sterling in April 2008. Additional puzzle projects and books are in the works.

Event details

Silicon Valley Puzzle Day will be held at the Morgan Hill Public Library at 660 West Main Avenue in Morgan Hill, CA, on Sunday, February 3, 2008, between 11 a.m and 5 p.m.

Admittance to the event to watch is free to the public. A $5 donation is suggested for tournament participants.

A marketplace, puzzle-themed workshops and non-competitive puzzle fun will be available to spectators all day.

Tournament participants can register at the event starting at 11 a.m. Competition starts at noon.

For more information, visit www.svpuzzle.org.

Mentioned in the Boston Globe

 Puzzle Day was mentioned in a travel article in the Boston Globe on Jan.13!

MORGAN HILL, Calif. Feb. 3

Also known as Heaven on Earth for Sudoku addicts, this day of puzzle competitions for children and adults will be held in Morgan Hill’s snazzy new public library. There’s plenty of the aforementioned numbers game, as well as a tense adult crossword competition designed by Will Shortz, the renowned puzzle maker who was the subject of the 2006 documentary “Wordplay.” If you fear competition, there will be stress-free workshops about puzzle making (and solving) and a group activity: creation of a giant (42-by-70-inch) crossword puzzle. Five-dollar donation recommended.

Morgan Hill Library, 660 West Main Ave., Morgan Hill, Calif., 408-779-3196, svpuzzle.org.

MH Times: “Puzzle lovers poised to converge at MH library for second annual event”

The Morgan Hill Times has an article talking about Puzzle Day. There are a few inaccuracies in the article (some of which have been corrected in the online version after the paper went to print), but hopefully people will come here to the web site to learn more. Check out the article in Friday’s Morgan Hill Times.

There is also a nice piece by the head of children’s services at our library, Saralyn Otter: Play and enjoy puzzles at your local library.

World Sudoku Champion Thomas Snyder to provide tournament puzzles, speak at event

Silicon Valley Puzzle Day organizers are super excited that 2-time US Puzzle Champion and the reigning US and World Sudoku Champion Thomas Snyder will be hand-crafting the puzzles for the event’s Sudoku tournament and will be presenting a workshop on Sudoku.

Thomas Snyder, from Palo Alto, was the winner of the first Philadelphia Inquirer National Sudoku Championship and a member of the six-person U.S. World Sudoku Team that will compete at the Third Annual World Sudoku Championship next year in Goa, India. He is a postdoctoral student in bioengineering at Stanford and has a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Harvard University. He strives to make an artistic statement with his puzzles, and his first book of puzzles, Battleship Sudoku, a new variation that combines elements from existing Battleship and Sudoku puzzle types, will be published by Sterling in April 2008. Additional puzzle projects and books are in the works.

• Read his blog posting on the Art of Sudoku
• Puzzles he’s written
• Mercury News, USA Today, and Philly.com articles on Snyder winning the US Championship
• You can pre-order his upcoming Battleship Sudoku book from Amazon

Exercise your brain on puzzle day Feb. 3

Puzzle Day Co-Chair Lisa Pampuch has an editorial into today’s Morgan Hill Times about Puzzle Day: Exercise your brain on puzzle day Feb. 3.

The Morgan Hill Times is the media sponsor for the event.

And speaking of brain health, one of our featured presentations at Puzzle Day will be “Maintain Your Brain,” presented by the Alzheimer’s Association of Northern California & Northern Nevada, will present.   The health of the brain plays a critical role in almost everything you do: thinking, feeling, remembering, working, and playing – even sleeping. The good news is that we now know there’s a lot you can do to help keep your brain healthier as you age (and puzzles can be part of that!). These steps might also reduce your risk of Alzheimer’s disease or other dementia. Simple lifestyle modifications also would have an enormous impact on our nation’s public health and the cost of healthcare. If you make brain-healthy lifestyle changes and take action by getting involved, we could realize a future without Alzheimer’s disease.

New PR

Look for our ads in the Morgan Hill Times, an announcement in Out & About magazine, and a nice article in the Morgan Hill Rotary Newsletter. More to come! If you are a member of the press looking for information and would like to cover the event, please contact us! We’d love to talk to you!

Puzzle gurus

Here’s some new information about the puzzles for the event and some of our featured speakers:

About the puzzles

The puzzles for the adult crossword tournament are being provided by famed crossword editor Will Shortz. The puzzles will appear soon after the tournament in the New York Times, so our competitors will get a sneak peak at them before the general public.

Shortz has been the puzzle editor of The New York Times since 1993 and prior to that spent 15 years as editor of Games magazine. In 1978 Shortz founded, and remains director of, the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. He also founded the World Puzzle Championship in 1992. Shortz has also been the puzzle master for NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday since the program’s start in 1987 and has published numerous books of puzzles.

The puzzles for the youth crossword tournament are being specially created for the event by published crossword constructors.

About the puzzle gurus

Byron Walden is an Associate Professor at Santa Clara University in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science. and an acclaimed crossword puzzle constructor. While his professional research interests focus on complex analysis and discrete dynamical systems, people in the crossword world know him as the creator of challenging puzzles. In his popular crossword blog, “Rex Parker does the NYT Crossword Puzzle” (http://rexwordpuzzle.blogspot.com/), Binghamton University professor Michael Sharp, writes that he considers Mr. Walden to be “one of the greatest constructors alive … or dead.” Walden will be supervising the judging of the Puzzle Day tournaments and will be giving a talk about constructing and solving difficult crossword puzzles.

Ganesh T S, an engineer from Santa Clara, CA, will be repeating his popular workshop from last year on cryptic crosswords. In addition to having some of his own cryptic crossword puzzles published, he runs an online community on a popular social networking Web site where people from different parts of the world get together everyday in a forum discussion to wrap up puzzles from some daily Indian newspapers (one of which carries puzzles syndicated from a British publication). His Cryptic Crossword Workshop aims to introduce an audience familiar with American-style crosswords to the joys of solving British-style cryptic crosswords. Cryptic crosswords involve learning more rules compared to ordinary straight crosswords in order to appreciate them. The deciphering of the solution involves working out the straight definition as well as the wordplay involved in the clues. This workshop elucidates the difference in grid construction, as well as clue structure. Solutions to sample cryptic clues will be analyzed and the wordplay discussed. Ganesh has also created a giant Cryptic Crossword for everyone attending Puzzle Day to complete together.

Andrea Carla Michaels, who competed in last year’s tournament and returns again this year to compete in both crosswords and Sudoku, is a professional namer, has been an NPR radio panelist/commentator, television writer and online humor columnist. She is a scrabble fiend and once won a motorhome on “Wheel of Fortune.” Her crossword puzzles have been published in the New York Times and LA Times. Michaels will be facilitating a morning workshop on constructing and solving Monday/Tuesday level “easy” puzzles. At a Bay Area appearance last year, Will Shortz introduced Michaels to the crowd of 1100 people as “his favorite Monday constructor.”

Brian Conrey, another repeat Puzzle Day competitor, is the Executive Director of the American Institute of Mathematics, one of the major sponsors of the event. The American Institute of Mathematics, a nonprofit organization, was founded in 1994 by Silicon Valley businessmen John Fry and Steve Sorenson, longtime supporters of mathematical research. Conrey will be giving a talk during Puzzle Day on “killer sudoku,” a variant of the popular game that combines elements of Sudoku and kakuro (also known as Cross Sums). These puzzles depend on the solver’s skill at mental arithmetic, and while the easiest ones can be easier than regular Sudoku puzzles, the hardest ones can take hours to crack.

How the tournaments work

Each tournament will consist of three of puzzles of increasing difficulty, with a time limit for each of the puzzles. Scoring is based on the number of correct answers in the least amount of time, so both count. In the adult division of each tournament, three finalists will be chosen. Everyone can watch as finalists in each tournament complete their tournament’s final puzzle on large puzzle boards in the championship rounds. Prizes will be awarded in a number of categories.

Details:

Silicon Valley Puzzle Day will be held at the Morgan Hill Public Library at 660 West Main Avenue in Morgan Hill, CA, on Sunday, February 3, 2008, between 11 a.m and 5 p.m.

Admittance to the event to watch is free to the public. A $5 donation is suggested for tournament participants.

A marketplace and puzzle fun will be available to spectators all day.

Tournament participants can register at the event starting at 11 a.m. Competition starts at noon.

For more information, visit www.svpuzzle.org.

Details are getting set!

December 17, 2008 – Bay Area fans of crossword puzzles and the popular Sudoku game are invited to compete in the second annual Silicon Valley Puzzle Day on Sunday February 3, 2008. The Friends of the Morgan Hill Library is hosting the event to celebrate puzzle fun and raise awareness of the new Morgan Hill Library that opened last summer.

“Silicon Valley Puzzle Day was so much fun last year that we’re doing it again,” said Lisa Pampuch, co-chair of the event. “Anyone who enjoys puzzles, who wants to keep their brain sharp, and who appreciates the library will love Silicon Valley Puzzle Day.”

This is the West Coast’s only competition combining crosswords and Sudoku for brain-building fun. The event is open to puzzle lovers of all ages, and prizes will be given to winners of the crossword and Sudoku puzzle contests. Competitors will compete in either youth (8-15 years) or adult (16 or older) divisions.

At free workshops throughout the day, puzzle experts will reveal secrets on how to improve crossword and Sudoku skills. A special marketplace area will sell food, puzzle books, and games.

The event is free for people who want to come and watch the competitors or learn new puzzle skills in workshops. Puzzle tournament participants pay $5 for each contest.

The Friends of the Morgan Hill Library is a group of volunteers dedicated to enhancing the quality of service at the Morgan Hill Library.

Details:

Silicon Valley Puzzle Day will be held at the Morgan Hill Public Library at 660 West Main Avenue in Morgan Hill, CA, on Sunday, February 3, 2008 between 11 a.m and 5 p.m

Admittance to the event to watch is free to the public. Competition registration costs $5.

Register at the event starting at 11 a.m. Competition starts at noon.

Mark your calendars!

The date has been set for the 2nd Annual Silicon Valley Puzzle Day! So mark your calendars for Sunday, February 3, 2008, sharpen your pencils, and get ready for another fun day of crossword puzzles, Sudoku, puzzles, games and more!