🧩 The Best Crossword of 2023


Your monthly digest from the world of puzzles and games	View in browser

Dear Reader,

You're reading the monthly newsletter from Amuse Labs, covering the world of puzzles, publishing and updates to PuzzleMe™, the most advanced digital platform for smart games.

The Best Crossword of 2023

The 12th ORCA Awards, organized by constructor Rich Proulx, are here! This year, the awards invited solvers to directly participate by voting for their favorites across nine categories, ranging from 'Best Clue of 2023' to 'Best Themeless Crossword of 2023'.

ORCA is another name for a killer whale, and it is part of a set of words found often in crosswords. "ORCAs" is also an anagram of OSCAR, and is hence befitting for a crossword award function.

The eagerly-awaited results will be unveiled during a livestream on March 6th at 9 PM EST. The event will be hosted by John Lieb and Andrew Kingsley, with a cast of prominent constructors presenting. Catch the livestream here.

Picture Credit: Media Department, The City Montesseri School

Matheletics with PuzzleMe

We recently partnered with City Montessori School in India to help organize Matheletics International, an inter-school math competition with over 100 students participating from across South Asia.

The competition had students solving a Mathdoku, which is a variation of sudoku. In Mathdoku, grids are divided into heavily-outlined groups of cells (often called “cages”) and the numbers in the cells of each cage must produce the target number when combined using a specified mathematical operation, like addition, subtraction, multiplication or division.

The Mathdoku event saw 54 participating teams. The winning team solved this hard Mathdoku in 20 minutes. Can you beat their time?

Host contests with PuzzleMe

If you’d like to explore how games and contests can help your organization, get a free consultation with our experts. We’ll go over the process of launching games, setting up contests, results you can expect, and much more.

Get A Free Consultation

Crosswords for Doctors

Did you know that PuzzleMe crosswords are used to aid doctors with continuing medical education (CME)?

JAMA, a medical journal and CME platform, uses crosswords to educate doctors on medical terminology. Last month, Master Clinicians, another CME library, also integrated PuzzleMe crosswords into their educational toolkit.

Such use cases are great at illustrating the adaptability of puzzles, showing that they can serve not only as entertainment but as powerful tools for education across various disciplines.

From the Crossworld

Save the date: Puzzmo is organizing Crossword Con, the first-ever half-day conference about crossword puzzles, on 5th April in New York. The event will be held in-person and live-streamed. Register here to get all the details.

Registrations for Boswords Spring League are now live. You can also find practice puzzles on the website. Meanwhile, we're all geared up for the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, being held from April 5th to 7th. The live tournament is booked out, but you can still sign up for the virtual tournament here.

PuzzleMe Spotlight

A selection of features from PuzzleMe, the most advanced digital platform for games

1. Hints to Help Solvers of Killer Sudoku

PuzzleMe can now offer hints to killer sudoku solvers. These hints use advanced logic to nudge solvers in the right direction without undermining the puzzle's challenge.

Hints on sudokus are already fairly popular with PuzzleMe solvers. With this new feature, we're excited to make killer sudokus more accessible to solvers of all skill levels.

2. Pre-Filled Sudokus for Easy Creation

Pre-filled sudokus are here! On the PuzzleMe sudoku creator, you will now find the option to select a 9x9 sudoku of a difficulty level of your choice, and PuzzleMe will automatically create the puzzle for you.

If you're just looking for a quick way to create and embed sudokus on your site or app, this is a feature that's made for you. Advanced creators can, of course, still fill in their own numbers and create custom sudokus.

3. Extra-Large Grids on PuzzleMe

PuzzleMe now supports crossword grids of sizes as big as 125x125. To make solving easier on such large grids, you'll be able to see the relevant clue just by hovering over the grid.

Multiplayer mode on PuzzleMe also works seamlessly on such grids. If you'd like to get cracking with a friend, here's Globe and Mail's 69x69 Giant Holiday Crossword Puzzle. To offer your solvers a great online experience for your extra-large grid, do get in touch with us.

Puzzle of the Month

Last month, we had a teacher create this fabulous jigsaw from a picture of the periodic table. We thought this was a fantastic way to get students to memorize the periodic table.

Create Your Own Game

About Us

Amuse Labs is the creator of PuzzleMe™, the leading digital platform for Smart Games. It is a B2B SaaS company trusted globally by brands and publishers, powering Crosswords, Sudokus, Jigsaws, Quizzes, Word Searches and more. Explore opportunities to partner by sending a note or applying if you’d like to work with us!

Oh, and to the journalists on our mailing list, write to us if you’d like to cover highlights from this newsletter or about Amuse Labs.