NPR’s Puzzle on the Air

npr-sunday-puzzleI am on a quest to become a contestant on the Puzzle on the Air segment of National Public Radio‘s morning news program Weekend Edition Sunday. During this segment, New York Times crossword puzzle editor and NPR puzzlemaster Will Shortz leads one lucky contestant on an on-air challenge of wordplay.

It’s remarkably easy to enter. Just solve the listener challenge given on the program and submit your answer to http://www.npr.org/puzzle before 3:00 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday. The contestant is chosen at random from all of the correct answers received before that week’s deadline.

Puzzle Solving 101

I am often asked how I go about solving puzzles. As I’m interested in geocaching, I decided to create a series of geocaches that teach people how to solve some of the most common types of puzzles as well as to give them the skills to solve other types of puzzles.

The result of this effort is the Puzzle Solving 101 Series of geocaches. Each cache in the series offers a lesson on a particular topic of puzzle solving. The description of each cache offers a description of the topic as well as solving tips. Each lesson also contains an example to solve using the tips presented in the lesson – the solution to each example puzzle is the location of a geocache in Broward County, Florida.