I'm trying to unravel the algorithm for an old 1980s game called Wanderer. The game is a simple grid: 16 cells high (all visible in the image) and 40 cells wide (though not all are depicted). In the game lots of things happen, but I'm only concerned with an sequence of falling boulders. They fal...

"HELLO World" has value 12, while "Puzzles are great" has value 223. What is the value of "Puzzling StackExchange" ?

You are given a 4x4 square grid. It has 16 cells and 25 grid intersections. Can you place 10 points at grid intersections, such that no three points lie on the same straight line? Lines can be oriented in any direction. Bonus question: can you find multiple solutions that are not rotations/mirror...

Mike the MMA* fighter and his fashion-model wife make a striking couple. They turn heads, especially when engaging in their favourite pastime - cosplay**. Mike likes to dress as a fantasy hero, complete with sword and buckler while Wendy goes more for the delicate wood-elf look. Whenever they hav...

This question is part of the best-puzzle award series. What are your nominations for the best puzzles, here on Puzzling.SE, of the fourth quarter ( October / November / December) 2020? Suggested guidelines for nomination: Nominate each individual puzzle in a separate answer, so they can be up...

Sometimes, creators of questions like to add colour to their puzzle, by adding some attempts to be "edgy" with their language. In most cases, I think we can all agree that its OK to spice up a question a little by making references to memes, pop culture, or running jokes. But what about political...

I have a game, but first, I need to explain how it works. Take a sentence, completely meaningful. Suppose the sentence is, "Yes, yesterday we ate the meal sometime at night". In this sentence, if you take two consecutive words, you will find that both of those words contain a common letter. (For...

Suppose that, instead of playing in your turn, you have to submit in advance, an ordered list of the 9 board positions. Then a computer plays for you by using, whenever it is your turn, the leftmost position that is still untaken. For example, suppose you are "X" and you play first. Then the comp...

There are two discrete ways to solve this Futoshiki puzzle, each with its own unique solution. Here is a penpa-edit (without the letters entered in case you want to use numbers instead), and here is a transcription: [ ] [ ] [D] [ ] [ ] v v ^ [ ] [ ] [U]<[ ] [ ] ...