All-in

All-in podcast besties and their friends got together to play Texas hold’em. See https://bit.ly/3xk2J0W for details. Each player figures out
the best hand he or she has starting with Chamath and proceeding clockwise. What happens? Hint: Write numbers you may encounter out
as words, but not the indexers shown in parentheses.
Brad (1) Chamath (1) Phil (3)
Peter David S
(4) (9)
David F Sheryl
(5) (5)
Elon (4) Jason (1) Bill (3)
__________
©2024 Zhenya Ross Print as color.
Battleship

This is a Nonogram (aka paint-by-numbers). For instructions, visit https://help.puzzyl.net/PBN.

1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1
4 5 1 5 1 2
7 2 1 1 1 1 1
2 14 14 1 1 3 1 1 16
6 2 1 1 2 1 1
1 1 5 1 5 3
1 1 1 1
1 2 2 2
1 1 1 1
1 1 2 2
15
4 2
4 3 3 1
4 1 1 1 1 1
4 3 3 1
4 3 1 1 1 1
3 3 3 1
2 2
3 4 4 1
3 1 1 1 1
4 3 4 1
4 1 1 1
3 4 4 1
5 2
12
8

©2024 David Garber Print as color

Blokus
Someone has taken some
. .
liberties with their Blokus
game and turned it into a
jigsaw-Sudoku hybrid! 3

They’ve taken one full set of

9 6 7 8
the 21 unique pieces, and
written the numbers 1-9 all
over them. Six of the pieces . 1
have been glued in place on
this 9×9 mini-board. A few . 6 3
cells stick beyond the edges,
but those lack digits. 4 8
Please pack the rest back
together! It looks like they’ll 5 4 8 .
just barely fit, following a mix
of Sudoku rules and jigsaw .
strategies. No rotations
needed!
8 9
Afterwards, those dashed
regions should make sum 7 3
sense.
. .
___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
+ + + + + +

2 3 7 1 4 9 2 7 3 5 2

4 2 7 1 4

8 2 6 5

7 1 6 3 4 7 1 5

3 9 1

8 9 6 4 7 5 5 1 4

5 9 6

5 2 6 8 3 2 7

9 1 3 1 4

5 2 8 9 6 9 6 2 8

©2024 David Garber Print as color.

Bridges of Catan
The settlers of Catan have decided to upgrade their transportation system. They want to construct a set of hashi (bridges), to speed up
commerce over their hexagonal lands. Whereas the old roads traveled around and between the resource tiles, these new bridges will jump
from tile-center to tile-center. All participating tiles have circles (with numbers) at their landing points. No bridges go anywhere else.
All bridges have 1 or 2 lanes. The circled numbers
count the total number of lanes reaching that tile,
1
across all bridges.
2 3
Bridge spans may not intersect mid-span.
Bridges may connect neighboring tiles or jump to
more distant tiles. They always align 2 2 2
with a hexagonal axis.
The specific tile types matter. The two ends of a
bridge will always be different resource types. 8 3 2
Furthermore…
4 1
Mountains
Due to their heights, all bridges that connect to or 4 4 3 3
from a mountain must have two lanes. Furthermore, 2
no bridge can span over another mountain tile –
even those not participating as bridge landings. 2 2 2 1
Pastures 4
To reduce traffic danger to sheep, any bridges
landing in a pasture may only have one lane.
Forests 4 2
To keep logging accessible, no spur in the bridge 5
system may terminate at a forest.
2
Hills and Fields
The bridge system is divided into regions, each 2 1
identified by a single letter. Boundaries occur
anywhere a hill is connected by bridge to a field 1 2
(remove those bridges to see the separate regions).
Read the region letters in reading order across the map. 2
©2024 David Garber Print as color.
Candy Land
Solve the puzzle online here: https://aka.ms/candyland-game
Solve the puzzle online here: https://aka.ms/candyland-game

Example (not the puzzle) Rules are based on “Strands” (New York Times):

• Find words that snake through the puzzle in any

direction: up, down, left, right, or diagonally.

• Themed words fill the entire board.

In this puzzle, the themed words are all at least
seven letters long.

One of the themed words (the “spangram”)

connects two opposite sides of the board and
describes an overall theme.

In this puzzle, the spangram is the puzzle’s final

answer. (Find all six themed words for a cute
bonus animation.)

• There’s other hidden words too. Find six of them

that are at least four letters long to activate the
“Get a hint” button. (No penalty).

• Letters are not reused in individual words or

among the themed words.

©2024 Ken Pacquer Play online at aka.ms/candyland-game

CuBirds

ACK AL _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ AN BIN
5 2
AN BA CK DU
_ _ _ _ _ _ and _ _ _ _ _
3 7
BA BL EA GBI
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
ING KI 6 6 GE GLE

LEG LL _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ IO KIN
2 3
LTI MO LES MOC
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
4 5
OOL RE ON OR
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
SI ST 1 1 PI RD

To _ _ _ _ a _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
TM TT RO SW
7 4

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

©2024 Philippe Nicolle Print as color.

Detective School
Class B will study witness testimony today. To We’ll warm up by reviewing a game of Clue
succeed, you’ll need to pick up on every detail a (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluedo#Rules). In
witness provides, as well as the ones they don’t, this case, you’ve only seen the five cards you hold,
all to recognize the exact moment when you’ve and two cards others have shown you. You’ll have
gathered just enough information to draw a to glean information from the other players’ turns
conclusion. to solve the mystery.

Turn P1 (You) P2 P3 P4

6
As a refresher, the first row of the table
reads as, “On turn 1, P1 suggested that
Suspect 4, Weapon 2, Location 1, could be 7
the 3 cards in the envelope; going around
the table clockwise, P2 and P3 could not
refute based on their hands, but P4 could, 8
by revealing the Suspect 4 card to P1.”

If in doubt, try the notation we covered last class; for example, on turn 2, we don’t know whether P3 showed
Weapon 4 or Location 4, but we know it was one of those, so we’ll mark those boxes with 2s until we gather
more information.

P1 O X O X X X O X X X X X X X X X O X X O X
P2 X X X X X X
P3 X X X X 2 2 X X
P4 X X O X X X
Env X X X X X X

When you think you know what’s in the envelope, submit the cards as a 3-digit number (suspect-weapon-
location), and append your class letter.

©2024 Tigar Cyr Printing recommended. Print as color.

Dinner Break
Some friends needed to pause their gaming for a meal break. They took these snapshots to remember the
state of each board.

©2024 David Garber Print as color.

DropMix

This is a music identification puzzle that must be played online.

https://aka.ms/ps24/dropmix
It seems that there was confusion when booking acts for the DropMix music festival and the event was
overbooked! The solution was to put on 3 acts at a time which wound up a bit chaotic. Can you help
determine what songs were played in each performance?

Note: This puzzle works better on desktop devices. When you type artists and title into the blanks,
letters are automatically mapped to the extraction clue.

Headphones are recommended but not required to solve.

©2024 Andrew Giese Solve at aka.ms/ps24/dropmix

Error Correcting Clues
Richard took the liberty of creating his own custom deck of cards for playing Clue
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluedo#Rules with his friends.

This came back to bite him when, in the middle of a game, his little brother saw his favorite card in the
older boy’s hand, grabbed it, and ran off.

Without knowing who’d already seen it, they didn’t want Richard to just reveal the “lost card”. But they
also couldn’t think of a way for him to respond when it was suggested. So, they got Richard’s older sister,
each showed her their cards, and asked for help.

She knew exactly what card her littler brother had taken and which 3 were in the envelope, but to respect
their wishes, didn’t announce either. Instead, she gave the investigators a magic number and told them
how to use it to tell the lost card apart from the real envelope cards.

That way, she told them, “Richard can just act as if he’d never had the ‘lost card,’ and if any of you are
about to open the envelope, you can use the magic number to check that your guess doesn’t include it.”

Can you figure out how her magic number Card 1 Card 2 Card 3 Card 4 Magic
works?
0
Here are some examples of what magic number
her system generates based on the true contents
of the envelope.
7

Who What Where Magic 6

1
1

8
5

4
4

Check your understanding by identifying the lost 2

card in the sets of unshown cards on the right.

Submit your answer as a 7-digit number made up of the numbers on the lost cards.

©2024 Tigar Cyr Print as color.

Family Game Night

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
A. B. C. D. E. F. G. H. J. K. L. M. O. W.

©2024 Cele Wolman Print as color

Gerrymandering Is Not A Game
Except when it is. Porcupines (yellow) and Leaves (green) are at it this time, looking to gerrymander themselves into office.
However, we’ve only got clues on how they did it – not the actual map. Redraw the map with these rules and clues – there are three
borders drawn to get you started. Extract the final answer by taking each district, determining the winning party, and indexing the
number of counties that voted for the winning party into that party's name.

Rules
1. A district (fully closed off group of hexes) must contain four or more counties (single hex). All counties must be part of a district
(no groups of three or less counties).

2. The party with the most votes in a district wins it.

Clues
1. Surprising no one, every district was either packed with majority vote >= 75% (3:1) or cracked by majority vote <= 60% (3:2).

2. In exactly two districts, the winner had votes from a single county – one district was packed (start here!) and the other cracked.

3. There was exactly one district that had votes for a single party – it had six counties.

4. There was exactly one district with only odd voter-count counties and exactly one district with only even voter-count counties.
The even voter-count district had the most counties of all the districts.

5. There were seven districts.

Based on “Mapmaker: The Gerrymandering Game” (not required for puzzle) – Rules: https://aka.ms/ps24gerryrules

©2024 Nathan Baird Print as color.

Impatient Game Night
A group of eight people are having a board game night. They chose to play Scrabble, so they split into two
groups of four (A, B, C, D and E, F, G, H). However, everyone takes a long time picking their Scrabble
word and everyone is impatient.

So, B, C, E, G, H and D are playing a 6-player variant of Pachisi simultaneously. Meanwhile, A and F are
playing Yahtzee with each other on a phone app.

In all descriptions, opposite means visually opposite in the diagram (not diagonally), and directly adjacent
means in an adjacent cell on the same row of the diagram.

In the diagram Scrabble players are coloured by game, and Pachisi players are italic inside the dotted box.
The diagram shows the true shape of the table (solid box) that is a rectangle with one person at each end.

B C E

A Scrabble Pachisi Scrabble F

D H G

Use these clues to identify the name of each player:

• Play proceeded clockwise in all games. Seat F is nearest the door of the room.

• Sheila sat opposite their current housemate, which meant playing right after them at Pachisi.

• Leilani was eating popcorn at the end of the table. Rebecca hates that smell, so sat as far away from
them as possible to minimize odour and be as near as possible to the room’s door.

• Ishmael was surprised to find that one of their Scrabble compatriots had a name that was an anagram
of Ishmael’s with one fewer letters.
• Khalid had never played Pachisi before. They got plenty of practice that night because the player
preceding them at Scrabble, who was sitting directly on their right, was very slow.

• Qinghua was happy to be sitting opposite Juliana until Qinghua realised how good Juliana’s Scrabble
game was. Qinghua was forced to ask for advice from Ishmael, because Ishmael sat directly adjacent
to them but in the other Scrabble game.

• Juliana noticed that all of the three people at their end of the table had names ending in vowels.

• Patrick really wanted to play with Qinghua, who is new to the group, but was sad when they only got
to play at opposite corners (as shown in the diagram) of the Pachisi game.
• Rebecca refuses to play Scrabble with Patrick, which makes it hard to organise the people.

Once you have all the names, use this table to extract the final answer:

F (3) A (7) E (4) G (5) C (4) H (5) B (1) D (3)

Final Answer

©2024 Martyn Lovell Print as colour.

King of Tokyo
Answers ordered alphabetically

11

THE
2

THE
9

7
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 1
0 1
THE
10

©2024 Andrew Giese Print as color.

Missing Pieces
Danish electronics En dash Postal worker’s
Example: + + = READING
company, in brief (1. & 1.) description (5 4) PA (12)

Largest
Where Yankee Doodle ocean (7)
is the official song (11)
What many of these
answers are (6)

Catholic cathedral
in Seattle (2. 5)
Wooden beachside
path (9)

Top U.S. producer

of maple syrup (7)
Douglas Adams’
paranoid android (6)
The Big
Apple (3 4)

Writer
Woolf (8)
Top-ranked
diet (13)

The Pond
(8) Fictional archaeologist
Jones (7)

Kitty Hawk
Land of
location (5 8)
Lincoln (8)
Slang for heavy
tears (5 5)

2 3 2 5 5 2 5 5 1
Dk. Blue Yellow Pink Brown Colorless Lt. Blue Red Green Orange

©2024 Rorke Haining Print as color.

On the Phone
Huh? What did you say? You’ve got it all backwards, man.

©2024 Michael Hayashi Print as color.

Peaceful Coexistence
In chess, ciphers, or even life itself, the sheer number of possibilities can often be overwhelming. But
what if tackling two such challenges simultaneously could actually simplify things?

(And if eight queens can live in harmony, maybe more can…)

Hint: Don't attempt the first word until you've solved all the other short words.

©2024 Paul Kwiatkowski Print as color.

Pictionary
I get together with a group of friends every Monday for some recreation.

_ _ _ _ _
-T _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
10

-K
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
6
_ _ _ _ _ _ _
11

4
_ _ _ _ _
2

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
7 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
12

_ _ _ _ _
3
_ _ _ _ -P( -
S
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
)
4 _ _ _ _ _ _ _
8

2( - )
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
5 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
9

Final Answer: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 1 1
0 1 2
©2024 Martyn Lovell Print as colour.
Quarto
Alice and Bob were playing a friendly game of Quarto to determine who would have to do the dishes that
night. As Alice placed the 9th piece to the board, a smile spread across her face. “I hope your hands don’t
get too pruned, darling,” said Alice, “All you can do is delay the inevitable.” As Bob studied the board, the
reality began to set in. There were already four spaces on the board where one misstep would spell
instant defeat. Looking 3 turns ahead, he could see himself stuck holding a piece with no good place to
play it. Even working backwards through his progression, he was unable to avoid this eventuality. “Well,
played, dear,” muttered Bob begrudgingly, “It seems that this outcome was truly _____.”

Optional cutouts
to assist with
tracking board
state

Quarto rules:

• All pieces have 4 characteristics (light or dark, tall or short, circular or square, solid or hollow) and
every piece is unique.
• The player placing the piece does not get to choose their piece. Instead, the opposing player
selects from a shared pool of remaining pieces which piece must be played next.
• A player wins the game when they place a piece that creates a line of four pieces that share any
common characteristic. Lines can be made on any row, column, or either diagonal.

©2024 Andrew Giese Print as color.

Risk
Risk is one of the all-time classic board games – perhaps because the use of force never seems to go out of style. But even the worst of
enemies must surely have one thing in common. If we can find it, perhaps we can sue for peace. What must we strive to reach?
©2024 Rorke Haining
“Risk board game” by cmglee, Gr0gmint is licensed under CC BY 4.0 Print as color.
Scrabble
The rules of Scrabble can be found here: https://www.hasbro.com/common/instruct/Scrabble_(2003).pdf

Each set of tiles below comprises the combination of tiles that a player added to the board on their turn.
+ X indicates how many pre-existing tiles were used, and the number of points that player scored in total
is shown in parentheses.

Turns are presented in order of play. The first word of the game has been filled in for you. Some of the
tiles played later are shown as semi-transparent tiles; these are to be placed and are not pre-existing.
Each word played can be submitted as an intermediate answer for confirmation.

+ 3 (21)

+ 1 (9)

+ 1 (30)

+ 1(68)

+ 1 (13)

+ 1 (13)

+ 1 (6)

+ 4 (19)
Light Blue : Double Letter Score
+ 1 (10)
Dark Blue : Triple Letter Score

+ 1 (8) Orange : Double Word Score

Dark Red : Triple Word Score

+ 1 (14)
Remember: letter and word premiums count only on the
+ 1 (14) turn in which they are played.
On later turns, letters already played on premium squares
count at face value.

If a player plays all seven of their tiles, that player earns a

bonus 50 points after scoring their word(s).
Once you have laid out each play, read the tiles placed on Dark Blue (left to right, top to bottom). Ignore blanks.

©2024 Jake Lui Print as color.

Set
This table contains cards from the game Set. Following the standard rules – Wikipedia has a summary –
most can be grouped into threes. None are in multiple sets. Find and remove all sets.

Decode any remaining cards as follows…

• Create a trinary number from [shape] [fill] [quantity] color can be ignored.
o For shapes, ovals=0, squiggles=1, diamonds=2.
o For fills, empty=0, shaded=1, solid=2.
• Read the trinary as letters, where 001=A and 222=Z.

©2024 David Garber Print as color.

Spot It!
1⟷2 _ _ [ ] 1⟷3 __[]______ 4⟷5 []___
2⟷3 _ _ [ ] _ _ _ _ _ 3⟷4 []___ 5⟷6 ___[]____
2⟷4 []____ 5⟷7 ______[]__
Clue: _ _ ____ ____ →? 3⟷5 _______[]__ 6⟷7 _________[]
©2024 Ken Pacquer Print as color.
Sushi Go!
Four friends are playing Sushi Go!, a card-drafting game. During each turn, every player simultaneously
selects one card from their hand to keep, then passes the rest of the hand to the player on their left
(clockwise). There are three turns remaining, after which all players will score points based on the five
cards they chose to keep. The point values of each card are as follows:

1 point by itself 5 points per pair

Egg Nigiri Tempura (single cards are worth 0 points)
2 points by itself 10 points per set of 3
Salmon Nigiri Sashimi (single cards are worth 0 points)
3 points by itself First card is worth 1 point,
Squid Nigiri
Dumpling second card is worth 2 points,
Owner’s future Nigiri
card is worth 3x third card is worth 3 points, etc.
Wasabi
(one-time use)

Players will always choose to keep the card that is guaranteed to earn the most points, given what they
have already chosen. Hands are not publicly visible to all players.

Determine which cards each player will keep at the end of the three remaining turns.
Then, for each type of card, calculate the total number of points the card type scored across all players.

©2024 Jake Lui Print as color.

Ticket To Ride
My girlfriend got me Ticket To Ride for my birthday! It’s a popular board game in which players put a number of colorful train cars on the
board to connect cities and score points. If a pair of cities has 2 possible connections, they are equivalent, but the player can only use 1 of
them. Her card said, “I know you’re a big fan of the Beatles, so when I saw this game, I had to get it for you. Is this the kind of game you
like?” It made me chuckle, because the game has nothing to do with the song. Here was my reply… _-_ _ _ _
Montreal ->
Washington 5
Portland ->
San Francisco 11
New Orleans
-> Saint Louis 5
San Francisco
-> Vancouver 7
Denver ->
El Paso 9
New York ->
Washington 4
Atlanta ->
Charleston 4
Denver ->
Omaha 4
Charleston
-> Miami 7
©2024 Rorke Haining Print as color.
Timeline - Inventions
Place the inventions in timeline order. What do all these inventions have to compete with?

©2024 Cele Wolman Print as color