Puzzles

Overview

With the benefit of hindsight, Professor Barany’s interest in puzzles stems all the way back to his childhood, but he became more serious about the cruciverbal arts in the late-1990s. Generally working with gifted collaborators, George honed his craft and eventually founded the Barany and Friends website which flourished in the 2010s but has more recently been dormant—one of his “retirement” projects will be to reboot the site to be better, if not necessarily bigger. For the past seven years, George has worked with Christopher Adams to create a quarterly puzzle for the Minneapolis Star Tribune magazine, and he has also tackled several additional interesting puzzling or game projects.

For this Symposium, the organizers commissioned Adams to construct “Minnesota Star Tribute”, a Sunday-sized (21x) puzzle with several amazing layers that you will have to discover for yourself. As of June 1, this puzzle is available to solve in “contest” mode. Early on the morning of Saturday, June 8, 2024, the contest ends and the puzzle will be unlocked, thereby enabling “reveal” and “check” functionalities. Three additional puzzles are presented under the same conditions, and there then follow other brainteasers for your solving pleasure, at your own pace. IMPORTANT UPDATE: The original contest deadline applies only to “Connections”. The new deadline for the other three puzzles is 11:59 PM on Sunday, June 30, 2024. SECOND UPDATE: The contest is now closed. Eventually, we will post a “midrash” for each of several puzzles.

Minneapolis Star Tribute

Commissioned puzzle, 21x (CONTEST)

By Christopher Adams