Birthday Puzzle 2026: Murder Mystery

 This year, I'm doing something a bit different. Instead of publishing a birthday puzzle here, I'm designing and writing a murder mystery puzzle for my birthday party! It's quite an undertaking, even for my usual standard - in addition to being challenging, it also has to be somewhat fun, which is not something I've ever optimized for in a puzzle, heheheh.

The party's in a week, so no specifics here - I might do a postmortem, or I might not. Ephemeral art is just as worthwhile as the stuff that sticks around, I reckon.

Birthday Puzzle 2025: The Splitdoku!

It's that time again - usually I dread my birthdays, but having a Birthday Puzzle to work on usually makes them manageable. This year, I've tried my hand at another simple, Nikoli-style puzzle, with efforts to make it accessible as well as unique. Presenting... the Splitdoku.

It is a simple "fill in the numbers" style puzzle, a bit more like Kakuro than Sudoku, but the same principles apply. You have the numbers 1 through n, where n x n is the grid size, and you have each number n times. Sounds a bit complicated in English, but on a 9x9 grid you'd have 9 ones, 9 twos, and so on until 9 nines, and you'd have to fit them into the grid like you would for Sudoku. Note: Splitdoku does not have Sudoku's requirement that the same numbers can't coexist in a row or column!

Then, the colored lines and shapes come into play. Each color partitions the grid into pieces of an equal sum. If a colored line or shape crosses through a grid square, those squares are not factored into the clue. I've made the colors semi-transparent, so you can tell where they overlap.

And finally, a disclaimer - yes, this is as simple as it appears on the surface. This is not one of my notorious "look at every typo and font choice because it's all important somehow" puzzles; it's just an attempt at inventing a new kind of Nikoli-style puzzle. The rules are hopefully very simple to understand, but they've led to some fun emergently complex solutions... and there is a Picross-y artistic element to these puzzles as well, which fills me with hope for their potential. Enjoy!

1. NO

2. I MISSED

3. TIC-TAC-TOE

4. NOT EQUAL

5. FORKED

6. COORDINATES

7. MAGIKOOPA

8. TIC-TAC-TWO

8. TYPO

10. BLUSHING NERD

11. BASKETBALL NERD

12. STOPWATCH

13. REPRESENTATIONAL

14. ABSTRACT

15. THE BIG ONE

Birthday Puzzle 2024

I make a puzzle every year on my birthday, always trying to make something brand new that pushes some personal limit. This year, I've gone with something, um, substantially less accessible than puzzles I've made in the past, but it "needed to be made" more than any of my other puzzles.

There is the concept of a "PokeDoku", which is a Pokemon-inspired take on a Sudoku. It consists of a 3x3 grid that must be filled out with 9 Pokemon total, and each row and column shares a characteristic, like "Fire-Type" or "Mega Pokemon". I found these puzzles very unsatisfying - there are many answers for each spot, and your score is determined by how few players chose that particular answer. Also, the categories are arbitrary, and it's only 3x3, where Sudoku is a full, perfectly balanced 9x9. So, I set out to try and make a better PokeDoku, and the result is below.

Now, if you happen to be one of the few people who identify as both a puzzle fiend and a Pokemaniac, you may be able to solve this puzzle without any kind of direction, so I'll just give you the puzzle and the most basic instructions.

• Your goal is to fill out this 6x6 grid with unique Pokemon such that each row, column, and colored 2x2 square has something different in common. (These are big, obvious characteristics and not something like "They both have a height between 4'11" and 6'1" ".)
  
• All variants of Pokemon present in the main series games can used, using their in-game names. Temporary form changes are associated with the base Pokemon, but are still considered their own Pokemon (with their own names).
• There are a few very similar sets of Pokemon that will fill this grid, but there is only one unique solution when it comes to the row, column, and square characteristics.
  

 

But I do want to give a bit more direction to make this puzzle accessible outside of the hardcore Pokemaniacs out there, so read on for those details.

• Columns in the puzzle represent Pokemon that share a type. All columns have a unique type.
  
• Rows in the puzzle represent Pokemon that start with the same letter of the alphabet. All rows have a unique letter.
  
• Squares in the puzzle represent the Pokemon's generation in order, starting from Generation I at the top left and ending with Generation IX at the bottom right.
• Regional variations of Pokemon go by the same name, and therefore start with the same letter. Alolan Rattata is referred to as Rattata in-game, and so counts for R, not A.
• Temporary form changes of Pokemon do have a different in-game name: Mega Pidgeot counts for M, not P. However, the temporary forms are assigned the generation of their base form, not the generation they were officially revealed.
• As mentioned above, there are a few cases in which multiple Pokemon can fill a single square (these Pokemon would have to share a type, a generation, and the first letter of their names). But there are only six types and six starting letters that are possible, providing a unique solution up to symmetry.

 You should have everything you need to solve the puzzle! It should be completely solvable without any guesswork.

Happy solving! I might do a breakdown of the puzzle here in a month or so, because hoo boy, it was a problem with too many constraints.

Birthday Puzzle 2022!

It's time for another birthday puzzle! This year, my birthday puzzle was CLASSIFIED. I've never done anything like that before, so it had a lot of puzzle ideas that had been building up in me for a while!

But, I couldn't resist also making something smaller in scope but wider in audience for a birthday puzzle. It's definitely simpler than many of its predecessors, but I enjoyed creating it all the same. I hope you enjoy solving it!

Birthday Puzzle 2021!

Hey folks, and welcome back to Spandan's Birthday Puzzle, 2021 edition. I've taken things in a very different direction this year. Normally I try to make something very complicated, something emergent, but at the same time fundamental... with varying degrees of success. What usually happens is that only a very small number (usually 0-2) of people end up solving them, and even that's only with a decent number of hints and additional clues. I'm usually more fixated on a puzzle ideal than I am on making it enjoyable; that has its own form of value to me, but often leaves people frustrated. 

So, here's a new direction I'm trying. I tried to invent a new Nikoli-style puzzle: a puzzle with clear, simple rules, with a well-defined progression path to the answer. I aimed for a puzzle like Hashi, Nonograms, or Sudoku, a puzzle that someone learns the rules to and plays in their spare time, deriving enjoyment from learning little tricks and shortcuts as they play. Let me be very clear - There is no "puzzle behind the puzzle" or anything else going on in this puzzle but the 12 puzzles and extras that are presented clearly at face value. In the past, I've delighted in hiding things in the introduction text, in changing details and making intentional typos as part of a deeper puzzle, and I'm sure I'll delight in them again, but this puzzle is exactly what it appears to be on the surface. That's a promise, and I wouldn't lie about that. 

Now, the puzzle. It's called Twinominoes, and it involves adding lines to a figure to split it into pieces that follow some rules. Short of writing an app for it, my best choice is to resort to Excel / Google Sheets as the tool that the most people have access to (even though Sheets is terrible at handling custom border drawing). So, here's the link to the puzzle itself.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_wL3NMGQdyXwnys85hYnBiIX2I2mvzHB/view?usp=sharing

I strongly recommend downloading a copy; the Google Sheets preview doesn't always do borders properly, but I made sure the puzzles were all functional in Sheets, so it should work if absolutely necessary. Graph paper and pencil is definitely the best option, but it does require more effort. Whatever medium you use, and however many or few puzzles you solve, I'd love to see your solutions and hear your feedback about if this new kind of puzzle is fun or interesting. Thanks for reading!

Birthday Puzzle 2020!

Hello, and welcome to my birthday puzzle, 2020 edition! A big, elaborate puzzle on my birthday is one of the few traditions I've been able to keep up with, and this year I'm posting the puzzle here rather than Facebook, to make it more accessible.

My earlier puzzles have been difficult, sometimes to the point of extreme frustration. Sometimes they required the solver to notice a very small detail just to progress, or they gave the impression of being so polished that any mistake was surely something I did on purpose. As you can imagine, this was stressful for everyone, myself included!

So, I am happy to say that I’ve taken a step to de-escalate this year. My 2020 birthday puzzle is meant to be enjoyed by children and adults alike. I’ve taken a leaf from the oft-underappreciated puzzles that grace cereal boxes and restaurant coloring sheets to create my own series of simple puzzles, enjoyable by all. And if there’s a little mistake or seemingly important detail here or there, I’m not too worried about it!

The old Spandan would have cut it off there and left you with no idea where to begin, but I can’t do that in good conscience. So, I’ll give you a quick summary of the puzzles and what you need to do to succeed! The first puzzle is a fill-in-the-blank game – all you have to do is find out which letter is missing, and then use the letters to solve the tricky bonus question. The second puzzle is a search and find, because I’ve cleverly hidden coins around the puzzle sheet, and only a keen eye will be able to find all of them. Watch out, though, some coins are hiding together! The third puzzle is a maze, with a twist! Instead of just finding your way to the end, you have to collect coffee for your friend. If you want to try the bonus puzzle, pay attention to the letters you come across! And finally, the last puzzle that ties the rest together is the word search. Find the words in the word bank – you’ll notice they’re all kid-friendly words, nothing adult there. The big, empty box is for the secret phrase I’ve hidden in the word search.

And, that’s it! I hope you enjoy the fresh new aesthetic, and the kid-friendly puzzles!

Here's the puzzle!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yLeXVunFnrXJVZ6MP7PjoCvq7sJFlzGx/view?usp=sharing