Puzzles

Lives up to its name! If you're looking for Java-based word, trivia, logic and visual puzzles, this free site has literally thousands - and more are added daily.

A number of the puzzles I have not seen anywhere else. There are over 200 "Transposed Quotes" puzzles, which I particularly enjoyed. In these, a quotation is spelled out in a rectangular grid with black cells separating words (like a standard anacrostic); the columns of the grid are then scrambled, and your challenge is to put them back in order. The Java engine on this puzzle, as on all of the puzzles I saw on this site, is clear and very easy to use.

Some of the puzzles are classics, like "Guess Your Best" (their version of Wheel of Fortune, or Hangman to purists), Word Search and Cryptograms. But even these have unique twists. The word search puzzles, for example, do not have a list of the words you're searching for, making them hellishly difficult. The cryptograms are enciphered in such a way that the name of the author is spelled out in the encryption method, if you can spot it.

Not to be missed are the Picture Puzzles, which are standard scrambled tile puzzles, although again the Java engine is easier to use than most. You can upload your own picture or play one of theirs - and some of theirs are quite beautiful. You can also choose the difficulty level from 30 to 100 pieces.

All-Star Puzzles is a great showcase for using the power of computer programming to rejuvenate the genre of standard paper-and-pencil puzzles. Highly recommended!