A puzzle is a game, problem, or toy that tests a person's ingenuity or knowledge. In a puzzle, the solver is expected to put pieces together in a logical way, in order to find the solution of the puzzle. There are different genres of puzzles, such as crossword puzzles, word-search puzzles, number puzzles, relational puzzles, and logic puzzles. The academic study of puzzles is called enigmatology.
Asimov's Science Fiction is an American science fiction magazine edited by Sheila Williams and published by Dell Magazines, which is owned by Penny Press. It was launched as a quarterly by Davis Publications in 1977, after obtaining Isaac Asimov's consent for the use of his name. It was originally titled Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, and was quickly successful, reaching a circulation of over 100,000 within a year, and switching to monthly publication within a couple of years. George H. Scithers, the first editor, published many new writers who went on to be successful in the genre. Scithers favored traditional stories without sex or obscenity; along with frequent humorous stories, this gave Asimov's a reputation for printing juvenile fiction, despite its success. Asimov was not part of the editorial team, but wrote editorials for the magazine.
William F. Shortz is an American puzzle creator and editor who is the crossword editor for The New York Times. He graduated from Indiana University with a degree in the invented field of enigmatology. After starting his career at Penny Press and Games magazine, he was hired by The New York Times in 1993. Shortz's American Crossword Puzzle Tournament is the country's oldest and largest crossword tournament.
Kakuro or Kakkuro or Kakoro is a kind of logic puzzle that is often referred to as a mathematical transliteration of the crossword. Kakuro puzzles are regular features in many math-and-logic puzzle publications across the world. In 1966, Canadian Jacob E. Funk, an employee of Dell Magazines, came up with the original English name Cross Sums and other names such as Cross Addition have also been used, but the Japanese name Kakuro, abbreviation of Japanese kasan kurosu, seems to have gained general acceptance and the puzzles appear to be titled this way now in most publications. The popularity of Kakuro in Japan is immense, second only to Sudoku among Nikoli's famed logic-puzzle offerings.
Kappa Publishing Group, Inc. is a Blue Bell, Pennsylvania-based publishing company concentrating on adult puzzle books and magazines as well as children's magazines and maps. It is a private company founded in 1955 with $11.5 million in annual sales.
Digest size is a magazine size, smaller than a conventional or "journal size" magazine, but larger than a standard paperback book, approximately 14 cm × 21 cm. It is also a 13.65 cm × 21.27 cm and 14 cm × 19 cm format, similar to the size of a DVD case. These sizes evolved from the printing press operation end. Some printing presses refer to digest size as a "catalog size". The digest format was a convenient size for readers to tote around or to leave within easy hand-reach.
Nikoli Co., Ltd. is a Japanese publisher that specializes in games and, especially, logic puzzles. Nikoli is also the nickname of a quarterly magazine issued by the company in Tokyo. Nikoli was established in 1980, and became prominent worldwide with the popularity of Sudoku.
Games World of Puzzles is an American games and puzzle magazine. Originally the merger of two other puzzle magazines spun off from its parent publication Games magazine in the early 1990s, Games World of Puzzles was reunited with Games in October 2014.
Classics Illustrated is an American comic book/magazine series featuring adaptations of literary classics such as Les Misérables, Moby-Dick, Hamlet, and The Iliad. Created by Albert Kanter, the series began publication in 1941 and finished its first run in 1969, producing 169 issues. Following the series' demise, various companies reprinted its titles. Since then, the Classics Illustrated brand has been used to create new comic book adaptations. This series is different from the Great Illustrated Classics, which is an adaptation of the classics for young readers that includes illustrations, but is not in the comic book form.
Dell Magazines is a magazine company known for its many puzzle magazines, astrology magazines, as well as four fiction magazines: Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Asimov's Science Fiction, and Analog Science Fiction and Fact.
Dell Publishing Company, Inc. is an American publisher of books, magazines and comic books, that was founded in 1921 by George T. Delacorte Jr. with $10,000, two employees and one magazine title, I Confess, and soon began turning out dozens of pulp magazines, which included penny-a-word detective stories, articles about films, and romance books.
The New York Times crossword is a daily American-style crossword puzzle published in The New York Times, syndicated to more than 300 other newspapers and journals, and released online on the newspaper's website and mobile apps as part of The New York Times Games.
Wei-Hwa Huang is an American puzzler, member of the US Team for the World Puzzle Championship, and game designer.
Howard Garns was an American architect who gained fame only after his death as the creator of Number Place, the number puzzle that became a worldwide phenomenon under the name Sudoku.
The Gilberton Company, Inc. was an American publisher best known for the comic book series Classics Illustrated featuring adaptations of literary classics. Beginning life as an imprint of the Elliot Publishing Company, the company became independent in 1942, Between 1941 and 1962, domestic sales of Gilberton's publications totaled 200 million. Gilberton was sold to the Frawley Corporation in 1967. The company ceased publishing in 1971.
Albert Lewis Kanter was the creator of Classics Illustrated and Classics Illustrated Junior. Kanter began creating Classic Comics with "The Three Musketeers" in October 1941. His renditions of classic novels in comic book form popularized classic tales for a younger audience.
Ann Brewster was an American cartoonist and illustrator during the Golden Age of comics. She provided art for many different publishers, including Ace Magazines, Fiction House, and Atlas Comics. Brewster is most notable for illustrating romance comics. After a career as penciller and inker for comics, she transitioned to illustrating novels and children's magazines before retiring in 1980.
Thorpe & Porter was a British publisher, importer, and distributor of magazines and comic books. At first, the company was known for repackaging American comics and pulp magazines for the UK market. Later on, it became a publisher of original material. The company released more than 160 comics titles in the UK, the most prominent being Classics Illustrated, MAD UK, Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan of the Apes, Larry Harmon's Laurel & Hardy, House of Hammer, and Forbidden Worlds. T & P's most prominent imprints were Top Sellers Ltd. and Brown Watson. Thorpe & Porter operated from 1946 to c. 1979.
Williams Publishing was the short-lived European comics and magazines publishing division of Warner Communications in the 1970s. Headquartered at the Columbia-Warner House in London, Williams had European-language divisions in Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and West Germany. Comics titles were for the most part translations of American publications — many of them Warner properties — as well as some U.K. and European titles. Initiated in 1971, most of the Williams publishing divisions were closed or sold off in the period 1974–1979.
Patrick D. Berry is an American puzzle creator and editor who constructs crossword puzzles and variety puzzles. He had 227 crosswords published in The New York Times from 1999 to 2018. His how-to guide for crossword construction was first published as a For Dummies book in 2004. One of the most revered constructors of his time, Berry has been called the "Thomas Pynchon of crosswords".
