Trevor Truran

Last updated

Trevor Truran (born 1942) is a United Kingdom former mathematics teacher, [1] best known as the creator of many games and puzzles. Truran began making up games as mathematical teaching aids. At one time his entire mathematics course for 9-13 year olds was based on games, puzzles and story situations. [2]

Early games were published in Games & Puzzles Magazine and he became Puzzles Editor of that magazine and later of Top Puzzles . For over 13 years he wrote for Computer Talk magazine and included many new games and puzzles as well as early articles on the Rubik's Cube. A nine-part puzzle Treasure Trail appeared in the Sunday Telegraph and he freelanced for many magazines and newspapers before taking up puzzling full-time in 1985 with the publishers now called Puzzler Media Ltd. In that time he has created and edited a wide variety of magazines from Wordsearch to mathematical but has largely concentrated on logical puzzling, providing much of the content to magazines such as Logical Puzzles.

He is the inventor of the logical puzzle now known as Mosaic (1980s) which was developed by Conceptis Ltd. and which had its first success on Japanese telephones.

He is credited by some as a possible founder or early creator of what might be called cross-referencing or row-and-column puzzles, where numbers outside a grid give information as to what to put inside the grid. An early example is Whittleword (1979) which was followed by Domino Deal, Ace in Place and others.

He is currently a Managing Editor at Puzzler Media Ltd. and edits Sudoku and Kakuro magazines as well as Hanjie, Hashi, Super Hanjie, Mosaic, Enigma and Colour Hanjie. He also contributes to other magazines such as Tough Puzzles and has created the "Squiffy Sudokus" for a Carol Vorderman book.

A chance meeting with Bernard Pearson led to an involvement with Terry Pratchett's Discworld fantasy setting, and the game Thud was the first result. [3] A second edition followed in 2005 to tie-in with the novel inspired by the game, Thud! , [4] which also features a faster, shorter game, "Koom Valley Thud", reflecting incidents in the book. A third edition of the game is still in print, and it has also been translated into Dutch. [3] Truran also designed another Discworld game, Watch Out, another two-player game pitting members of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch against members of the Thieves Guild. It was publicly tested in 2004 but not eventually published, as according to Bernard Pearson it was not thought to be "sufficiently Discworld". [5]

Publications

He has published two books:

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Terry Pratchett</span> English fantasy author (1948–2015)

Sir Terence David John Pratchett was an English humorist, satirist, and author of fantasy novels, especially comical works. He is best known for his Discworld series of 41 novels.

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 arrive at the correct or fun 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nonogram</span> Logic puzzle forming a picture in a grid

Nonograms, also known as Hanjie, Paint by Numbers, Picross, Griddlers, and Pic-a-Pix, and by various other names, are picture logic puzzles in which cells in a grid must be colored or left blank according to numbers at the side of the grid to reveal a hidden pixel art-like picture. In this puzzle type, the numbers are a form of discrete tomography that measures how many unbroken lines of filled-in squares there are in any given row or column. For example, a clue of "4 8 3" would mean there are sets of four, eight, and three filled squares, in that order, with at least one blank square between successive sets.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ian Stewart (mathematician)</span> British mathematician and a popular-science and science-fiction writer

Ian Nicholas Stewart is a British mathematician and a popular-science and science-fiction writer. He is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at the University of Warwick, England.

<i>The Science of Discworld</i> 1999 book by Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen

The Science of Discworld is a 1999 book by novelist Terry Pratchett and popular science writers Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen. Three sequels, The Science of Discworld II: The Globe, The Science of Discworld III: Darwin's Watch, and The Science of Discworld IV: Judgement Day, have been written by the same authors.

<i>Discworld MUD</i> 1991 video game

Discworld MUD is a popular MUD, a text-based online role-playing game, set in the Discworld as depicted in the Discworld series of books by Terry Pratchett.

<i>Discworld II: Missing Presumed...!?</i> 1996 video game

Discworld II: Missing Presumed...!? is a 1996 point-and-click adventure game based on Terry Pratchett's series of fantasy novels set on the mythical Discworld, and sequel to the 1995 video game of the same name. The story sees players assume the role of Rincewind the "wizzard" as he becomes burdened with the task of finding Death and coercing him out of an impromptu retirement and back into his regular duties. The game's plot borrows from a number of Discworld books, including key elements from Reaper Man and Moving Pictures.

<i>Discworld</i> (video game) A point-and-click adventure game

Discworld is a point-and-click adventure game developed by Teeny Weeny Games and Perfect 10 Productions and published by Psygnosis. It is based on Terry Pratchett's novels of the same name. Players assume the role of Rincewind the "wizzard", voiced by Eric Idle, as he becomes involved in exploring the Discworld for the means to prevent a dragon terrorising the city of Ankh-Morpork. The game's story borrows elements from several Discworld novels, with its central plot loosely based on the events in Guards! Guards!

<i>Discworld Noir</i> 1999 video game

Discworld Noir is a 1999 adventure game developed by Perfect Entertainment and published by GT Interactive. The game is set in Terry Pratchett's satirical Discworld universe, and follows its first and only private investigator as he is given a case leading him into the deadly and occult underbelly of the Discworld's largest city.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rhianna Pratchett</span> English video game writer and journalist

Rhianna Pratchett is an English video game writer and journalist. She has worked on Heavenly Sword (2007), Overlord (2007), Mirror's Edge (2008) and Tomb Raider (2013) and its follow up, Rise of the Tomb Raider (2015), among others. She is the daughter of fantasy writer Terry Pratchett.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sudoku</span> Logic-based number-placement puzzle

Sudoku is a logic-based, combinatorial number-placement puzzle. In classic Sudoku, the objective is to fill a 9 × 9 grid with digits so that each column, each row, and each of the nine 3 × 3 subgrids that compose the grid contain all of the digits from 1 to 9. The puzzle setter provides a partially completed grid, which for a well-posed puzzle has a single solution.

<i>Thud!</i> 2005 Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett

Thud! is a fantasy novel by British writer Terry Pratchett, the 34th book in the Discworld series, first released in the United States on 13 September 2005, then the United Kingdom on 1 October 2005. It was released in the U.S. three weeks before Pratchett's native UK in order to coincide with a signing tour. It was nominated for the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel in 2006.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Discworld Diary</span> Themed diaries by Terry Pratchett

The Discworld Diaries are a series of themed diaries based on the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett. Each one is based on an Ankh-Morpork institution, and has an opening section containing information about that institution written by Pratchett and Stephen Briggs.

Wei-Hwa Huang is an American puzzler, member of the US Team for the World Puzzle Championship, and game designer.

<i>Unseen Academicals</i> 2009 Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett

Unseen Academicals is the 37th novel in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. The novel satirises football, and features Mustrum Ridcully setting up an Unseen University football team, with the Librarian in goal. It includes new details about "below stairs" life at the university. The book introduces several new characters, including Trevor Likely, a street urchin with a wonderful talent for kicking a tin can; Glenda Sugarbean, a maker of "jolly good" pies; Juliet Stollop, a dim but beautiful young woman who might just turn out to be the greatest fashion model there has ever been; and the mysterious Mr Nutt, a cultured, enigmatic, idealistic savant. According to the publisher, Transworld, the "on sale" date for the hardback was 1 October 2009 although the official publication date is 8 October 2009. Bookshop chain Borders included a small set of exclusive Discworld football cards with each book.

<i>Discworld</i> Fantasy book series by Terry Pratchett

Discworld is a comic fantasy book series written by the English author Terry Pratchett, set on the Discworld, a flat planet balanced on the backs of four elephants which in turn stand on the back of a giant turtle. The series began in 1983 with The Colour of Magic and continued until the final novel The Shepherd's Crown, which was published in 2015, following Pratchett's death. The books frequently parody or take inspiration from classic works, usually fantasy or science fiction, as well as mythology, folklore and fairy tales, and often use them for satirical parallels with cultural, political and scientific issues.

The fictional universe of the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett features a number of invented games, some of which have gone on to spawn real-world variants.

<i>Discworld: Ankh-Morpork</i> Board game

Discworld: Ankh Morpork is a board game set in the largest city-state in Terry Pratchett's Discworld. Designed by Martin Wallace and Treefrog Games, the game revolves around the playing of cards and placing minions onto the board. Each player attempts to meet the win condition for the personality that they randomly and secretly selected at the start of the game. The game features many characters from the Discworld series, but players do not need to have any knowledge about the books.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fergus McNeill</span>

Fergus McNeill is a Scottish author and award-winning interactive entertainment developer. He has designed and created games since the early 1980s, working with companies such as CRL, Silversoft, Macmillan Group, Activision, SCi Eidos and EA. He was a founder member of TIGA and is a member of the Crime Writers' Association and BAFTA. He is the author of a series of contemporary crime thrillers published by Hodder & Stoughton.

References

  1. "Trevor Truran". Archived from the original on 2011-07-15. Retrieved 2010-12-20.
  2. Galanti, Gil (10 March 2002). "It's been a puzzling life - Interview with Trevor Truran - Editor at Puzzler Media". Conceptis Puzzles. Retrieved 31 October 2022.
  3. 1 2 "Thud (2002)". BoardGameGeek . Retrieved 31 October 2022.
  4. Pratchett, Terry (2012). A Blink of the Screen . Doubleday. ISBN   978-0-385-61898-4. It also gave me the germ of a plot, which quite soon afterwards got written. It was called, amazingly enough, Thud! .
  5. Jacco Versteeg (17 October 2006). "Has anyone actually seen a copy of this game?". BoardGameGeek . Retrieved 31 October 2022.