Wei-Hwa Huang

Last updated

Wei-Hwa Huang (born August 4, 1975 in Eugene, Oregon) [1] is an American puzzler, member of the US Team for the World Puzzle Championship, [2] and game designer. [3]

Huang was a member of the United States International Math Olympiad team in 1992 and 1993, where he was awarded a Silver Medal both years. He was a Putnam Fellow in 1993. [4] Huang has won the annual World Puzzle Championship on four occasions: 1995 and 1997–1999. [5] [6] He also won the 2008 Sudoku National Championship. [7] With team Left Out, he won the 2019 MIT Mystery Hunt. [8]

With Tom Lehmann, Huang designed the board game Roll for the Galaxy released in 2014 by Rio Grande Games. Roll for the Galaxy is a dice-based adaption of the award-winning card game Race for the Galaxy with deck-building mechanics. Huang and Lehmann also designed Roll for the Galaxy: Ambition, an expansion released in 2015. Roll for the Galaxy was nominated for three Golden Geek Awards and an International Gamers Award. [9]

Huang graduated from Montgomery Blair High School [10] and the California Institute of Technology [11] and was an employee at Google until July 2008. [12] One of his most famous projects was the Da Vinci Code Quest on Google, which was a set of 24 puzzles launched on April 17, 2006, in cooperation with Columbia Pictures. [13]

Huang submitted a crossword puzzle to The New York Times newspaper which was published on Tuesday, September 10, 2002. [14] In 2012, Huang co-authored a book with Will Shortz, the editor of The New York Times crossword puzzle. [15]

Huang is an investor and co-producer of the Broadway musical The Lightning Thief. [16]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Crossword</span> Grid-based word puzzle

A crossword is a word game consisting of a grid of black and white squares, into which solvers enter words or phrases ("entries") crossing each other horizontally ("across") and vertically ("down") according to a set of clues. Each white square is typically filled with one letter, while the black squares are used to separate entries. The first white square in each entry is typically numbered to correspond to its clue.

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">Will Shortz</span> American puzzle creator and editor (born 1952)

William F. Shortz is an American puzzle creator and editor who is the crossword puzzle 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.

<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 contains 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.

The World Puzzle Championship is an annual international puzzle competition run by the World Puzzle Federation. All the puzzles in the competition are pure-logic problems based on simple principles, designed to be playable regardless of language or culture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American Crossword Puzzle Tournament</span>

The American Crossword Puzzle Tournament is a crossword-solving tournament held annually in February, March, or April. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 tournament was canceled. In April 2021, the 43rd tournament was held virtually. Founded in 1978 by Will Shortz, who still directs the tournament, it is the oldest and largest crossword tournament held in the United States; the 2019 event set an attendance record with 741 competitors, including over 200 rookies.

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.

The New York Times crossword puzzle is a daily American-style crossword puzzle published in The New York Times, online on the newspaper's website, syndicated to more than 300 other newspapers and journals, and on mobile apps.

Crosswordese is the group of words frequently found in US crossword puzzles but seldom found in everyday conversation. The words are usually short, three to five letters, with letter combinations which crossword constructors find useful in the creation of crossword puzzles, such as words that start and/or end with vowels, abbreviations consisting entirely of consonants, unusual combinations of letters, and words consisting almost entirely of frequently used letters. Such words are needed in almost every puzzle to some extent. Too much crosswordese in a crossword puzzle is frowned upon by cruciverbalists and crossword enthusiasts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Merl Reagle</span>

Merl Harry Reagle was an American crossword constructor. For 30 years, he constructed a puzzle every Sunday for the San Francisco Chronicle, which he syndicated to more than 50 Sunday newspapers, including the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Seattle Times, The Plain Dealer, the Hartford Courant, the New York Observer, and the Arizona Daily Star. Reagle also produced a bimonthly crossword puzzle for AARP The Magazine magazine, a monthly crossword puzzle for the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI, and puzzles for the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.

<i>The New York Times Crosswords</i> 2007 video game

The New York Times Crosswords is a video game released on May 22, 2007, for the Nintendo DS.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Homer and Lisa Exchange Cross Words</span> 6th episode of the 20th season of The Simpsons

"Homer and Lisa Exchange Cross Words" is the sixth episode of the twentieth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on November 16, 2008. In the episode, Lisa discovers that she has a talent for solving crossword puzzles, and she enters a crossword tournament. Lisa's feelings are hurt when she discovers that Homer bet against her in the championship match.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Race for the Galaxy</span> Card game

Race for the Galaxy is a card game designed by Thomas Lehmann. It was released in 2007 by Rio Grande Games. Its theme is to build galactic civilizations via game cards that represent worlds or technical and social developments. It accommodates two to four players by default although expansions allow for up to six players, as well as solo play. The game uses iconography in place of language in some places, with complex powers also having a text description. While appreciated by experienced players for being concise, some new players find the icons difficult to learn and to decipher.

Parnell Hall was an American mystery writer. His works include the Puzzle Lady and the Stanley Hastings series, as well as the screenplay to the 1984 cult classic C.H.U.D. He collaborated with Manny Nosowsky for crossword puzzles and with Will Shortz for sudoku puzzles incorporated in Puzzle Lady stories.

Helene Hovanec is a former elementary school teacher who has authored 66 puzzle books, 59 of which are for children.

The Philadelphia Inquirer Sudoku National Championship, hosted by puzzle master Will Shortz, was an annual sudoku competition run by The Philadelphia Inquirer and held at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in 2007–2009.

Thomas Snyder is an American puzzle creator and world-champion sudoku and logic puzzle solver. He is the first person to win both the World Sudoku Championship and the World Puzzle Championship. Snyder writes a puzzle blog as Dr. Sudoku.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cracking the Cryptic</span> British YouTube channel about sudoku and other puzzles

Cracking the Cryptic (CTC) is a YouTube channel dedicated to paper-and-pencil puzzles: primarily sudoku, but also cryptic crosswords and other types of number-placement, pencil, and word puzzles. They occasionally stream puzzle games on YouTube.

Roll for the Galaxy is a dice game of building space empires for 2 to 5 players. Designed by Wei-Hwa Huang and Tom Lehmann, it was published by Rio Grande Games in 2014. Player dice represent their empire's populace, whom the players use to develop new technologies, settle worlds, and trade. It is a dice version of an older board game Race for the Galaxy.

References

  1. ↑ "My Puzzling Life" by Wei-Hwa, 1998 Newsletter of World Puzzle Federation, p.3
  2. ↑ Grossman, Lev (Mar 11, 2013). "The Answer Men". TIME Magazine.
  3. ↑ "Wei-Hwa Huang's Board Game Designer Page at BoardGameGeek".
  4. ↑ "Putnam Competition Individual and Team Winners". Mathematical Association of America . Retrieved December 14, 2021.
  5. ↑ "World Puzzle Championship - WPC History". wpc.puzzles.com.
  6. ↑ Spice, Byron (1999-10-25). "Prince of Puzzles". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette : A6.
  7. ↑ Shapiro, Howard (2009). "2009 Inquirer Sudoku National Championship: Third time's the charm for L.A. woman". The Philadelphia Inquirer. Retrieved 30 September 2014.
  8. ↑ "MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 Wrapup". YouTube . Archived from the original on 2021-12-13.
  9. ↑ "Roll for the Galaxy at BoardGameGeek".
  10. ↑ "Montgomery Has 3 In Westinghouse's Top 10 Finalists". The Washington Post . 1993-03-09. pp. B7.
  11. ↑ "Puzzlement". The New York Times : Section 6, Page 14. 1995-11-12.
  12. ↑ Yi-Wyn Yen and Michal Lev-Ram (January 22, 2008). "10 fascinating Googlers". Fortune.
  13. ↑ "The Da Vinci Code Quest Launches On Google". www.movieweb.com.
  14. ↑ Shortz, Will (June 16, 2005). The New York Times Will Shortz's Greatest Hits: 150 Crossword Puzzles Personally Picked by the Puzzlemaster. p. 64. ISBN   031234242X.{{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)
  15. ↑ Will Shortz and Wei-Hwa Huang (September 18, 2012). Will Shortz's Puzzle Master Workout. Seven Footer Press. ISBN   978-1934734520.
  16. ↑ "Wei-Hwa Huang at Playbill".



This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.