puzzle

Fill up your screen--with Blowfish!

Blowfish is a free arcade game with cartoony graphics and sound, as well as a simple, silly, and surprisingly engaging schtick. You tap the screen to place and inflate blowfishes (which you can move while you're inflating), and your goal is to fill two-thirds of the fish-tank screen with gently floating--and often cutely expressive--blowfish before the timer runs out.

You have a limited number of fish per level, and each fish is vulnerable to fast-moving, spiky sea urchins while you're inflating it. The inflated fish bounce off each other and the urchins, but you can tilt your iPhone … Read more

Five perfect puzzle games for the iPhone

Puzzle games and the iPhone and iPod Touch go together like peas and carrots (and they're nearly as good for you). They fit beautifully on the small screen, they have no awkward controls to master, and they're ideal when you have 5 minutes or 10 minutes to kill (and don't feel like killing things).

Here's a list of my five favorite puzzle games (so far):

Hanoi A beautiful rendition of the classic Towers of Hanoi game. The object is simple: move a stack of disks from one side of the board to the other. There's … Read more

Adventure classic Myst makes iPhone debut

Everything old is new again. Myst for iPhone and iPod Touch puts one of the best-selling computer games of all time into the palm of your hand. It's in the App Store now for $5.99.

If you're too young to remember Myst (in which case I hate you), it's a first-person graphical adventure that's not unlike dropping into the middle of "Lost." You find yourself on a deserted island (or is it?) filled with mysterious objects, machines, puzzles--maybe even a hatch or two.

The iPhone version looks just like its PC predecessor, from … Read more

Build crazy contraptions in Crazy Machines (Review)

Developers have been working overtime to bring classic PC games to the iPhone. Some, like Wolfenstein 3D Classic, do a great job recreating the original, but just don't play well on a small touch screen.

Then there's Crazy Machines, the unofficial heir to Sierra's beloved classic The Incredible Machine. It's not only a faithful recreation, but also a perfect fit for the iPhone and iPod Touch. If you like puzzle games, this is $2.99 extremely well spent.

For those unfamiliar with the whole "machines" concept, the idea is to build a Rube Goldberg-style … Read more

You're cleared for landing

Flight Control is an attractive, addictive game in which you play an air-traffic controller guiding an endless armada of incoming aircraft to (you hope!) safe landings at a crowded airport. Flight Control makes brilliant use of the iPhone and iPod Touch's interface, as you use your finger to trace a trajectory for each approaching craft, sending jets to the long runway, small planes to the short runway, and slow-moving helicopters to the airport's helipad. The controls are incredibly simple and intuitive, which contributes to Flight Control's surprisingly rich and devilishly addictive gameplay.

The game starts out at … Read more

Kerning is important

Kern is a very simple, typography-inspired arcade game in which you try to precisely position missing letters into falling words without creating an "unnecessary ligature," i.e., a spot where the letters overlap. The visual design and sound effects of this game are impressively slick and elegant throughout--as befits a graphic design-themed game--but aside from the variety of typography-related words and point sizes, the gameplay is fairly repetitive and one-dimensional, especially for a paid app. Overall, Kern will be best-loved by design nerds (although it should be noted that even the gameplay only has a superficial relationship to … Read more

Take a trip to Rolandoland

Rolando Lite is a free preview of the first eight levels in Rolando, a clever and gorgeously realized arcade puzzler in which you coax charismatic little balls (Rolandos) through ever more complex levels. The game makes excellent use of the iPhone and iPod Touch, as you touch or drag to select Rolandos, tilt your device to roll them, swipe upward to jump, drag with two fingers to look around a level, and use your finger to rotate, push, and pull certain objects (these being "sacred" objects that only you--the exalted "Finger"--can manipulate).

These initial levels, … Read more

Addicted to mah-jongg

Beware, after playing just one game of Moraff's "MahJongg 2009," you'll find yourself eager to come back and play more. We just wish the trial period lasted longer.

The user interface is colorful, easy to navigate, and offers users a few extra features. Prominent menu buttons reside at the top of the window, and allow you to choose from different game designs, and apply game settings, such as the number of matches, and tile-set displays. There also are buttons to undo and redo moves. In terms of extras, you'll find a radio that plays soothing … Read more

Sudoku fans: Try these gnarly KenKen puzzles

Sudoku can get pretty tough. But if you're looking for fresh pastures, KenKen puzzles offer a new challenge.

The only problem for me: The New York Times' online KenKen site offers only 6x6 puzzles.

However, Nextoy, the company that distributes KenKen puzzles outside Japan, has spruced up its official KenKen Web site with considerably larger sizes--7x7, 8x8, and 9x9. The sites use the same Flash-based interface as The New York Times' puzzles, which NextToy supplies.

Nextoy President Robert Fuhrer said the puzzles are updated daily. For now, each is of medium difficulty, though larger puzzles are harder in general. … Read more

My latest puzzle love: KenKen

A correction was made to this story. Read below for details.

My first infatuation was with Sudoku. Then my attentions moved to Kakuro. Now, though, I have a big crush on KenKen.

No, I'm not talking about marital infidelity involving various Japanese women. I'm talking about a series of logic puzzles that have made their way from that country to U.S. newspapers, Web sites, and mobile phones.

Though Sudoku certainly hasn't reached the level of ubiquity of crossword puzzles, it is certainly widespread. The 9-by-9 grids--each of the 81 cells must be populated with the numbers … Read more