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Ice and Puzzles

    Hey, everyone. Carley and I are safely ensconced in our place in the valley. An ice storm has been cruising blissfully through the deep South and we are taking it easy. I have a bit of flu-like symptoms. The roads are icy and it is quite windy.
     We have been playing some new puzzle games on the Padster. I have been playing The Old Clockmaker's Riddle. With this game you get a portion for free, then pay $2.99 for the full version. It is a match 3 style of game with a nice little story. It seems that you have received some other person's mail and had the bad manners to read it. (Probably illegal in the U.S.) It is a cry for help from a small town that is under some sort of curse. So, you travel there and begin to use your skills to take the curse off each building, one at a time, by matching the icons and doing a series of mini-puzzles. These mini-puzzles have to be done in a specific number of moves, so that you leave no pieces on the board. I found them to be difficult, but there is a button for skipping them. Thanks to the developers for that! (Shouldn't you really take someone from the Vatican along for a job of this magnitude?)
      Carley has been playing Spell Rift, a game in which you form words from a mass of letters. In addition, you must do side jobs, like collecting 50 tiles. You have things like 'stone tiles', which can be used an infinite number of times without disappearing or giving you any bonus points. Another side job I just encountered was "Collect 40 unique words". I took this to mean that I shouldn't make the word 'Rose' three times, like I did a moment ago. Ha, ha.
     I gather that you are trying to reach some mystical place called "The Well of Words". The graphics and controls are tight and crisp and it has good music with it. It is on sale for 99 cents as we speak. Wouldn't it be a drag to be stuck in a well of words, where you were hip deep in words swirling around you? Like all the bad words you ever said, or all the mean things you said to people? Sounds like a nightmare.
    Finally, we have been experimenting with a game called Tumblewords. It has pretty art work that makes me miss the woods at the old green retreat. Anyway, you have a rack of letters and you make words with them. You also have a bottom rack of letters which you can steal from and insert these letters into the top racks to make longer words. Then you have power ups which give the abilities to do things like flip tiles, change the letter on a tile or shuffle the board. It seems to be a well-made and fun game which you can play alone or with others. It has an earth rattling price of 99 cents.
     Isn't it funny that you may go weeks without seeing new puzzle games, then there will be a sudden flow of them?  As I have said many times, I am not a puzzle person but these games are okay, while I await the next Zombie game. From the icy grip of Old Man Winter, this is CE Wills.
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