Blogocentric Formulations

Winston is about to do some puzzling...

Write about putting together the pieces of puzzles.

I love puzzles of all kinds. Jigsaw puzzles, crossword puzzles, sudoku, riddles, cryptograms, word searches, mazes, board games, trivia... I enjoy them all. I think it's because I love problem solving in general; looking at a situation and trying to figure out the correct solution. When I was younger, we would take road trips from Northern California to Montana, which was a two-day drive. I remember my parents would buy me one of those big workbooks full of hundreds of crossword puzzles and word searches (the kind you can buy at the grocery store), and I would just plug away at them for the entire drive (when I wasn't reading a book).

My love for puzzles also kind of followed me into my other interests and my career as well. Doing credits for film and television is similarly trying to put all the pieces in the right places, and resolve conflicts between what people want and what we can actually do. I love games like Dungeons & Dragons which are exercises in problem solving... and I love running Dungeons & Dragons games even more than playing in them, which is also an exercise is creative storytelling and problem solving (since you're reacting to unpredictable choices of the players).

Of all the puzzles out there, I think my favorite are probably logic puzzles. Especially things like escape rooms, where you have to figure out a bunch of clues and put them together to solve a larger puzzle with a bigger picture. I've never actually done an escape room before, partly because I don't really know anyone else who's excited about them like I am, and partly because solving puzzles under the pressure of a timer kind of takes some of the fun away for me. I like to take my time and think through things; not feel like there's a time pressure to finish. Real life has enough activities where you're pressured to complete activities while you're on a clock.