Puzzmo — The (new) place for thoughtful puzzles.
From award-winning game designer Zach Gage and engineer Orta Therox, along with Hearst Newspapers,Puzzmo is a fresh spin on a cultural mainstay: the newspaper games page.Our daily games are designed for all players: they’re easy to get into, yet challenging to excel at. Puzzmo is built for you to play alone, collaboratively with your friends or loved ones… or competitively against your frenemies. 😈Puzzmo features a variety of games from Zach Gage — classics likeSpellTower, a word game of opportunity creation, andReally Bad Chess, a sacrilegious take on chess that forgoes the traditional starting pieces, as well as brand new games likeFlipart, a visual puzzle inspired by organizing a sock-drawer, andCross|word, an approachable crossword designed to appeal to first time solvers and lifelong aficionados alike.Cross|word is a daily “midi”-sized crossword that, like Gage’s Good Sudoku, features a variety of tools that make crosswords much easier to learn. It features puzzle selections led in-house by Brooke Husic in coordination with AVCX that promote the unique, varied, and often funny voices of our creators in a way you won’t see in the mainstream.
Logos & Illustrations
Product screenshots
Embeddable Puzzles
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Today's Weather Memoku
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Today's Typeshift
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<iframe title="Puzzmo Presents" src="https://puzzmo.com/_embed/latest.html?embedID=play:lrl3b1d" width="100%" height="800px" frameborder="0" allow="clipboard-write"></iframe>
Today's SpellTower
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<iframe title="Puzzmo Presents" src="https://puzzmo.com/_embed/latest.html?embedID=play:02o3bac" width="100%" height="800px" frameborder="0" allow="clipboard-write"></iframe>
Today's Really Bad Chess
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<iframe title="Puzzmo Presents" src="https://puzzmo.com/_embed/latest.html?embedID=play:ezq3bny" width="100%" height="800px" frameborder="0" allow="clipboard-write"></iframe>
Today's Flipart
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<iframe title="Puzzmo Presents" src="https://puzzmo.com/_embed/latest.html?embedID=play:2z1i3bwb" width="100%" height="800px" frameborder="0" allow="clipboard-write"></iframe>
Today's 🤡 🎭 Bongo
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<iframe title="Puzzmo Presents" src="https://puzzmo.com/_embed/latest.html?embedID=play:hi1k3bdn" width="100%" height="800px" frameborder="0" allow="clipboard-write"></iframe>
The Team
Lead design
The chill one. Zach (he/him) is a conceptual artist and game designer from New York City. An Eyebeam Alumni, Apple Design and Game of The Year Award Winner, and BAFTA Nominee, he has exhibited all over the world, including at venues like the Venice Biennale and the New York MoMA, and had a solo exhibition at Postmasters Gallery. His work has been covered in many online and printed publications including the New York Times, Art in America, Neural Magazine, WIRED, and EDGE Magazine.In his downtime Zach designs games in his head, goes berry picking with his family, plays Cosmic Encounter with friends, and on the days that he’s really lucky, floats in a pond. Someday he’s going to retire from email.
Lead engineer
The quiet one. Orta (he/him) worked on programming languages, games and helped build multi-million dollar marketplaces at startups. For Puzzmo, he wrote the first lines of code and figured out how to make anything that isn't a game work at launch. Whether this will all turn out fine is still open to speculation at this point.Orta is a prolific contributor to Open Source, and has given hundreds of talks and featured in two documentaries (so far!) He one day hopes to actually chill out, and live in a farmstead with his wife and their dog Hayes.
Lead games engineer
The West Coast one. Saman (he/him) is an artist, designer and programmer. He builds the Puzzmo games and the Puzzmo app. He is obsessed with getting the interaction and animation details right across every screen size and input method out there. Before Puzzmo, he released a hand-crafted puzzle adventure game calledWilderplace. He has years of experience inventing map making tools, designing & building web apps, and making zines and comics.Saman lives in Oakland, California with his wife, toddler, and cat. When he's not working, he's probably collaborating with the toddler on large scale crayon or sidewalk chalk drawings. They do not yet have any gallery shows booked.
Puzzle editor
The girl who's never off the grid. Brooke (she/her), who earned her PhD from Stanford University and has published research articles in computational chemistry, biophysics, and linguistics, was compelled to create crosswords herself by mainstream outlets' lack of breadth of cultural references. In addition to helming Puzzmo's crossword operation, she publishes crosswords widely, including as part of the New Yorker's in-house puzzlemaking team. Brooke's editing credits include such "indie" venues as A24, American Values Club, Inkubator, These Puzzles Fund Abortion, and the annual Lollapuzzoola tournament.When not crafting themes, filling grids, or finessing clues, she patronizes her local library, runs in her local park, and practices vinyasa yoga at her local studio.
Game design/Puzzle generation
The jack-of-all-trades. Jack (he/him) is a game designer, programmer, and musician based in New York City. He’s collaborated on many games, includingKnotwords,Good Sudoku,Spelltower+,We should talk. and the upcoming gamesIf You Die In the Game, You Die in Real Life: The Game andHell War. If you’re playing a puzzle game that doesn’t have a constructor on Puzzmo, there’s a pretty good chance he made the thing that made the puzzle you’re playing!
Business
The business guy. Andrew (he/him) is VP of Games at Hearst and Puzzmo's GM. He is the team's commercial lead, in charge of making sure Puzzmo has the right partners (think: publishers, sponsors, agencies etc.) and generally clearing the way for the creative and technical teams.As, Andrew takes his time and is pretty good at Spelltower, but for some reason smashes that hint button while playing Typeshift.
Partners
The news nerd. Kevin (he/him) has worked for editorial powerhouses including Hearst, The New York Times, Buzzfeed, and The Wall Street Journal. His experience ranges from general management to biz ops to sales strategy to business development, all in the service of making news "work" for readers and for publishers. He leads business development for Puzzmo, and jokes that he put the "why" in "Sales."You can reach him at.Kevin lives in Miami with his journalist bride; when he's not coaching his daughters' soccer teams he can be found in the garage noodling on his drum kit, or on Puzzmo making the "Difficulty: Gentle" crosswords look bruising ;-)
Software engineer
The hobby collector. Gary (he/him) is working on the API to allow Puzzmo to continue to scale as we grow. Before Puzzmo he worked on the infrastructure for companies such as Discord, Dropbox, YouTube, and CBS. He likes to bring a focus on user experience and design to backend infrastructure.When not working Gary can be found doing one of his random hobbies such as woodworking, music, game development, sewing, biking, drawing, speedrunning, or whatever else has caught his interest this week.
Junior Games Engineer
The confused one. Jason is Puzzmo's junior games engineer. He fixes bugs and makes Puzzmo's games better. Also makes sure Discord peeps are happy and if they aren't, he's always there to listen.He lives in Houston, Texas. Puzzmo is his first actual job. He likes to learn cool things.
Front-end engineer
The aspiring polyglot. Lilith (she/her) is an artist and programmer fascinated by language and storytelling. At Puzzmo, she focuses on keeping the front-end shipshape with an eye on UX and opportunities for delight.Outside of work, she can be found reading, making comics, and extending her French/German/Japanese/etc. learning streak. Periodically, she also attempts to convince herself that she enjoys running.
Audience
The one who wants to hear from you (yes, you!) Ben leads Audience Development for Puzzmo. He joined after a career in late night TV and politics, working for Comedy Central, The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, and Senator Warnock. His job is to advocate for and grow our audience, so if you have ideas or thoughts you want to see on Puzzmo, let him know in the Discord @BenMeyerson!In his downtime, he plays board games, Dungeons and Dragons, volunteers at the Prospect Park Zoo, writes screenplays, plays music, and tries to find spare time for more hobbies.
Alumni
Puzzmo character animations are by Nelson Boles, and Puzzmo Illustrations are by Angie Wang.
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