LinkedIn Daily Games
Ramen Junkie A lot of people like to play brain games, and while Crosswords have been popular for a while, Wordle really popularized the whole “Once Daily” craze for online games a few years ago. I have done Wordle, and a ton of variations on Wordle. I did Sudoku for a while. I was even doing Crosswords for a bit. Currently, my go to is the daily LinkedIn Games.
They are in the app, they may be on the web too, I don’t know, I don’t look at the website. Hell, I don’t even really look at the app except to play the 5 games they have.
Anyway, I wanted to talk a bit about these games for a bit, and what I think it means for my own thoughts processes. They more or less fall into two categories, word games, and special games. I am pretty good at all of them, but very good at the special games.
Crossclimb
Sort of a crossword like game, you have a series of words all of the same length, with clues for each word. But the trick is, the end result will be words that can be ordered in a way that only one letter changes.
So the one this morning had something like, “Ice turning to water” and “To get with another person” as clues.
Melt and Meet.
You have to arrange the words though, so one clue in between might be “To lose feathers”, Molt, which would come above.
I typically average half the average time on this puzzle daily. You get two hints, for a single letter or a full word, each has a cool down. It can be useful to just accept the idea of using these when younger really stuck, though I don’t use them often.
A better strategy is to just move on, then see where you have gaps in your arrangement to get clues.
Like the above examples, maybe you can’t get Melt, but you have Molt and Meet. Well, the M and T are common, so there is likely at least one word in between those, because two letters changed. It would take “two hops”. This also means you can conclude it’s either ME_T or M_LT or MO_T or M_ET. You basically have 4 words to try to sus out the answer from.
Pinpoint
Definitely weakest game, but probably not for being bad at it. You get 5 clues to find the common denominator. The first two tend to be really obscure, most of the time.its obvious by the 3rd, and the last word is usually very obvious.
My problem tends to be, I get too abstract with the connection and expect them to all be really obscure like the first clue sometimes is.
Today has Wet, Boiler, Bathing, Three Piece…
I guessed Slippery (when wet), Room (Wet Room, Boiler Room), Water (all are water things), Bathing Suit (which was wrong) but the answer was simply “Suit”.
It’s notable, that this is the only puzzle you can actual fail. All of the others just get a larger and larger timer, and as far as I can tell, the timer is unlimited.
Zip
This is a newer one, its kind of interesting, I am super good at it. Like I said, I am really great at the “special” puzzles.
You have a grid with a sequence of numbers laid across it, sometimes there are walls. Not every square has a number, it’s usually either 6 or 8 at the max. You have to start at 1, and connect the numbers in order, while also filling in all the squares.
You have to be able to get them in order, sometimes this means doing some zig zag to pick up blocks, also, you have to be able to see ahead a bit since you may need to leave a path to get a later number.
They feel pretty easy, but I find it fun to do and almost always get it in the 10-20 second range with 0-2 backtracks.
Tango
I want to like Tango more, but I am not sure what could really be changed to make it more enjoyable. The object is, you have a grid each row and column has 3 each of a sun or a moon. You can’t have more than two in a row of any symbol. There are sometimes indicators like = or x that means that two blocks must be equal or opposites.
Sometimes they replace the symbols for holidays. The final four used Basketball teal mogos, which honestly kind of fucked up my ability to logic, I think maybe the problem was the colors were sort of reverse from normal.
Every game of Tango feels like it’s either just, filling in a chain of obvious drops. Or, you make one guess in the right spot, usually one of the = or x nodes, and then fill in the logic chain until you hit a dead end or win. If you hit a dead end, clear the board, and start with the opposite.
Queens
Saving the best for last, I actually went looking for a place to JUST play Queens puzzles. I should try to program up something to generate them maybe.
It’s kind of a Sudoku style game.
For queens, you have a grid, it has several continuous colored sections or irregular shapes. They can be as small as one square. The object is to put a Queen crown in every colored section, but also, only one in each row and column
So you start with obvious singles. You also can eliminate some for anything that is a row.
The real trick to being quick as these is eliminating “large rows”. Say every color intersects the two middle rows. But two of the colors, exist entirely in the middle rows. You can eliminate two rows now from every other color except those two. Each row, has to be one of those two colors, because those colors can’t be placed anywhere else. These can be 2, 3,4 whatever high, though they become less useful if it’s 4 and are about useless if it’s 5, aside from maybe now you have 3 colors in the opposite set that makes a “large row”.
Another one is to catch where placing a crown eliminates a color completely, which can make choosing easy sometimes. If you have a 2 block nestles inside a 3 block “L”, you know it’s not going to be the “inside” box because you would remove all the spaces from the 3 block “L”. For example.
You run these “filters” across rows and columns and it makes a lot of the solutions become clear.
You do occasionally have to just guess and go for it. And after a while even when guessing, you might end up with no place to put a crown, but you have a good “feel” for how to adjust.
I usually win these very fast, within 20 seconds usually.
Josh Miller aka “Ramen Junkie”. I write about my various hobbies here. Mostly coding, photography, and music. Sometimes I just write about life in general. I also post sometimes about toy collecting and video games at Lameazoid.com.
