Song Of The Puzzlesmith, With Ian Livengood | Defector

Silly morning brain puzzles and games can benefit cognitive abilities while providing a fun warm-up before daily work. A weeklong collaboration focused on puzzle and game creation, including origins, development processes, and beta testing practices. Questions included why games are tested in Canada and how game-jam style naming compares to alternative concepts. The conversation covered how creators think about goals, what makes puzzle-focused thinkers different, and how people identify with that mindset. Examples included playful word choices, speculative phone-based disease settings, and references to logic puzzle expertise. Additional focus centered on crafting crosswords that feel fresh for a culture with less shared knowledge than before.

"We talked a bit more about puzzle stuff after the break, with a special focus on the challenge of crafting new-feeling crosswords for a culture in which people generally know a lot less than they used to. But after Drew outlined his morning puzzle ritual and I shared the screenshot-heavy spe"

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