If you're not satisfied with the degree to which your daily life puzzles you, there's finally a solution beyond your local paper's word jumble. Sorrent's Daily Puzzle offers you three puzzles per day: one verbal, one spatial, and one logical. Created by puzzle master Scott Kim, these puzzles are generally quite challenging, although the visual puzzles really steal the show.
To play Daily Puzzle on Sprint PCS, you must create a Game Lobby tag, should you not already have one. You may then download any and all of the puzzles created in the last week. After completing puzzles more than a day old, you'll be able to see the correct answer right away, along with the statistically most popular answers among the user base. The current puzzles' answers, however, become available the following day. If you're trying to maintain a high-completion percentage, this can be downright suspenseful.
Sorrent has done well to contract Scott Kim into indentured servitude. Many of his puzzles had us drawing pictures and taking notes, such as one that asks users to number the possible routes through a hexagonal rotary, the likes of which hasn't been seen even in central Massachusetts. Some of these visual puzzles are 3D and can't be drawn--you'll just have to visualize them, as Kim must have. One such puzzle asks users to line up the patterns on the faces of unfolded paper cubes. A syllogism puzzle makes users fill out a classroom seating chart by deciphering vague facts about the arrangement. While not prohibitively difficult, this sort of thing certainly takes some forethought. If you get stuck on any one puzzle, you can ask for a hint, but that request will be recorded for all to see.
Kim's verbal puzzles just aren't on a par with his excellent logic and spatial brain-benders. Many of these are a sort of verbal topology, requiring you to turn one word into another. Our favorite of these challenged users to turn the word "run" into "fly" in four steps, changing only one letter per step. The answer-entry system was structured in such a way that only one solution was possible. Despite the cool concept, this puzzle--one of the most challenging of the verbal set--was still too easy. More commonly, the verbal section will give you a series of blank letter squares, and give you two options for one of them. You'll then have to enter the letter sequence that can yield two words, by swapping out those two given letters. According to Daily Puzzle's own statistics, the great majority of players nail these.
Daily Puzzle is presented very nicely on the Sanyo PM-8200, with a color-coded interface that lets you know which puzzles you've completed and which remain unconquered. Whether you get a puzzle correctly or not, you'll be able to look at Kim's detailed solution the next day, and perhaps glean insight into the workings of a mind uniquely suited to puzzle creation. Kim is obviously a visual guy, and Daily Puzzle's interface will appeal to other visual thinkers. The game's auditory performance isn't overwhelming, but little tunes accompany most menu accesses. Apart from the inclusion of some kind of audio puzzle, the game wouldn't really benefit from the inclusion of more robust sound.
Brainteaser fans would do well to integrate this game into their daily routines. Daily Puzzle is challenging and rewarding in equal measure. It can also be done socially, either by challenging friends to beat one another's win percentage, or by working out puzzle solutions in groups. Daily Puzzle has no real competition on mobile, save for daily crossword applications, and it is therefore highly recommended to puzzle fans with Sprint Vision phones.
