A friend of mine passed me a copy of a German puzzle book, and I thought it would neat to share some overseas puzzle fun with my fellow puzzle fiends.

Now, I have to admit that I’m slightly biased here. German is my favorite language that I don’t speak — how could it not be with words like “backpfeifengesicht,” meaning “a face deserving of a good hard smack.” — and I simply love that you can jam together words in order to form new words for any and all occasions. It’s a marvelously adaptable language.

You might be familiar with the word “weltschmerz,” which means a sort of sentimental pessimism or melancholy over the state of the world. It translates from the German for “world pain.”

But when you add the prefix paleo- to the word, you get paleoweltschmerz, the theory that the dinosaurs became extinct through sheer boredom with the world.

Yup, it wasn’t a meteor, it was ennui. How great is that?

Anyway, let’s get to the puzzles! [Click each puzzle pic for a larger version!]

Here we have German versions of a Codeword puzzle and a Framework. It’s a little jarring to see recognizable words like MAXIMUM and MOHAIR amidst so many unfamiliar ones.

Here’s another Codeword and a logic puzzle. (As a side note, I would totally watch a movie entitled Das Logical.)

This German word seek is awesome, if only for the incredibly long words being accommodated. I don’t think I’ll ever manage to get “Ypsilonwachtel” into a word seek grid.

We’ve got an interesting symbolic math puzzle, and another Framework, plus what appears to be a deduction puzzle with repeated letters. (A deduction puzzle with EXTRA SCHWER, by the way. Which is terrific, as there’s been a shortage of SCHWER around here for a few weeks now.)

If I can obtain more international puzzles, maybe this could be a running series of posts, making PuzzleNation a little more PuzzleInternational. =)