Tag Archives: Marriage

A Monopoly Game Unlike Any Other

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I’m always on the lookout for great puzzly stories, and a friend of mine passed along this link to a puzzly holiday proposal from last year that totally fits the bill.

This story comes from a reddit user named Justinlebon26, who was looking for a meaningful and unique way to propose to his girlfriend Michal.

Check out what he came up with:

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That’s right, he designed a Monopoly board all about their relationship. After all, the two of them enjoyed playing Monopoly so much that their handmade board fell apart. And with that, a plan slowly came together.

He designed new property cards to go along with the new spaces on the board. Some were places they’d gone on vacation, others were the streets where they’d grown up. How they met, their first date — all were immortalized on the board.

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New Chance and Community Chest cards would follow, with one special addition to the deck.

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With a friend’s help constructing the board, our young romantic’s gift was done. (Complete with the secret lurking beneath the Luxury Tax space)

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He waited until Christmas day to unveil his gift, and they celebrated with an inaugural game.

So… how did it all turn out?

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This is easily the happiest ending to a Monopoly game in history. Kudos to Michal and Justinlebon26, and here’s hoping they have many happy years of gaming ahead of them.

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A proposal most puzzly!

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Tuesday’s post was all about the chaos and unpleasantness ensuing from a puzzly misunderstanding, so let’s make today’s post about puzzles bringing people together.

Oh yes, my fellow puzzlers and PuzzleNationers, we’ve got a puzzle-fueled engagement on our hands!

Our friends at Penny Dell Puzzles were contacted by a fellow named Bryan who wanted their assistance in crafting a puzzly proposal for his girlfriend.

Bryan provided information and ideas for the folks at Penny to utilize, and a special Simon Says puzzle was constructed for the proposal and slipped into a short run of magazines during production. That way, the proposal would be concealed amidst many other puzzles, and his girlfriend wouldn’t suspect a thing! Diabolical!

(For the uninitiated, Simon Says is an instruction puzzle where you start with a phrase, follow various instructions on how to manipulate and change the letters in the phrase, and you end up with a completely new phrase, usually a pun or a play on the starting phrase.)

In this case, the puzzle started with an affectionate HEY BOO BOO, and 19 steps later, you end up with the fateful question WILL YOU MARRY ME MIA?

So… how did it go, you ask?

Success!

Bryan later told his puzzly cohorts:

The day couldn’t have turned out any better and the fact that she said yes definitely helped. We actually completed around half the book prior to the engagement and she had no clue that page was special. She was completely surprised as well as her parents and it took her until Line 17 to finally figure out what it said. Kudos to you guys for being able to draw it on for that long!

Congratulations to Bryan and Mia! I wish them nothing but the absolute best, and I hope they have many many happy years of love and puzzling ahead of them.

Our pals at Penny Dell Puzzles really outdid themselves on this one. Kudos indeed.

[For the story on the proposal the PDP crew assisted on last year, for another fellow named Bryan, click here!]

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Puzzle Romance!

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Valentine’s Day is only a few days away, and a friend who knows I write a weekly puzzle blog asked if I’d be penning anything in particular for the blog regarding the holiday.

I replied that I was working on a post about puzzly ideas for Valentine’s Day gifts and experiences, similar to the post I did last year. And he laughed at the very idea of puzzle romance, the poor fool.

“Sir, how dare you doubt the power of puzzles to sway the heart of someone special!” I bellowed back, caught up in the moment.

I mean, seriously. Does this guy not realize that we’ve featured several wonderful stories of puzzle romance in this blog alone?

Heck, one of my favorite posts last year was about a puzzly proposal that our friends at Penny Dell Puzzles helped orchestrate.

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You can get the full story here, but in short, a puzzler in love reached out to PDP for their assistance in hiding his proposal within one of his girlfriend’s favorite puzzles, Escalators. They even did a small print run just for him to camouflage the proposal in a puzzle book!

It was a marvelous team effort, brilliantly executed…oh, and she said yes.

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Plus there’s this terrific story about a friend of mine who composed some cryptic-crossword-style clues as part of a gift for his longtime girlfriend. When she solved all of the clues, they spelled out the message “Truly happy being yours.”

There are all sorts of thoughtful and romantic puzzle ideas out there, from a relationship scavenger hunt like the one from Parks and Recreation to this video of a Rubik’s Cube-themed proposal at a speed-solving event:

With a little ingenuity — and maybe some puzzly friends — you can create a unique and wonderful experience for someone you love. Puzzle romance is real, my friends. Just look at this happy couple, united by their mutual love of puzzles:

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I wanted to close this post out with a little something for all the puzzlers and PuzzleNationers out there. And with Valentine’s Day coming up, it seemed appropriate to whip up a Matchmaker puzzle for you to solve. Enjoy!

Fill in the missing first letter of each word in the column on the left. Next, look for a related word in the group at the right and put it in the blank in the second column. When the puzzle is completed, read the first letters of both columns in order, from top to bottom, to reveal a romantic song lyric.

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You can also share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and explore the always-expanding library of PuzzleNation apps and games on our website, like our Valentine’s Day-themed puzzle set!

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Well, that escalated quickly.

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I talk a lot in this blog about the role puzzles have played in history, in our culture, and as touchstones for particular individuals. But it’s far more rare for me to talk about one puzzle in particular that changed someone’s life.

Today, I have the privilege of doing precisely that, because a puzzle crafted by our friends at Penny Dell Puzzles has changed two lives for the better.

One day, a gentleman named Bryan reached out to Penny Dell Puzzles with an audacious proposition: his girlfriend is a big fan of their puzzles and he wanted their help in crafting a special puzzly proposal of marriage!

He supplied ideas for clues and entry words, and a topnotch editor accepted the challenge of crafting a page of Escalators puzzles specially tailored for the occasion.

(For the uninitiated, an Escalators puzzle involves clued entries where a 6-letter word loses a letter and anagrams into a 5-letter word, then loses another letter and is anagrammed into a 4-letter word. Those lost letters end up spelling out words and phrases reading down when each grid is complete.)

So this singular puzzle featured his girlfriend’s name, then his name, and then the fateful question: will you marry me?

And to really cap off the presentation, the puzzle was inserted into an actual puzzle magazine (in a special limited run at the printers), so that our hero could deftly guide her toward the puzzle with her being none the wiser.

It’s an absolutely awesome idea, a testament to puzzly ingenuity, and honestly, just about the cutest proposal story I’ve ever heard.

I’ll let Bryan take it from here, in an email to his fellow collaborators at Penny Dell Puzzles:

I wanted to let you know that I proposed to Erin today with the puzzle and she said yes! It went perfectly. The puzzle looked great in the book and Erin thought nothing of it, thinking it was just another Escalators puzzle.

Once we got about halfway through the puzzle and she saw my name, it became kind of obvious, and once I knew that she knew, I got down on one knee and popped the question.

She was so surprised and blown away she even forgot to say yes and was just asking how I made it happen! She did eventually say yes after a lot of hugging, kissing, and tears, and then we continued to solve the puzzle before making calls to the rest of our family and friends.

Congratulations to Bryan and Erin! I wish them nothing but the best on their journeys to come.

And kudos to our friends at Penny Dell Puzzles for truly going the extra mile for puzzle fans and romantics alike.

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You can also share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and explore the always-expanding library of PuzzleNation apps and games on our website!