Doctor’s Note: Update on our solving videos
Hi all,
I wanted to share some updates and other thoughts about our solving videos.
1) We have historically released the videos one day after the puzzles are released and still think this is the most rewarding approach so the earliest solvers can’t get help right away on a tough challenge. But we have been putting the updated links on the original posts the next day which make them hard to schedule and requires daily site maintenance. We will now instead be posting the solutions on the following day’s puzzle, but with quick links to those posts for people in the future to find.
2) Also, we are starting to get some other people making these solving videos and not just me. Yes, they will need some (helpful) feedback about microphones and clarity of words and pace of speech and other things, so please be constructive in your comments and not just complain. We’re all trying to share the language of puzzles and even if the words fail to be perfect in a video, the visual images should be enough to help guide you on where to look and potentially how to think to get to the next steps. That the language of a logic puzzle does not need any “English” is what excites me so much in communicating through puzzles.
3) Finally, if you are interested yourself to eventually become a presenter of solution videos for GMPuzzles, please feel free to reach out here. One great way to officially “apply” for this kind of job is to film a video for any of our puzzles that currently don’t have one. If they are good enough, we’ll add that video to our official post and channel and may consider adding you to the GMPuzzles team to do these videos more regularly. There are a lot of others using twitch or YouTube to make solution videos so the standards already out there, people using OBS or other streaming tools to make videos, is our starting point. Not where I was at in 2014 when I made the first video with just a cell phone camera and shaky video and bad lighting. I’ve enjoyed learning how to make more compelling videos without needing an editor and expect some of you might as well so I’m here to help.
Cheers,
Thomas
thank this is very good..
I have enjoyed all of the videos,not just the ones done by Dr. Sudoku. I hope that at some point there will be vides for the harder ARAF puzzles from last month.
Thanks.
Randall Doud
Yes, we’ll eventually get around to completing those videos. Arafs often solve more by intuition so planning a full logical presentation can take more time but we’re planning to start soon.
Hello, and thank you for this wonderful blog.
I’d be happy to contribute some videos: I’m a professor with a good deal of experience making walk-throughs of logic puzzles for my students (many tell me that they find them lucid and pleasant to watch and listen to). However, I’m not at all technologically savvy. If you give me some tips, as you mention, on the technical side of making the videos, I’d be glad to add some for you so that you can see how you like them.
Thanks again. Feel free to email me if you like: it would be good to hear from you.
Thanks Justin for the offer. If we put together a list of instructions for making videos we will think to share them with you; right now there is a lot of “learned wisdom” but not as much written out for others to follow.