The “Twelve Days of Sudoku” used our regular editorial and testing team and thanks go to them for continued support. Video additions to several of these posts are expected in the future but not this month.

“Ready Layer One” and all associated content were a production by one person and all credit/blame belongs to me for the unusual experience. While a solo work, this does not mean there isn’t a long list of people to thank for ideas and love throughout the years that inspired a lot of the connections. To everyone who ever mattered in my life, and to everyone who still might, these puzzles, jokes, and other ideas are for you from deep inside my brain. The stories you share back are the return gift to sender that I’ll await through the years when the layers finally get cracked open.

Some posts still need minor edits or addition of offline content once people verify passwords, but nothing new should appear for starting explorers for awhile. For future visitors, the best trailheads are still the two links above. Other items add into the series, such as the Motivational Posters as puzzlehunt style challenges for “Twelve Days” followers, and the story/flavor text posts add to the experience but are not starting points. All posts tagged “Puzzle” have something I expect a person could discover and might want to “submit” if they figure out what and how.

Besides puzzles and favorite books and music and science history and other things, this very personal series does include aspects of mental illness/wellness, including the stigma associated with it and not being able to convince people you are ok after they’ve seen you can sometimes be ill. These are all things I have been coming to terms with in being bipolar over the last few years after several hospitalizations and large changes in professional work life. In the altered words of Brave New World, I’m claiming the right to be manic and depressed, just not most of the time. I do not want medication that would prevent me from having the kind of brain I have. My bursts of creativity do change with my mood, even when just slightly heightened, as does my willingness to be introspective and grow by sharing thoughts. A healthy Thomas balances mood but has some ups and downs within identified bounds. That said, my rate of typing and pace of thoughts even on normal days can seem overwhelming to people observing the process. This was the first series where, despite the required content being made before anything went live, the extra touches added in the downswing phase of a short creative period revealed the artist at work and frightened several people (at least based on my ability to read into comments, discord posts, etc.). It almost certainly kept many people from going down the rabbitholes for fear they would lead to nowhere, when they always were intended to lead to 3 “first round” puzzles/stories that followed the beginnings seen here.

Be sure that if I am somewhere near “we” on the mental __llness chart below, as I am today as the series “ends” its launch phase, it is mainly because of our shared memories of community together, fun memories that cross boundaries of space and time. I do think societal impacts from COVID-19 and having to lay off some team members in my science job led directly to my first severe bipolar episode, as my community of we became a party of one. WE -> I = illness. I’ve been trying to build back friendships where geography is far apart ever since, and this series is a gift to those friends that made me feel happy before and will again. Even having someone just recognize a photo as my Hovse’s cannon and sharing a memory of recovering it from Mudd made my day, so even weak (but close) connections should reach out if they find something for them.

Soundtrack: 4th album by 💀🚕🇶🇶🇶🇶☕, and other purposefully random playlists that spin out from there.