I’ve continued to get questions on if I’m ok (yes, to the extent I can ever in this world say yes). I’m now getting the same question in a new kind of way. It is clear I’m struggling more with a chronic problem of mental illness in our society, not just my own acute cases of mania, and some part of this series was being more public about an evolving mission for my life (outside of puzzles a bit) that has to be more visible than in the past. I want to reassure folks that after the end of this Tango series and anything else I add by Jan 19, I’ll be moving my “atypical” posts, now tagged, to a different place and letting you get back to just puzzling here. But there will be another place to see what I’m overanalyzing or if I’m ok even if I’m not doing as many puzzles for awhile. (I will probably not be as visible on gmpuzzles for awhile, except for my favorite XVIII-rated Legos section of the discord.)
As a separate step to further encourage puzzling and not worrying, since I think people will enjoy the content and it is not impossibly difficult, today I wanted to clarify several things about the puzzlehunt style puzzles posted in the past few weeks, because many people lead fairly busy lives and can’t go about guessing rules/answer key mechanisms and so forth.
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First, Ready Layer One is a single puzzlehunt style puzzle, of MIT Mystery Hunt level difficulty, with at least two answers. It is self-contained, to the extent anything needing a lot of potentially outside knowledge is self-contained. One of the answers is COVFEFE and it is not valuable to know that answer if you cannot prove it to me. Answers can be checked by entering those words in our short-link format, as we’ve used with other contests. For example: https://www.gmpuzzles.com/s/covfefe, all lower-case. When a correct answer is needed to open a WordPress post, it should likely be entered in all upper-case letters.
Correct answers (as well as some bad answers) will open as a google doc — or at least they should if I set all the permissions appropriately — with some extra “flavortext” and potentially useful messages or requests to contact me. ads@gmpuzzles.com can always be used as a separate submission or hint request mechanism but no guarantees on rate of response except it might help me catch errors and fix permissions if any remain. Private messages in Discord also work. I guess in some sense all of the submission mechanisms are valid so just try any, but the short-links is the automated one.
The Google doc text sometimes itself may seem cryptic or a puzzle like the covfefe solution text linked above. It will also always have an image of some tweets or an instragram or something else I posted to public social media while hypomanic that I find both funny and scary, because of the content and the context. Enjoy the easter eggs.
On the COVFEFE Easter Egg text, I did donate the $10,000 prize for the first year across National Alliance for Mental Illness places national and local since there were no puzzle solvers before the end of the tax year of 2024. I do not know if I’ll actually again put 10% of my earnings in 2025 behind this puzzle hunt prize including the Twelve Days, because that seems manic and I don’t want you to panic. I may rewrite it again to make it sound more Christian since 10% is still their number, and be clearer that you don’t win the money, you get to suggest where it goes (unless you somehow prove your ideas are so worthy that you need the money through your proposal).
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The Twelve Days of Sudoku is a regular series on Sudoku construction with 14 thought-provoking classic sudoku puzzles, some of which I constructed properly. The series also includes a mini puzzlehunt of mostly easier difficulty pieces, with about 20 answers to confirm in the same way, if you bother to explore the links and other content. It includes the motivational posters, and may use other visual posts in the overall “atypical” tag used for all Ready Layer One, Twelve Days, …, content from December 19 forward as information content including Ready Layer One but it does not need any answers from that challenge.
Intro post
Post 1 and notes
Post 2 and notes
Post 3 and notes
Post 4 and notes
Post 5 and notes
Post 6a and notes
Post 6b and notes
Post 7 and notes
Post 8 and notes
Post 9a/9b and lost notes
Post 10 and lost notes
Post 11 and lost notes
Post 12 and lost notes
The Thirteenth Day of Sudoku
Motivational Poster 1/4
Motivational Poster 2/4
Motivational Poster 3/4
Motivational Poster 4/4
The other content when tagged with “puzzle” and “atypical” are puzzles that give easter eggs (all answers share something from my prior writings usually funny or curious) and may be a future part of an unconstructed Ready Layer One puzzle hunt / game / series where several unreleased or password blocked posts currently sit. When not tagged with “puzzle”, the content is humorous, experimental, or both, and probably best enjoyed by people who can understand I was trying to write like I was in a particular state of mind, but not actually dangerously near to certain states of mind. I am a fan of Comedy: Who Needs Practice as an accessible/better example of what my writing can sometimes be like when not impenetrably strange, but A Golly Jood Time is what has me on the floor so I avoid it.
I have other unreleased content like this that I may eventually put out like a weird prompt to write like I was Donald Trump speaking to a conservative-only audience about meeting a bright young man, small hands (aka me), who wanted to talk about important history updates for big dick fine man (aka Richard Feynman). I think it is funny. It also is insane as no one not in their 80s should speak that way and those who do should have some support around them not just sycophants. I wrote it at the peak of a hypomanic/manic episode so I know it is the farthest from normal. I keep records of when I write things because I want to use digital biomarkers of my text, speech, and other things to help monitor my mental trajectories. My YouTube video series talking through puzzles is another example of such work that has a secondary health purpose I have explored / want to explore more, and something I use whenever anyone claims to have “depression detection” from sentiment analysis of speech or dialogue.
So to anchor back to something I added to Ready Layer One in the museum/artist’s text, for those wondering about the known purposes of the series: Having spent so much of 2024 rebuilding my life after a third mental hospitalization in eighteen months in August 2023, I wanted to in a controlled way challenge myself to writing a one week puzzle series, knowing I’d probably get hypomanic and open creative thoughts again but now with treatment plans in place to follow. All the Twelve Days basic content was already written, but not its surrounding puzzlehunt or other writings. Ready Layer One was the day one construction and post, the rest has been week one (puzzles only) and month one (life the universe and everything) since. A lot of my downtime while still with a flowing mind has been about what is next for me including in science and studying brain diseases, not just “Pure Imagination”. All the extra content was unplanned and an aspect of my brain being open, always with a small danger a shock can turn me manic, but with my being Thomas sometimes meaning I want to have an open mind. I hope you don’t mind the muffin buttering or celebrating Gilbert O’Sullivan as those were brainworms that helped thoughts emerge that I wanted to also share not at all about puzzles. I think that perfectly innocuous post is one of my most important writings in one to two years, just not for GMPuzzles. It is for me, and I will find a way to have it find its audience as I start on a new mission for my next 45 years. Hopefully by then someone has solved my puzzles, because I can no longer rely on “solvability” of content to be a sign of mental health.
