About ToPuWriMo

ToPuWriMo, short for Tortoise's Puzzle Writing Month, is my puzzle-writing project for the month of June, inspired by such other ventures as NaNoWriMo and NoPoWriMo. In a nutshell, my main goal is to write and publish one new puzzle for each day in the month of June; you can find the puzzles here as they are posted. I also have some specific goals I would like to achieve along the way, and some guidelines to keep me from losing my sanity.

Goals

  • Write at least one normal crossword and one cryptic crossword during the month. For some reason, I find it easier to write variety grid puzzles such as Marching Bands and Some Assembly Required, so it will be good practice for me to write in more conventional formats.
  • Write at least one puzzle each week which is not a "word puzzle." This probably means some sort of logic puzzle, but could be something else altogether.
  • Over the course of the month, I would like to produce an extravaganza consisting of around a dozen puzzles plus a meta. This will take some planning. Which brings me to...

Guidelines

While I want to aim high with ToPuWriMo, I don't want to set myself up for failure. Therefore, I am putting some guidelines and allowances in place for the sake of my sanity.

  • While I would like to post a puzzle a day, puzzles do not have to be written on the day that I post them. In particular, I will be going on a couple of camping trips during the month of June, and I intend to write puzzles ahead of time and have them post automatically while I am away.
  • If I don't manage to get a puzzle posted on a particular day, I reserve the right to make it up some time in the next week. This extends all the way through the first week of July, should I need that much time.
  • I also reserve the right to do some preliminary work on puzzles before ToPuWriMo starts. A 12-puzzle extravaganza takes a lot of planning, for example, and I intend to do some of that planning during what is left of May. 
  • In my situation, being on a puzzle-a-day schedule means I won't have time for test-solving. I reserve the right to go back and edit previously posted puzzles for accuracy, difficulty, taste, or other reasons.
  • Not every puzzle will be a tightly crafted masterpiece. While I prefer to write crossword variants when constructing at my leisure, I will probably be throwing in dropquotes, word searches, and other more easily constructible puzzles along the way. Hopefully, these will make up a minority of the puzzles in ToPuWriMo.
  • If I don't manage to get 30 puzzles done by June 30, or even July 7, that's no big deal. I'll still have written a lot of new puzzles, which is a fine accomplishment by itself.

Join me!

One of the features of NaNoWriMo and NoPoWriMo is the community of like-minded creators working towards a common goal and supporting each other. While I have no illusions about the "To" in ToPuWriMo becoming a "Na," I think it would still be great if other puzzlers wanted to get involved in making June a month of constructing. You don't have to write a puzzle a day to participate -- it could be a puzzle every other day, two puzzles a week, or whatever pace suits your constructing speed. Feel free to set your own goals and guidelines. If you do choose to participate, I only ask two things: first, that you make your "YoPuWriMo" puzzles available for others to see and solve, and second, that you leave a comment here letting me know about your intentions, and where you will be making your puzzles available. Comments are welcome even if you choose not to participate as a constructor; nothing would make me happier than to find out other people are looking forward to the puzzles I write. Thanks for your support!

Comments

Anonymous (not verified)

Sat, 05/28/2011 - 4:24am

It's an intriguing idea!  Of course, I'm terribly busy, myself, so I don't know whether I'll be able to oh who am I kidding.  I'm certainly free.  Now, whether I'll have the energy to write-and-post a puzzle a day, or even a puzzle a week, remains to be seen, but perhaps I'll throw a couple of puzzles out for TahPoWriMo.--Tahnan

Anonymous (not verified)

Sat, 05/28/2011 - 10:38pm

I don't know if I will have ideas for KePuWriMo, but I would like to start KeTaPuSolMo!  (That's Ken and Tara Puzzle Solving Month!)  She has finally graduated college, and she has expressed an interest in learning to solve puzzles (and hopefully attending future Hunts within reason).  Yay!

So, I think I will attempt to use this time to co-solve with her.  Exciting!  (:

(And, of course, if I do come up with a/some puzzles, I'll try to figure out a place to post them and will certainly let you know.) 

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