{"id":3423,"date":"2024-11-27T10:30:02","date_gmt":"2024-11-27T15:30:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pleasantvillepress.com\/?p=3423"},"modified":"2024-11-27T10:52:23","modified_gmt":"2024-11-27T15:52:23","slug":"pleasantville-community-to-hunt-puzzles-this-weekend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/pleasantvillepress.com\/index.php\/2024\/11\/27\/pleasantville-community-to-hunt-puzzles-this-weekend\/","title":{"rendered":"Pleasantville Puzzle Hunt Returns This Weekend"},"content":{"rendered":"

Local families and puzzle enthusiasts will participate in a community puzzle hunt Thanksgiving weekend<\/span>. This year marks the fifth year for the Pleasantville Puzzle Hunt. The activity is part brain game, part scavenger hunt, and appropriate for people of all ages.<\/span><\/p>\n

Two locals created the puzzle hunt. Greg Nemec is a resident of Pleasantville and teaches art at Pleasantville High School. Andy Goodman also lives in Pleasantville and is a creative director and writer at an ad agency.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The puzzle hunt began during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. \u201cEveryone was keeping to themselves, they didn\u2019t know if they could even get outside,” Goodman said. “So we\u2019re like, what can we do to get people out and about safely?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe came up with some puzzles. We made it into a scavenger hunt where people could go around in their own groups and have some fun.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Goodman said he and Nemec have loved puzzles since they were kids. \u201cWe both grew up reading Games magazine, which at the time was edited by Will Shortz<\/a>, who\u2019s another Pleasantville resident. The puzzle master, as we know,” Goodman said. <\/span><\/p>\n

“We\u2019re also quite a bit influenced by a group called Puzzled Pint<\/a>, which has these sort of puzzle sets that people get every month and they get together to solve.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In the beginning, Goodman handled much of the puzzle construction. More recently, Goodman and Nemec have split up the puzzle work evenly.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAs someone who always did a lot of puzzles, I always loved them. I didn\u2019t really have the expertise of building puzzles so I\u2019ve been doing more and more, and so I do probably a third of the puzzles now,” Nemec said. “As an illustrator, mine are often visual-based. Andy\u2019s are maybe more word-based.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Every year, the puzzle hunt has a different theme. \u201cWe come up with a theme at the beginning of the year,” Goodman said. “We brainstorm ideas around the theme. We actually come up with the last puzzle first, which we call the meta puzzle, which uses answers from all of the other puzzles. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cA metapuzzle is a puzzle made from the answers of all the other puzzles,” Goodman said. “So, once you’re done with the first nine and you have those nine answers, you populate those nine answers into the last puzzle and you put them through the puzzling machine and you get a final answer that you can then submit to us to be eligible for a prize.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n