Local families and puzzle enthusiasts will participate in a community puzzle hunt Thanksgiving weekend. 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.

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. 

The puzzle hunt began during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. “Everyone was keeping to themselves, they didn’t know if they could even get outside,” Goodman said. “So we’re like, what can we do to get people out and about safely? 

“We 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.”

Goodman said he and Nemec have loved puzzles since they were kids. “We both grew up reading Games magazine, which at the time was edited by Will Shortz, who’s another Pleasantville resident. The puzzle master, as we know,” Goodman said.

“We’re also quite a bit influenced by a group called Puzzled Pint, which has these sort of puzzle sets that people get every month and they get together to solve.”

In the beginning, Goodman handled much of the puzzle construction. More recently, Goodman and Nemec have split up the puzzle work evenly.

“As someone who always did a lot of puzzles, I always loved them. I didn’t really have the expertise of building puzzles so I’ve 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’s are maybe more word-based.” 

Every year, the puzzle hunt has a different theme. “We 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.

“A 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.”

Video from last year’s Puzzle Hunt posted on the Pleasantville Puzzle Hunt Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/PvilleHunt.

Prizes include “board games, other things that you know people donated, maybe they have a board game they never used so we always ask the community to help contribute to that,” Nemec said. “The most fun part of that is people saying ‘I did it, I did all of the puzzles, and the metapuzzle made sense, and I came up with a very satisfying clever sentence.”

Puzzle clues are comprehensible to a wide range of ages, and difficulty ranges from easy to challenging.

Goodman said some answers are activity-based, such as  “cutting something out. Mostly it’s filling in blanks, whether its of music trivia or why is this word misspelled, and what’s the missing letter, that kind of thing.”

“[The clues] all lead you to a location in Pleasantville,” Nemec said. “When you get to that location, there’s another clue that sends you back to the original puzzle to find some hidden answer. And those are the first nine puzzles.”

Nemec said support for the Puzzle Hunt has been gratifying. “The other day somebody drove by, and we happened to be walking out of a movie, and he said ‘hey when’s the puzzle hunt? When’s the puzzle hunt?’ So its nice to see there’s community enthusiasm for this every year.”

“We love when families come together and the parent is submitting an answer and also the kid is submitting an answer and showing us a picture of their final answer sheet so so proud,” Goodman said. “It’s really satisfying for us as well.”

Planning the hunt is also a family activity. Goodman’s wife, Whitney, tests and proofreads the puzzle. Nemec’s wife, Kat, visits local businesses to get permission to put signs in their windows or on the sidewalk in front of their stores.

This year’s theme will remain a secret until the puzzle starts. “Last year’s was all about fun and different things that went into having fun,” Goodman said. “This year, it is still a secret, but we still think you’re gonna have fun with it.”

The puzzle hunt will begin Friday, November 29, at 10 a.m. Contact the Pleasantville Puzzle Hunt page on Facebook or email pvillepuzzlehunt@gmail.com for a link to the downloadable Puzzle Pack. A limited number of printed Puzzle Packs will also be available in the Recreation Center mailbox. Finish the Puzzle Pack and submit a final answer by Sunday, December 1 at 4:30 p.m. for a chance to win a prize.