Websites on Paper And Pencil Games For Fun

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Battleship - The classic board game played with paper and pencil.

Free Hangman Games - History, illustrated instructions, online/downloadable/printable game versions, and links to other Hangman resources.

Ghoulash, The Last Game On Earth - A complex adventure game where players compete to complete various quests.

Indoor Fun & Games - Fun, simple games to kill time at a restaurant, at the doctor's office, in the car.

Knowledge Hound: How To Play Guggenheim - Word game to help improve memory, requires only a pencil and a sheet of paper.

Lecture Games - Games to play on paper, during a boring lecture.

Oflameron - Logic table game played on paper with dice. Site contains the game's description, images, rules and playing forms for download in Microsoft Word format.

Pen and Paper Games - Player registry search tool for finding players in your own area.

Pencil and Paper Games - Instructions and variations for Othello, Tic-Tac-Toe, Squares and Sprouts.

Psi Squad - A logic game for three or more players, similar to the classic board Game, Mastermind.

Puzzles and Games at MZ Estate - Offers versions of Battleship, Scattergories, and Yahtzee to print out and play, as well as word searches and trivia quizzes.

Richard Bartle: Spellbinder - Game where players take the role of wizards battling it out in an arena. The game's creator, discusses the history and success of the game.

Waving Hands - Alternate name and rules for Spellbinder. These are the free and complete rules upon which all other variants have been based.

Crossword Puzzles

About.com Crossword Puzzles - Offers reviews and information about several puzzle sites.

Australian Crossword Club Site - Offers word lists, anagrams, and a monthly club magazine.

Beat the Champ - A scrabble-style crossword puzzle.

Brian Jacques: Redwall Crossword Puzzles - A collection of themed crosswords based on British author Brian Jacques's Redwall Abbey.

ClueMaster - A collection of puzzles available to solve online or download. Fee required.

The Crossword Centre - A resource guide with links, books, software, and a collection of interactive and downloadable puzzles.

Crossword Puzzle Games - Offers thousands of puzzles ranging in size and difficulty. Site also offers a creator and a solver.

Crossword Puzzles - Offers many types of crossword puzzles, creation software, and solving tools.

Crossword Puzzles: The Complete Guide - Offers free puzzles to solve, tips for creators, a history, and links to other related resources.

Crosswording - Randomly-generated free puzzles to play online or print and enjoy later.

CrosswordLinks.com - A resource with rules and helpful tips, articles, software, forums, and information about leagues, tournaments and online play.

Crosswords, Word Puzzles and More - Free daily puzzles available to print out and solve.

Crosswordsite - Both American and British English styles graded from easy to hard for solving online or on paper.

Fernsmacker's PuzzlePick - Features three different puzzles: a weekly cryptic crossword, a monthly double acrostic and a twice weekly trivia puzzle. Subscription needed.

Guardian Unlimited Crosswords - Paid crossword subscription site with puzzles that can be solved online or printed out.

Harry Potter Crossword Puzzle - 140 themed clues that cover the first three books.

I Love Crosswords - Hundreds of downloadable crosswords available to paid subscribers.

Know-Your-Stuff - Free knowledge-testing word games, puzzles, and quizzes. Many specific themes to choose from. Download pdf versions or play online.

MacNamara's Band Inc. Crossword Puzzles - Available to download and solve using Across Lite software. Custom puzzles are also available.

Monograph on Crosswords - An instructional and philosophical essay by an enthusiast.

The New York Times Crosswords & Games - The daily crossword puzzle with four ways to play, plus free classic crosswords and trivia quizzes. Subscription required.

Peter & Penny's Crossword Puzzles & Quizzes - Available to print and solve.

PrintCrosswords.com - Printable crosswords and sudoku puzzles.

Puzzle Choice - Offers online and offline versions. Includes different styles such as alpha-cross, cryptic, and codeword.

The Puzzle Society - Paid subscription site offering online and offline versions of daily, weekly and monthly puzzles.

Puzzlers Cave - Free cryptic and themed crosswords to print or play online. Also offers a creation tool and forums.

Puzzle.TV - Subscription-based site with new puzzles daily. Also has word search, codebreakers and cryptograms.

Sloth2Toed Puzzle Page - A collection of puzzles from a variety of sources. Includes standard, acrostic, and daisy chain.

Tidbits Puzzles - A collection of tidbits style crosswords.

Times Online - Offers paid subscription to weekly and monthly puzzles from The Times and The Sunday Times.

The World's First Crossword - Read about and solve crossword by Arthur Wynne, first published in the New York World in 1913.

XWord - Crossword Compilers - A collection of various styles of puzzles by Anina Roux and her team, compiled for magazines and newspapers in South Africa.

Xwords.co.uk - Play online or print and solve. Also offers creation tool. Registration is free.

Yahoo! Games: Crossword - New puzzles daily, archived for two weeks. Free registration required.

Dots and Boxes

Connect Capture - A game mixing dots and boxes with chess. Completing a box activates the enclosed chess piece, capturing other activated chess pieces.

Dots and Boxes - Dots and Hexagons - Reviews standard rules, and introduces the analogous game on a hexagonal board.

Dots-and-Boxes Analysis - Analysis program and results.

Eric Weisstein's World of Mathematics: Dots and Boxes - Entry with rules, basic strategy, and references.

Talk by Katherine Scott: Loony Dots and Boxes Endgame - Streaming-video 30-minute talk held at MSRI during the Combinatorial Game Theory Research Workshop, July 24-28, 2000. Describes a particular type of endgame which arises frequently in practice and can be solved in polynomial time.

Sprouts

Math Forum: Sprouts Notation - Discussion of notation for use in commentary.

Math Forum: The Game of Sprouts - Discussion including a strategy by John Conway.

Mathematical Games: Sprouts - Brief summary of the game.

Sprouts: Analyzing a Simple Game - Mathematical analysis by the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy.

World Game of Sprouts Association - Association devoted to a serious exploration of the game.

Sudoku

Christiaan Olie - Personal page describing Sudoku, rules, strategies, and offering puzzles to print. [Dutch/English]

Daily SuDoku - Offers daily printable puzzles of varying difficulties, including Sudoku for Kids. Also offers archive of past puzzles, tool for rendering custom puzzles, FAQ, and books for purchase.

Daily Sudoku - Offers a different printable puzzle each day. Also includes solutions and FAQ.

Dan Rice's Sudoku Blog - Weblog discussing techniques for creating and solving puzzles, including hard puzzles. Also offers a daily puzzle.

Flying Frog Consultancy - This web page describes a 19-line (769-byte) OCaml program that solves Sudoku puzzles.

Free Sudoku Puzzles - Offers a free javascript version of the sudoku game.

Gaby Vanhegan - Daily and random puzzles at six difficulty levels, Flash and JavaScript solvers, solving techniques and glossary of terms.

Grant Gibson - Offers syndicated puzzles for websites as well as print publications.

The Heebie Su Doku Site - Offers a glossary of terms, links to puzzles and variants, and tips for solving.

Hirofumi Fujiwara's Sudoku - Offers a tutorial for creating puzzles, a Java-based solver, and links to other resources. [English/Japanese]

Information For Beginners - Collection of printable grids, ordered by difficulty level. Solutions provided. Includes rules and solving methods.

Knight Features - Publishing syndicate in the UK and Ireland. Offers several variations, including classic, colour, kids, and Sudoku Word.

Maths Is Fun - Offers a number of applications and solvers for a variety of platforms. Also offers custom puzzles.

Minimum Sudoku - A project collecting Sudoku with the smallest number of givens that are still uniquely solvable. Offers the puzzle for download in text format.

Play Sudoku - Flash version of the Sudoku game. Also offers solution.

Prize Sudoku - Offers competitions for prizes. Traditional Sudoku, Godoku (letters) and Super Sudoku (16x16).

Puzzle Bus - Offers a daily puzzle, books, software, and related merchandise. Also offers puzzles for syndication.

Scanraid LTD Search Technologies - Sudoku Solver by Andrew Stuart. Shows the logic behind solving sample games square by square.

Simple Sudoku Solver - JavaScript brute force solver.

Sky One - Information on UK-based cellular provider's world-record largest Sudoku puzzle and accompanying contest.

Solve My Sudoku - Solves puzzles based on inputted information.

Solving Sudoku - Step by step guide to solving sudoku puzzles. Goes from basic to advanced techniques.

Sudoku - Provides sudoku puzzles in easy, medium and hard levels with their solutions. Also provides facility for daily email sudoku newsletter.

Sudoku - Free daily puzzle with solution. Includes archive of past puzzles.

Sudoku - History, instructions, variants and puzzles in four difficulty levels (PDF format). [German/French/English/Spanish/Italian]

Sudoku - Generates and solves classic and X-Sudoku Problems. Diverse options and an integrated help facility makes this program best of class.

Sudoku Addict - Offers printable grids and solution walkthroughs.

Sudoku enumeration - Several programs in different languages for analyzing possible Sudoku combinations.

Sudoku Online - Includes Sudoku tips and strategies as well as a downloadable game and a 3D Sudoku puzzle.

Sudoku Online Solver - Free online generator, solver, and helper. [English/French/Spanish/Polish]

Sudoku Place - Offers daily puzzle in PDF format. Includes archive, FAQ, and a "dozen" variant.

Sudoku Puzzles - Free daily puzzles with five difficulty levels with their solutions. Also offers guide to solve Sudoku puzzles.

Sudoku Puzzles - Offers four difficulty levels. The puzzles can be solved online or downloaded as a PDF file. [English/German/French/Spanish/Dutch/Portuguese/Italian]

Sudoku.com - Includes an overview of how Sudoku is solved, a monthly contest and a downloadable Sudoku game. Also includes a kids section and discussion forums.

SuDoKu-Cracker - Only creates puzzles with a "unique solution". The built-in generator has six different levels of difficulty and can generate many (millions) different puzzles. All puzzles can be printed, exported, saved and opened again.

SuDokuMate - SuDokuMate is a SuDoku Helper (not a Solver) that replaces pencil and paper to aid solving.

Sudoku-san - Free daily puzzles with four difficulty levels. Also offers a solving assistant and downloadable e-book collections for purchase.

SudokusWeb.com - Free daily printable Sudokus. Also offers history, rules, and solving techniques. [English/Spanish/French/Catalan/German/Portuguese]

Sudoweb - Free daily puzzles with five difficulty levels. Also offers printable e-book.

The Times Sudoku - Daily sudoku and killer sudoku puzzles from The Times newspaper, London.

Universal Press Syndicate - Offers monochrome and color grids and variations for online and print syndication. Information on syndication as well as an interview with creator David Bodycombe.

Vegard Hanssen's page - Offers a database of crafted puzzles, organized by difficulty. Also offers FAQ and forum. [Norwegian/English]

Wikipedia: Sudoku - An encyclopedia entry describing the rules, history, strategies and variants of Sudoku. Notes that these are a type of "latin square" which have been analyzed since ancient times.

World Sudoku Championship - Information on the 2006 World Sudoku Championship held in Italy. Includes background information, events, results and FAQ. [English, Italian]

9x9, 6x6 and Samurai Sudoku - Offers classic Sudoku and variants, as well as an online solver.

Yosmany.net - Offers HTML to add a JavaScript-based puzzle to any site. [English/Spanish]

My Days Are Numbered - An article by Seth Stevenson offering a brief overview of Sudoku. (May 31, 2005)

The Economist: Do you sudoku? - Article on the puzzle's popularity in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. (May 19, 2005)

The Guardian: So you thought Sudoku came from the Land of the Rising Sun... - Article by David Smith covering the puzzle's origins as "Number Place" by Dell Puzzle Magazine in New York in the 1970s. (May 15, 2005)

The Guardian: Sudoku fever grips UK newspaper readers - By Stephen Brook. Article covers how the UK craze got started. (May 10, 2005)

BBC News: The puzzling popularity of Su Doku - Article by Paula Dear. Covers history in Japan and the UK and compares to the Rubik's cube craze of the 80s. (April 22, 2005)

Tic-Tac-Toe

Guy Fawkes's Analysis of Boolean Tic-Tac-Toe - Analysis of variant that allows anti-play.

The History of Noughts and Crosses - Article on the game's history.

Math Lair - Tic-Tac-Toe - Game variations, looking from the mathematical side

Pencil & Paper Games Plaza: Tic Tac Toe - Instructions for game play.

Tic Tac Toe In Brief - Rules, variations, strategy, theory and practice. Includes an online version of the game.

Tic Tac Toe Strategy Solutions - Details a step-by-step process that allows the first player to win or draw, but never lose.

Tic Tac Toe Top Secret - Description of a strategy against a member of the group that allows one to win or to draw.

Tic-Tac-Toe Strategy - Features explanations and the opportunity to put the advice into practice.