Very cool puzzle check tool gives players a break!

wordXross players rack up points based on how quickly they complete the puzzle. The point system is based on the assigned difficulty level coupled with a judgment of how long it should take the average player to complete the game. Part o' my job is to encode this data into each puzzle.

Alas...poor Harvey.

It turns out that, due to a coding error, a player would've been told that he or she was expected to solve a Harvey Estes puzzle in about...a year or so.

This was not good.

So Jerry put on his programmer's hat and made a tool for Vicki and I to easily check for any coding errors. Very cool. I spent Labor Day checking for coding errors on every single puzzle. There were, um, several.

But the good news? Folks can now be expected to solve a Harvey Estes puzzle in 'way less than a year! :-)