It Takes Two: Introducing Tango, our newest game

Welcome to Gametime, a weekly newsletter recapping the past week of games on LinkedIn, what’s new in the puzzles space, and more — brought to you by LinkedIn Games Editor Paolo Pasco . Click 'Subscribe' to join the community and be notified of future editions.

If you’ve been playing LinkedIn Games regularly, you may have noticed that where there used to be three games in the sidebar, there are now four. This week, we rolled out Tango , and I for one am excited to see it out in the world.

Tango is a logic game with a few simple rules:

1. Fill each square in the given grid with either a moon or a sun.
2. You can’t have three of the same symbol (moon or sun) next to each other, vertically or horizontally.
3. If two squares have an “x” between them, the symbols in those squares have to be different. If two squares have an “=” between them, the symbols in those squares have to be the same.
4. In the finished grid, each row and column must have equal numbers of moons and suns. In the 6x6 grids we have now, this means there are three suns and three moons in each row and column.

That’s it! Just like with Queens, the ruleset is relatively short, but you can get a surprising amount of complexity and logical deduction, in ways that continue to feel surprising and novel. I’ve taken a sneak peek at the first few weeks’ worth of puzzles, and I can safely say you’re in for a treat.

The Tango puzzles for this month have been hand-crafted by Thomas Snyder , the logic puzzle expert whose work you probably know well from Queens . As any Queens fan can tell you, he writes a good puzzle.

For more about Tango, including some exclusive tips and tricks, take a look at the brand-new Tango part of the This Week in LinkedIn Games section below!

?? Pinpoint: Lateral thinking puzzles were of interest this week, with get rates for these puzzles being all over the map. The Saturday, October 5 things you can crack puzzle tripped people, with a get rate of 55.9%. Some commenters reported that the phrases “crack a smile” and “crack a joke” were unfamiliar to them, making the puzzle that much trickier. Meanwhile, the Sunday, October 6 things with horns puzzle had a very high get rate (especially for a lateral thinking-style category), at 91.4%. The average number of guesses was 3.90, indicating that the last two clues (“Unicorn” and “The center of a steering wheel”) helped crack it open.

A side note, about the things with horns puzzle: a few people noted that their first guess, informed by the clue “Bull,” was… a word I can’t print here. For those people, you can rest easy in the knowledge that over 3000 (!) people also guessed that expletive, so no need to be ashamed. Well, you should still maybe be a little ashamed. There’ll be no cursing in my games, and that’s a promise.

Commenters on the Wednesday, October 9 types of flowers puzzle have noticed that the clue “Iris” is back yet again. People keeping track at home know it’s been used many times before, appearing in the categories “Things that are associated with rainbows,” “Parts of a camera,” “Parts of the eye,” and “Greek gods” before today. With five uses, I now have enough to release a meta-Pinpoint with the category “Pinpoint categories that have included ‘Iris’” (that is, if I ever wake up and think “Gee, the Pinpoint comments could sure stand to be angrier today”).?

Play today’s Pinpoint?

?? Crossclimb: Eagle-eyed solvers noticed a little more synchronicity between the Pinpoint on the Crossclimb on Monday, October 7, when the Pinpoint (types of fish) coincided with the Crossclimb, ending in a two-word term for a glass water-filled enclosure for an aquatic pet (FISH/TANK). I saw a lot of puns in the comments about things being “fishy,” ha ha.

My favorite Crossclimb comment from this week, though, wasn’t related to game content at all. Kathleen Jane Yu wrote, “Playing while I graduate since I was last in the line because of the alphabetical arrangement.” Congratulations on your graduation, Kathleen! I hope the puzzle didn’t make you miss something important in the ceremony.

Play today’s Crossclimb?

?? Queens: The Saturday, October 5 puzzle was the hardest of the week, with the lowest solve rate among this week’s puzzles (81.4%) and highest average solve time by far (6 minutes, 48 seconds). Let’s take a look, and see how you could use one strategy to make some very fast progress:

We can start with a reasonably easy logical step: since the red region takes up the entire bottom row, we know any red cell not in the bottom row cannot have a Queen (otherwise, it’d be impossible to place a Queen in the bottom row). This allows us to X out a large number of cells.

Now, we can use that strategy again! Notice that the brown region takes up the entirety of the available cells in the second row from the bottom. By the same logic, we can X out any brown cell not in that row (since if we put a Queen in any of those cells, it’d be impossible to place a Queen in the second row from the bottom).

Since the remainder of the brown region forms a 1x3 block, we can X out the yellow cell that touches all three of the cells in that block (since if a Queen were there, it’d be impossible to place a Queen in that brown region without two Queens being adjacent). Note that this only leaves one open cell in the third row from the bottom, so we can place a Queen there. Once you do, placing the resulting X’s leaves only one square in the green region that can accept a Queen, and you can continue to solve from there.

Play today’s Queens

?? Tango: Being as new as Tango is, stats are still coming in — how much can you pull from three days’ worth of data? So, in the absence of analysis, I wanted to share some strategies that can help you get started with the genre of puzzle. My favorite one combines two rules, so it’s just a little complex — but once you notice the pattern, it can be immensely helpful to spot in grids down the line. Let’s look at the partial grid below:

We don’t get a lot of immediate information, but we can use this to determine a good number of symbols. Let’s look at the two empty squares in the middle row. Using the rule about “=” signs, we know those two squares must contain the same symbol. So, they’re either both suns or both moons. However, if those squares were both suns, this would break the rule that doesn’t allow us to have three of the same symbol in a row. Therefore, we know both of the squares in the middle must be filled with moons. We can use this pattern generally; if there’s two squares connected by an “=” sign, and a symbol on either side of that two-square block, you can use this strategy to place a few symbols.

If you want to see this strategy (and more!) in action, don’t miss our daily posts with video walkthroughs of each puzzle!

Play today’s Tango

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?? Bill Young Wins Week 2 of LinkedIn Games: Top Voice Duel! ??

Week 2 has wrapped up, and Bill Young , Top Voice and Head of Games at Twitch, has claimed victory once again! This time, he outplayed Carly Taylor, M.Sc. in a very close match-up, in a fierce competition across ?? Queens, ?? Pinpoint, ?? Crossclimb, and our newest game ?? Tango.

Now, as we move into Week 3, Bill is set to take on his next Top Voice challenger — Arin Goldsmith who works at Blizzard! Stay tuned for an exciting showdown, and catch all the updates in the next Game Time Newsletter.

Think you can keep up with the Top Voices? Play along on LinkedIn games and see how you rank.

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