It’s holiday gift guide season and we’re focusing on gifts for single parents this year. Whether you know someone who is a single parent for a night, a weekend, a week, or always, these gifts are chosen for any of those times. There are several guides, themed differently, so you can choose the type of gift you want to give. This one is games and puzzles.
Neil Patrick Harris designed two single-player games (so far, hopefully) for Theory 11. They are escape room type games, where the challenges build on each other until the escape or ultimate “escape” is made. Box One starts with trivia cards and builds towards more and more challenging puzzles. Box Two throws you in the deep end right away but gives you a virtual partner to help you get started. Both of these are single-player games, but could be a fun activity for date night, too.
Theory11 Box One and/or Box Two
If you’re more into games of solitaire played with card decks, you have to check out Theory11’s gorgeous decks!
Educational Insights Kanoodle Ultimate Champion
Kanoodle is a logic puzzle for single players. There are pieces of various shapes (and types, depending on which Kanoodle you play. Your task is to fit all of the pieces back onto the play board, which doubles as the case, depending on the starting points marked out in the accompanying booklet. Educational Insights has elevated the game play by adding a clock. You can set the timer to run down or up, so you decide how to challenge yourself. There’s a 3D version of play built into the case, too. Challenging and fun!
Thunder Bay Press Nightmare Before Christmas Sticker Jigsaw Puzzle
Thunder Bay Press gives us a new kind of jigsaw puzzle with the Nightmare Before Christmas Sticker Jigsaw Puzzle book. The jigsaw pieces are stickers that fit into an image frame. The story of Nightmare Before Christmas has been written as a rhyming poem and each page is a sticker jigsaw that matches the part of the poem on those pages. There are also three facts about the movie on each page. It’s a fun experience on many levels.
Thames & Kosmos Exit the Game with Jigsaw Puzzles
Thames & Kosmos’s Nightfall Manor is an escape room in a puzzle in a box. Gaston, the village storyteller, has disappeared after claiming he was going to solve the mystery of Nightfall Manor, the local castle. Your task is to track him down and find out what has happened to him. Pack your curiosity, your intuition, and your best puzzle-solving skills and go!
Educational Insights Slidewise
Slidewise is a sliding word puzzle that is so cleverly designed. The game itself is a handheld, manual puzzle that has enough heft that it’s not going to break easily but is lightweight enough to toss in your handbag or carry-on, if you’re traveling. The goal is to line the tiles up in the green-arrowed row so that the desired word (from the provided list or any five-letter word you choose that has the required number of provided letters) is across the middle.
David Kalvitis Greatest Dot To Dot Super Challenge
David Kalvitis revolutionized dot-to-dot puzzles about 25 years ago. Rather than simple images, which are discernible by the placement of the dots on the page, Kalvitis’s dots number in the hundreds and are so cleverly constructed that you’ll be halfway through before you know what you’re drawing. He has also created different types of dot sequences, including start and stops (stop when you get to a star or other image and then start again at the next number); Alphabet (follow the letters in alphabetical order); and Evens and Odds (follow even numbers in one line and odd numbers in another). Challenging and fun and the image can be colored in, by your or your littles, when you’re done.
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