This article is about a U.S. puzzle magazine, for the UK computer and video games magazine, see games™.

GAMES Magazine (ISSN 0199-9788) is a United States-based magazine devoted to games and puzzles, and is published by GAMES Publications, a division of Kappa Publishing Group. It was originally published by Playboy (debuting with the September/October 1977 issue) and was briefly out of business in 1990 and 1991. The magazine was bought and brought back to life in 1991 by the mail-order company Bits & Pieces, and based in Manhattan. Kappa Publishing Group acquired it in 1996 and moved the GAMES office to Kappa's headquarters in Pennsylvania. The magazine is published ten times a year (monthly, except for January and June).

Throughout its publishing history, GAMES has differentiated itself from other puzzle magazines by with its creative covers that are themselves puzzles, color sections containing feature articles and games, and a large variety of puzzle types, with wit and humor used throughout. Each issue contains a feature article and puzzles in its introductory color section, the newsprint pencil puzzle section ("Pencilwise"), and, in the closing color section, board game and video games reviews. "Wild Cards" is a final section containing one or two pages of puzzle miscellany, such as word games, trivia, or chess problems. Most issues feature a puzzle-solving contest; in fact, the magazine periodically has a "hidden contest," in which part of the challenge is to find the concealed puzzle. Readers are also challenged to find the "fake advertisement" among the legitimate ones. The December issue includes a compilation of new and noteworthy games in its GAMES 100 list, similar to the German Spiel des Jahres.

The "Pencilwise" section forms the core of the magazine, and contains common puzzle varieties such as crosswords, cryptic crosswords, word searches, cryptograms, and math and logic puzzles. It also contains more unique puzzle types such as crossword variations, visual logic puzzles like "Paint By Numbers" and "Battleships", and a variety of other wordplay and visual puzzles. All puzzles in the magazine are ranked by difficulty: a one-star puzzle is an "Easy Hike", while three stars means "Proceed at Your Own Risk". Readers who write in with mistakes or alternate solutions to puzzles are often rewarded with a GAMES T-shirt. Readers may otherwise obtain a GAMES T-shirt by being a runner-up in a GAMES contest.

GAMES Publications also publishes GAMES World of Puzzles (ISSN 1074-4355) on a bimonthly basis. This magazine is similar to an extended "Pencilwise" section of GAMES Magazine. It also contains a contest in every issue, most often a variety crossword or trivia quiz.

Bygone sister publications of GAMES include The Four-Star Puzzler (1981-1983), GAMES Special Edition (late 1980s-1990), GAMES Premium Puzzles (early 1990s), and Pencilwise Extra (also early 1990s). Children's magazines put out by GAMES were GAMES Junior (1987-1990) and Zigzag (mid-1990s). GAMES has also published a number of books containing "best-of" puzzle collections.

Will Shortz, the editor of GAMES Magazine from 1989 to 1993, is currently editor of The New York Times crossword puzzle.

See also

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• Cross sums
• Logo extraction puzzles
• Nurikabe

External links

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• Official website
• "Second Time Around - relaunching of Games Magazine" -- 1992 Folio Magazine article on the bankruptcy and relaunch of the periodical

Games magazines | United States magazines | 1977 establishments