#1: Brian Bellis (mootpoint) on Jan 2, 2026

I suggest that this Forum should be a remembrance of creators and solvers here at Web Paint-by-Numbers who are no longer with us. I would love it if it was more than just names and dates but rather a celebration of their contribution to the site. Would someone like to get the ball rolling?

Does that include members who have left under unhappy circumstances? I really loved kadou's puzzles and creative spirit, and I hate the way he felt he had to leave the site.

There are *so* many people where I wonder what ever happened to them.

Brian, are you looking specifically for people who have died, or for anybody who once used to post here and no longer logs in?

I'm going to make a guess and comment about people who no longer log in, even if they are still alive.

I miss Lilly Johns, who made lovely puzzles.

Jan was a big fan of Gitte "granny" Olson's puzzles, though I think he thought she was granny-aged and actually someone recently found her on Facebook and she is actually much younger than Jan imagined. Gitte says that nowadays she always uses a phone to access the Internet, so this site is hard for her to navigate. (I have programming changes on the staging site that will make this site more phone-friendly, but they have been sitting for a couple of years now, waiting for someday.)

Teresa Kellerman (fasstar) made beautiful, thoughtful puzzles. Jan often talked about how she had once won the lottery and used her winnings to start a foundation to help people who have Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.

When we were first restoring the database crash, Ki Bitzar was a huge help at carefully logic-ing through mind-busting puzzles that had multiple solutions and had been restored incorrectly, to get their images right.

I kind of miss Black Cat's postings.

JoDeen Mozena was always cheerful, thoughtful, intelligent, and supportive. I loved her stories of her grandchildren, being on that game show, and when, after years of solving, she created her first (and only) puzzle.

And of course Jan, who created the site. It's now eleven years since he passed away. No idea how the numbers added up so quickly.

Now I want a topic to praise the people who are still here, too!! Though that would be even harder than this topic to remember all of the amazing people!

Valerie. I was thinking of our folks who have died but a "where are they now?" forum post would be good too.

I really miss maceraseven / sanane samanye, who was (very unjustly, IMHO) blackballed for a puzzle (he? she?) made of a mideasterner with a large nose, and many PBNers called it racist and essentially lynched him / her.

It was actually a portrait of a neighbor of his/hers, with whom s/he was very friendly with, and had actually requested the portrait.

I found m7's puzzles to be astounding, and the work of a gifted artist, polymath, brilliant mind, and amazing imagination.

I asked a Turkish gentleman what maceraseven and sanane samanye mean, and he said it it meant s/he was hell-bent on not being identified and MYOB.

It is tragic to have lost this creator, especially over a mistaken interpretation of an image.

I have been searching social media in vain for years trying to locate this prodigy, to no avail. If anyone knows anything at all that could help me track him/her down, I would be forever grateful.

Brian -- The tricky part is figuring out whether a person disappeared because they died or because they stopped logging in for some other reason. For some people we do know that they died, but for example Ki Bitzar solved more than 30,000 puzzles and then in 2023 stopped logging in. That name is a pseudonym, so it's likely that we will never know what happened, but I worry.

I once made a forum posting asking if people wanted a way to leave some kind of contact info in their account so that if they disappeared the folks here would have some way of checking in. I don't think the forum showed that posting to many people, or maybe people didn't have much to say about it or didn't think it was a good idea. But I still would like more options to check to see if people are okay. I also worry about what would happen to the site if anything ever happened to me. I have no plans to disappear, but stuff happens and I worry.

I have no problem sharing some personal info. I use my real name here and on facebook. I've asked my wife to log into my account and let my wonderful puzzle community know that I have died. (I'm 67 so I have a few more years)

I hate that M7 was pushed away. I somehow missed the whole issue. They made some great puzzles.

Update to #5 - according to Google Translate, "sanane samanye" means "what's it to you?", and "maceraseven" means "adventure seeker". So yeah, he(?) is going to be impossible to track down ...

Without looking up the specific details, so I may be remembering bits of this wrong: My recollection is that Sanane made a puzzle that someone reported was identical to Nazi propaganda that said to kill all the Jews. She said that having the puzzle on the site felt like hate speech to her. Sanane didn't like the discussion and left this site. I stewed about it for a while, and eventually took the puzzle offline. I am not okay with having hate speech on this site. I hope wanting people to be safe from hate speech does not make me a bully.

Here's the Facebook thread of that discussion:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/webpbn/posts/10158109120907459/

And here's the part of the discussion that was here:
https://webpbn.com/index.cgi?page=read.cgi%3Ftype%3DT%26id%3D1026%26what%3Dall%26

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