#1: Valerie Mates (valerie) on Aug 18, 2026

There are under 100 puzzles left to be featured in the section of the home page for puzzles recovered from the database crash, so that section will soon be gone from the home page.

I've been thinking about what will go there next.

My current plan is to create Puzzle Themes, and use that to put timely puzzles there. The idea is that each puzzle could be attached to a holiday or other event. For example, the holiday "Sneak Some Zucchini Onto Your Neighbor's Porch Day" is in early August, so showing puzzles on that theme would be appropriate from about August 1st to 15th. The idea is to have a list of holidays and other events, assign them to puzzles, and then the site would randomly pick 20 timely puzzles to show in a new section of the homepage for seasonal puzzles. Themes could overlap. For example, there could also be a "Summertime" theme that runs for the whole summer, including when the Zucchini theme is running, and the site would pick random puzzles from any themes that are current on that day. There could also be a theme called "Timeless" for puzzles that don't attach to any particular date, so that they could be featured too, especially on random days that don't have many holidays going on.

I would like to crowdsource adding themes to the existing puzzles.

The part I am thinking through is who will be able to add themes and assign them to puzzles. Should it be a short list of trusted people who I choose? Or everybody on the site? Or anybody who has created at least one puzzle and solved at least one puzzle?

I would appreciate people's thoughts.

(Note: No need to suggest themes right now. That part comes later.)

What do you think?

I would think most of us could be trusted to add the appropriate themes (could be more than one) to our puzzles. Perhaps add a forum topic where others could submit comments if they think a puzzle is incorrectly themed or if a puzzle has been missed, perhaps because the creator is no longer active or such.

What a great idea. There are a ton of seasonal puzzles that sometimes pop up out of season on the featured puzzle page.

A featured series list might be fun too. There were a bunch of name the band or song puzzles. Mondegreen or Hinky Pinky puzzles were very popular. Remember the Sandbox and What's On the Roof themes. We've had a lot of mini puzzles such as 5x5 or 8's. Animal puzzles, cars, fruits & veggies, jokes, movies. These wouldn't need to be connected to a particular season but solvers might enjoy resolving all the community quilt squares.

I think I need to go make a zucchini puzzle now.

Oh I love that! Thanks Brian!

I think those could fit in as themes too, of the timeless type that doesn't have dates attached. So there could be a "5x5 quilt squares" theme, or a "When I was five" theme, definitely a Mondegreens theme, and themes for particular creators' series. Each WCP would also be a theme. I like that!!

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