There’s a new puzzle in town, and if Brookline author Jeff Cleghorn is right, you may become as addicted to them as you are to Sudoku or Crosswords.

He will give a demonstration of his new type of puzzle, BabelDoKu, and will sign copies of the book at Toadstool Bookshop in Milford from 2-4 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 4.

BabelDoKu was named after the city of Babylon that was about seven miles away from the U.S. Army Forward Operating Base in which he served during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

“BabelDoKu came to me shortly after I played my first game of regular Sudoku, just before I went to Iraq to help fight the roadside bomb problem in 2007,” Cleghorn said.

“As a U.S. Air Force bomber navigator, I was taught something called the ‘tap code’ in prisoner of war training. This code was developed during the Vietnam conflict to allow U.S. prisoners to tap messages to each other when they were in solitary confinement. The code involves a grid of cells that measures five cells on a side, for a total of 25 cells. Each cell contained one of the 26 letters of the English alphabet. After playing Sudoku, I saw the symmetry between the 9 by 9 cells of that game and possibility of a 25 by 25 cell puzzle that contains letters. And words.”

It’s the opportunity to give players clues to the words and phrases hidden in a big grid of letters that Cleghorn hopes will attract players of standard Sudoku, crossword and word search puzzles. He’s been convinced enough by positive feedback from early players that he has a patent pending on the puzzles.

“I have four variations of BabelDoKu published in my first book of puzzles, BabelDoKu #1, which is available at local bookstores like Toadstool and on my website, BabelDoKu.com,” he said.
“Each one caters to a different type of puzzle player. In one version, no words are hidden, and players employ the standard logic of Sudoku to determine which letter goes in each empty cell. In another version, I give crossword puzzle clues to the words hidden in the puzzle. In yet another version, I tell you the words hidden throughout the puzzle, and the player gets to fill in the empty cells and find them, just like a word search puzzle.”

Cleghorn said he is most happy with his last version of the puzzle, one that involves famous quotations. “I hide a famous quote in the puzzle, and you can use your knowledge of what people have said to deduce bits and pieces of the quote, and eventually figure the whole phrase out.”

Getting folks to understand the puzzles by description is tough, Cleghorn admits. That’s why he has spent the effort to create puzzles that he gives away for free on his website. He also has arranged a demonstration of BabelDoKu and how he created them at his Aug. 4 booksigning event at Toadstool Bookshop in Milford.

“Come out to Toadstool, and I’ll give you a free puzzle and explain why BabelDoKu puzzles are ‘Q-less.’ I’ll even sign books for those who want me to,” Cleghorn said.

Cleghorn also offers teachers free puzzles for use in classrooms. Teachers send in a list of 10-15 vocabulary words with definitions that Cleghorn uses to create a crossword version of the puzzle. The words are hidden in the puzzle, and the definitions are the clues given to the hidden words. Teachers print out the custom puzzle, hand them out, and students then use their vocabulary knowledge, or Sudoku logic skills, or both, to solve the puzzle.