Why are online puzzle games having a moment? | The Vergecast

Hooked on LinkedIn’s Queens? Gotta extend your Wordle streak in the New York Times games app before you start your day? You’re in good company on today’s Vergecast episode. Allison Johnson is joined by Simon Anthony and Mark Goodliffe, world-class puzzle champs and hosts of the delightful Cracking the Cryptic, a YouTube channel where they solve a puzzle on camera every single day. They specialize in Sudoku — and not just the classic number games you might be familiar with. Simon and Mark tackle mind-bending, seemingly impossible puzzles, working through it all in realtime, sometimes over the course of several hours. What happens when you get stuck? How can you tell the difference between a puzzle made by a human and a computer-generated one?They help us crack the clues. Then Allison sits down with Marc Levoy, one of the pioneers of computational photography, to talk about his new camera app: Project Indigo. Levoy is known for his earlier work on the Pixel camera, and was a driving force in shaping phone photography into what it is now. We last caught up with him in 2020 when he left Google for Adobe, so we got up to speed on what the heck he’s been doing for the last five years — and the important difference between HDR and an HDR-ish photo. 0:00 Intro 00:45 Meet the Puzzle Champions: Simon and Mark 00:58 The World of Cracking the Cryptic 02:49 Understanding Classic and Variant Sudoku 04:27 The Art of Handmade Puzzles 07:49 Building a Community Around Puzzles 10:10 The Challenges of Solving Live 22:39 The Miracle Sudoku Phenomenon 30:21 Introduction to Marc Levoy and Project Indigo 32:06 The Evolution of Computational Photography 34:05 Understanding HDR and Ultra HDR 40:05 Discussing HDR Photography 40:54 Tone Mapping and Artistic HDR 43:02 Project Indigo's HDR Approach 45:34 RAW Capabilities in Project Indigo 54:22 Generative AI in Photography 01:01:21 Future of Smartphone Camera Hardware 01:04:28 Project Indigo's Experimental Features 01:09:53 Listener Question: