Delightfully Friday Junior: Puzzling Together

Life is a puzzle. You are born, you die and a lot of puzzling stuff happens in between.

We here at Flagrant love puzzles. I think the thing I enjoy most about my work is that I get to solve real world puzzles everyday. Sometimes it is trying to figure out how to write a database query, debug a flaky test or get css to match a design. Other times it is helping a client figure out what problem they are trying to solve and then come up with the right solution. And then of course there is the puzzle of figuring out what we are feeling and how to best express it to our co-workers so that it can be heard and understood.

But sometimes we just need to do some old fashioned puzzles just for fun! In fact, once a week we at Flagrant take a break from our “regular work” to do a puzzle together. Our goto website is Jigsaw Explorer. A link is shared and everyone logs on while we get our dopamine hits from virtually snapping pieces into place and racing to get that final piece to complete the image and maybe guess where the photo was taken. Sometimes it is quiet and other times we banter. Afterwards we all take a moment to share some appreciations from our work and/or personal lives.

Putting a puzzle together is a great metaphor for how we work at Flagrant. Each of us has a different perspective and skill set and it takes a team to figure out how all the pieces fit together to get a complete picture. Most of all, it is more fun and satisfying to work together and celebrate our individual and collective accomplishments as a team.

While puzzles are a year round daily part of our lives, the holidays are an especially rich time for puzzles. Some of our developers stay up late working on Advent Of Code. It is also when the New York Times releases their Puzzle Mania. And everyone appreciates that jigsaw puzzle on the coffee table to help break the ice during holiday gatherings and vacations.

Puzzles are such a rich part of our culture at Flagrant so we decided a couple weeks to get together and find a way to share some of it with you! At a recent Friday Junior (what is that? see here) we put together a montage of our favorite puzzles to share with the world.

Then as a group activity we created a puzzle of our own for you to solve! A new favorite puzzle called bracket-city by the Atlantic recently released a puzzle builder which allows you to send your own secret messages or special announcements. You should check out how to play and it may become a new favorite daily puzzle of your own.

Then when you are ready you can try out our own puzzle here. Once you have it solved it will reveal a very important message about something new on our website that you might also find helpful for your celebrations this holiday season (spolier alert: you might need to come back here once you are done). Let use know what you think!

If you’re looking for a team to help you discover the right thing to build and help you build it, get in touch.