Funny farm
Funny farm is a type of puzzle. It consists of a network of words that are connected based on similarity or association. The puzzle is usually presented as an interactive puzzle, solvers can input phrases into the grid to fill out the network.
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Background[edit | edit source]
The name comes from Funny Farm, a puzzle game from the mid-2000s developed by abednego. The starting screen involves finding connections with things on the farm, but the connections start to branch elsewhere as more bubbles get unlocked. The gameplay was later popularized by game apps such as iAssociate.
The concept of graphical representations of word associations seen in Funny Farms are known as semantic networks and have been used in linguistics, data science, and sociology. The vertices represent words or concepts, and the edges represent relations that may be directed.
Strategies[edit | edit source]
Funny farms are identifiable by the use of graphs and a fill-in-the-blank input system. Entries are found by considering associations, which fall under various categories.
- Some associations involve synonyms, which can be found with a thesaurus.
- Some associations involve members of a set. Should said set have a canonical list, browsing through the list may be useful for finding connections.
- Some associations involve finding common multi-word phrases that use the word.
Notable Examples[edit | edit source]
- Analogy Farm fron Mystery Hunt 2013
- Black Widow from Puzzle Potluck 3
- Word Wide Web from Teammate Hunt 2020
- Collage from Mystery Hunt 2023
- PH123: Web of Lies from Microsoft Puzzlehunt 2023 (Placement Test round meta)
- Major Monster Mash from Microsoft Puzzlehunt 2023 (Hunt Metameta)
- 🤫 from Huntinality 3
Code[edit | edit source]
- Github repo by Alex Irpan - Prototype used for Collage from Mystery Hunt 2023
- Github repo by bcai2 - Prototype used for 🤫 from Huntinality 3