The world will miss you. A very talented actor, a superb comedian and from all accounts a very nice guy, you touched all of us!
Comments from Carrie
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The new Bumfoozle ideas sound really cool. Micah loves all that “figuring out” stuff, and now Brock’s getting the bug, too. He’s solved quite a few puzzles by himself lately.
We’re headed out the door in about an hour for a six-week vacation, so you know that game will be keeping us occupied in the car.
Bumfoozle Update Just Released!
While you’ve been Bumfoozled, looking for new solutions, we’ve been working on a new release!
Apple Game Center™
One of our avid Bumfoozlers, 6 year old Liam, has been a wealth of ideas. (We love getting your ideas!) He wants a Bumfoozle club and a way for him to compete with his friends. So while we are figuring out how we might be able to accommodate his request, we have decided to at least implement Game Center access. Now you are able to meet with other Bumfoozlers in Apple’s Game Center and see how they are doing. If you share your iPhone or iPad with your grandchildren, or anyone in your family and have multiple players, and if you choose to, you can assign one or more of your players as the designated Game Center player and his or her scores and achievements will be posted to the Game Center, or each player can have her own Game Center login associated with her. You can see your ranking with other Bumfoozlers who are in the Game Center.
In-App Purchase
We’ve added a couple of in-app purchases too. If you would rather not wait until you’ve passed all the lower levels, you may purchase the “The Impatient Bumfoozler Cure” that will immediately open access to all levels. If you’d rather not be distracted by the pop-up ads, you may purchase “No more Ads” and they will go away.
Rate Me
We know that it’s hard to remember to rate the app, so after you’ve used it a while, it will suggest that you rate it. Of course this is optional. You have three choices: you can rate it, you can ask to be reminded later, or you can tell us not to nag you again, and we will not. If you use Bumfoozle on multiple devices, you will get again nagged on each device… sorry.
Register Me
You can now register your email. So why would you want to do that? Well, we have plans that we are not talking about and we would like you to be the first to know, so we will use that email address to notify you. We don’t like spam, and we don’t like our email address being sold to others, so we promise not to do either. Of course, registering your email is totally optional. You have three choices: You can register, you can tell us to nag you later, or you can tell us to never nag you again. If you have multiple devices, you will have to tell us again on each device… sorry.
Bug Fixes
What about bug fixes? Try as we might, a few bugs managed to creep into the previous version. We tried our best to fix all of them. So all of the known bugs (features as we prefer to call them) have been fixed.
Older IOS not supported
For those of you still running a device on IOS 4.2 or before (both of you), we’re sorry but this release will not run on your device. It now requires IOS 5.0 or later. There were some features that we wanted to offer that required IOS 5.0. So it’s time to upgrade your device. It’s worth it!
Great Stocking Stuffer!
Just in time for Christmas. No need to run out to the store. No late deliveries. Just click on this link and print out the certificate shown below. Roll it up and tie a bow on it and put in all your someone’s stocking and on Christmas morning they will be able to download it to their iPhone, iPad or iPod and immediately begin to get Bumfoozled.
Grandchildren love Bumfoozle
Recently I had a chance to watch my grandchildren (ages 3 – 10) as they tried to find solutions in Bumfoozle. I was surprised that even the 3 year old was able to do it. He was able to see a space then see the piece in a different orientation that would fit. It confirmed to me that this was more than just a way to occupy their time, it was a way to exercise their young brains as they learned problem solving, spatial relationships, eye-hand coordination and many other skills. I asked my six year old grandson why he liked Bumfoozle and he said that it was because it made him think. Kids love to learn and Bumfoozle is a great tool to help them develop their thinking skills.
Storm preparation hint using trash bags
Large plastic trash bags can be amazingly useful in your disaster preparedness.
Most realize that you can also put a large clean trash bag in your garbage barrel and fill it with water, that way you have a source of clean water. But did you realize how they can be used when you can’t flush the toilet?
If you have a power outage lasts several days, you may still run out of water, but you still need to use the toilet. A clever technique that hospitals often use is to lift the seat and place a large trash bag over the bowl, letting it rest on the water and drape down over the outside of the bowl. Then put the seat back down. It can be used several times, and when it gets full or begins to smell, you can dispose of it and replace it with a new one. It is also a good idea to tape the flush lever so that it doesn’t accidentally get flushed. Be sure to stock up on waterless hand sanitizer.
Turning off the sound
For those who are like me and don’t read directions, you probably won’t read this either, but there is a way to turn off the sound. On the startup view (the one where you choose the level), in the lower right corner, there is an info button (a round dot with an “i” in the middle). If you press that button, it will take you to a view where you can turn the sound off. There are two buttons. One turns off the background music that plays continuously, and the other one turns off the sounds like the “click” and the happy dance.
New release – version 1.0.5
Bum Guy is not so bashful in this new release. We’ve coaxed him to come out of the shadows and dance for you on stage. Yes, it adds 4 seconds between when you find a solution and the time you get to work on the next one, but what’s the rush? This isn’t Tetris or some shoot ‘em up. Enjoy the dance, Bum Guy is doing the happy dance for you because you found another solution. (Sorry for you who are using an old iPod running IOS 4.2. Bum Guy just couldn’t figure out how to dance on your device without crashing.. I think it’s a memory problem, but I don’t remember.)
And for those of you who discovered that there was a defect (“bug” for us old timers) in the version 1.0.4 that allowed you to count a placement of pieces that wasn’t legal, that has been fixed. For now, we’ll still count them, but in a later version, you will have to option of removing all illegal solutions.
What will be new in the next version? That’s a secret. Bum Guy thinks you will like it though.
Fudging
Bum Guy says:
If you are an avid Bumfoozler you soon realize that you can simply reverse the whole puzzle board or rotate it 180 degrees (90, 180 and 270 degrees on the 5×5 grid of Level 3) and it will count as a new solution. When I thought of checking for this, I decided that the only person that you would be fudging would be yourself. So I suggest that you avoid doing it. Of course as you get hundreds solutions, you might inadvertently find such a solution. That’s ok because you’ve still had the fun and mental exercise of finding a solution. My 6 year old grandson discovered this and actually I was pretty proud of him to recognize that you could reflect or rotate the entire puzzle board and have it counted.
Another form of fudging would be to write a computer program to find all the solutions. If you decide to do that, then more power to you. It isn’t an easy task and you deserve credit for the hard work and thought process that you have to go through. You will find that it soon becomes very complex. Unless you also invent an iPad robot, you will still have to enter all the solutions in manually to have them counted.
Dedicated to Ruby Smith
Bumfoozle was released to Apple on what would have been her ninety-third birthday. Years ago, my mom, Ruby Smith, found over 100 solutions to this puzzle at level ten. I thought of several names: “Ruby’s revenge” did not work because she was not a vengeful person. So I came up with “Bumfoozle” because every time I tried to solve it I got bumfoozled. I would have loved for her to see the app on my iPad, but she went to be with her savior a few months before she would have turned 91.