I'm the Weakest Link
OK... Basically everyone has a links page nowadays. Some are small, some are large (even excessively so). Generally, link pages just have a lot of links to web sites that the webmaster likes to go to. If you have too many links, you run a serious danger of having links to places that don't exist or that really aren't very good.
So I'm making a compromise. I'm not going to list the huge number of favorites I have, but I am going to try to have a significant number of links here, organized into categories. The idea is that if a link goes on this page that web site is better than mine in one of three ways: (1) it has a huge amount of data or stuff, of which I don't have the time to amass (this includes reference works); (2) it contains great things that I do not have and am not likely to have (possibly because of copyright); or (3) it is a useful/fun/important/interesting page that you should know about.
Puzzle Links | |
|---|---|
| Sudoku | |
| Web Sudoku | Web Sudoku is pretty basic, but it has a huge number of random puzzles, so you will get bored way before you actually run out. I found one of the Evil puzzles a bit easy but the rest were a lot harder. |
| Vegard Hanssen's Sudoku Puzzles | This site is just incredible. There are puzzles of a huge number of sizes, types, variations, and difficulties. If you're bored of one kind of puzzle, just try another! The selection's a little sparse in some areas, but all in all this is an amazing site if you love the sudoku concept. |
| Bob's Du-Sum-Oh Puzzle Page | Bob is the inventor of Du-Sum-Oh (also known as Squiggly Sudoku). You have irregular regions and a minimalist number of clues, which makes for some very difficult puzzles. How big can you handle? (The rest of the site is pretty cool as well.) |
| Slither Link | |
| Kwon-Tom Loop | A very competitive site, where a new puzzle is released every day and you try to get the lowest time for a full week. Weekday puzzles go from easy to very tough, and the weekend puzzles are bigger (and often pretty tricky too). I strongly suggest signing up if you're interested (it unlocks some essential features). I got into Club 19, can you? |
| Hirofumi Fujiwara's Slither Link page | There are a bunch of these puzzles here, with a nice java applet. These aren't just easy puzzles, though - most of them are quite large and difficult. Also check out the rest of his site; he has some great stuff up there. |
| Griddlers/Nonograms/Picross | |
| Griddlers.Net | If you ever wanted half a million Griddlers to solve, here's the place. Register for free and start solving single-color, many-color, multi-grid, and even triangular griddlers! You can even compare your speed with other people who've solved a puzzle. |
| Griddler Deluxe Program | Although there aren't as many puzzles as on Griddlers.Net, there are still a quite substantial number, and the player/solver/creator program is no slouch. |
| General Pencil/Paper Puzzles | |
| web Nikoli | The official web site of an absolutely awesome Japanese puzzle creator. They publish a magazine and dozens of individual puzzle books that aficionados of these kind of puzzles will need to take a look at. This is the creator of a good number of the Japanese pencil-and-paper puzzles you see around, and there are a lot that you've never seen before. |
| janko.at | This is a great German site with a multitude of logic puzzles in Java. A few of them (the Kreuzzahlen and the word puzzles) require a working knowledge of German, but a good many of them are accessible for others, since the rules are often easy to figure out. |
| Erich's Puzzle Palace | This site has some great, hard puzzles of a huge number of types. No java applets, but the puzzles are really diverse and can truly get you thinking. |
| Conceptis Puzzles | A lot of cool picture-forming puzzles of various types. Register to be able to play more than the default. |
| General 2-D Sliding Block Puzzles | |
| Hirofumi Fujiwara's Sliding Block Puzzle page | Having made a quite nice java applet, Fujiwara has created a sequentially more difficult set of sliding block puzzles. Go through them slowly if you have problems doing other sliding block puzzles. |
| Nick Baxter's Sliding Block Puzzle Page | This is a quite large collection of old and rare sliding block puzzles, many of which are ridiculously difficult but still fun. If you think you're good at sliding puzzles, try some of these! This happens to be my favorite sliding puzzle site. |
| PuzzleBeast | This site is home to a bunch of nonstandard sliding puzzles, some of which are very unique. The puzzles themselves have been optimized by computer, which means each one is often very tricky even though a very similar puzzle might not be. |
| SBPSolver | The homepage for a very useful sliding block puzzle solver. There aren't too many puzzles here, but this program will let you create and solve puzzles yourself, without having to spend hours of trial and error. |
| slidingblock.tk | The puzzle site of Dries de Clercq. There are a lot of innovative and very difficult sliding puzzles (some need over 1000 moves!) as well as some interesting and difficult variants. Definitely worth a look if you get bored of the other "easy" ones. |
| Burrs | |
| IBM Research: The burr puzzles site | This is a great place to test out, solve, and create 6-bar burr puzzles. You can look at a few really hard ones or make your own! Cool! |
| General Solid Puzzles | |
| Puzzle will be played... | This amazing site has images of the pieces and solutions for an incredible number (easily ove ra thousand) of polycube put-together and burr puzzles. If you have the time and cubes, try building some of these. You won't be disappointed. |
| Puzzles in General | |
| clickmazes | The puzzles contained in this site are all challenging, interesting, thought-provoking, and well-done. Try them and see! |
Video Games | |
| Java/Flash Games Sites | |
| Kongregate | Kongregate has a lot of free games, but what really sells it is the badge system. Complete tasks of four difficulties to earn badges, which give you points but also remain permanently on your account. Getting all the badges requires a huge amount of time and skill, but I'm working on it. |
| J*va on the Brain | Karl Hörnell has a good selection of his own Java games, with a bunch of documentation. This isn't the biggest site, but the games are great and well thought out. |
| AddictingGames.com | Standard stuff. A big listing of games. Try a few, you're bound to find a good number you really like. |
| Albino Blacksheep | Both games and flash movies. There are a lot of unique and genuinely great things on here. |
| Character-Specific Fan Sites | |
| www.sm64.com | Curtis Bright has really gone through this game and catalogued everything. He's also an expert who has some great times and has helped discover a lot of high-powered glitches. If you like Super Mario 64, you'll like www.sm64.com. |
| The Rare Witch Project | The people here are experts on Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie... They were the ones that hacked the game to find those crazy sandcastle codes. They have a lot of stuff relating to the series and to other Rare games. |
| Mario Kart 64 Player's Page | This is a record site for Mario Kart 64. The ranking system there is a great way to keep track of how good you are. |
| Video Game Music | |
| VGMusic | A pretty well-known site, VGMusic is a wonderful place to get video game MIDIs and remixes people have made. If you like video game music, there's no excuse to not check this site out. |
| Speedruns | |
| Speed Demos Archive | SDA is the site for speedruns. There are speedruns for hundreds of games there, many of which you've probably played. They only accept submissions that display great skill and no cheating, so you can be sure that any time spent watching these runs will not be wasted. |
| TASVideos | Just as SDA is the center for pure speedruns, TASVideos is the center for tool-assisted speedruns. There are over a thousand published runs, with incredible optimization and a few truly mindboggling glitches. TASVideos has high standards for both speed AND entertainment, so the published runs are guaranteed to be both impressive and entertaining. |
| General Video Game Sites | |
| David Wonn's Unique Video Game Glitches | This is a pretty good source for cool glitches and errors in games. There's just... a lot of stuff here. A lot of these are very, very interesting, cool, and surprising. |
| System Crash | This here is a bunch of amazingly crazy glitches. The ones here are really weird, and some of them even have videos. Check it out a lot! |
| RPGClassics.com | Basically, this is a set of great websites for various RPGs. For example, check out the Paper Mario one. There's a lot of info, screenshots, etc. for so many different games that if you try to imagine it all your head will a splode. Pick your favorite RPGs and check them out! |
| GameFAQs | I'm sure you've heard of this one... GameFAQs hosts walkthroughs, cheats, saves, reviews, and message board for virtually all published games. GameFAQs is the site that other FAQ sites check for new FAQs, so it's a very good place to contribute to. |
Rubik's Cubes, etc. | |
| Community Sites | |
| SpeedSolving.com | This forum is pretty much the center of the English-speaking cubing community. Many top cubers come here to discuss times and techniques. There's also a wiki, which is a bit of a work in progress, but already contains more algorithms than anyone could possibly need. |
| TwistyPuzzles.com | A great image and data gallery for a near-complete list of Rubik's-type puzzles, books, and games. The forum has some issues, but it's the best possible resource for anyone interested in collecting or building custom puzzles. |
| WCA Results | The WCA is the organization behind the competitive cubing world; they approve competitions and track the results and records that follow. This page allows you to look at the times that have been achieved. Here is my profile. |
| speedcubing.com | This is a great site for cubing news, as well as having links to basically all of the major individual cube sites. It also hosts the Unofficial World Records page, although that hasn't been updated for a long time. |
| Reference Works | |
| Jaap's Puzzle Page | A listing of Rubik's Cube links would simply not be complete without this page. There's just so much info here that you could spend days just reading it all. And it's good info, too! Jaap has put a lot of time into giving the world a great index of twisty puzzle types and specifications. There are pictures, descriptions, short histories, permutation calculations, and simple solutions to a huge variety of mass-produced puzzles. |
| Simulators | |
| Virtual Magic Polyhedra | Amazing site, with hundreds of different puzzles to choose from, ranging from some that only take a few moves, to monstrously difficult puzzles that take several thousand at best. I hold a lot of records here. |
| hi-games | The cubing simulator here doesn't turn as fast as some others, but the high score tables and small community make this site a really fun place to be. There are also a few other skill-based games to compete on, if you grow bored of pure cubing. |
| jflySim + qqTimer | A fast simulator which can handle many different sizes of cube, plus a few other common puzzles. It's fully integrated with my timer, so there are a lot of stats available. |
Minesweeper | |
| Communities | |
| Authoritative Minesweeper | This is basically the official site for the minesweeper world rankings. Damien Moore has built up a great page full of statistics, many different rankings, and a small but active community. |
| Interesting Variants | |
| Nonosweeper | How fast do you think you can solve a nonogram puzzle without opening the wrong square? There are some extremely fast players here, and the three classic levels demand some serious skill. If that's not enough, the full version unlocks one more level (the very difficult Genius) and a tournament with a new board to compete on each week. |
Rhythm Games | |
| Communities | |
| FFR | FFR is an extremely popular rhythm game with a very active community. It's been around since late 2002 (although it was down for almost a year in 2009-2010), and has built up some 1000 playable songs, with some songs that are as easy as possible, and others that will challenge the best players in the world. Check out my profile! |
| KeyBeat Online | KBO was intended to improve on FFR's game, and it's done a pretty good job (supporting both 4-key and 6-key play, for instance), although it's not nearly as popular. It still has a cool game and an active community, though, and is definitely worth checking out. |
Juggling | |
| Juggling Equipment | |
| Renegade Juggling | There's a whole bunch of great stuff in the online catalog here. A great place to buy quality equipment, if you ask me. |
| Dubé Juggling | The equipment here is very high-quality and quite expensive. Only the best brands are featured here. |
| Serious Juggling | I don't think there is a larger selection of juggling equipment anywhere. Call the number or send an e-mail and get basically whatever you need. |
| Patterns and Tutorials | |
| Jugglewiki | JuggleWiki is a set of juggling articles whose format should be somewhat familiar to anyone who knows about Wikipedia: all of them are editable. Although most of the tricks are without tutorials, there are a very large number of tricks with animations here and the articles on theory, routines, and the like are very interesting and innovative. |
| TWJC Tutorials | This is simply the best juggling trick tutorials site that I've found. It's very informative and its tutorials are interesting and useful. Check it out! |
| Wildcat Jugglers - Tutorial | There are a good amount of tricks here, with some useful tutorials, but the real high point is the looping videos of the tricks - they can be watched again and again, and even in slow-motion! |
| Videos and Personal Websites | |
| IJDB | This is the International Juggling Database, and it's just full of resources: a big community, a ton of videos, and a huge database of personal records for standard and crazy patterns alike. A central resource to anyone interested. |
| Anthony Gatto The World's Greatest Juggler |
Gatto, well-known in the juggling community for having mastered the juggling of obscenely large numbers of objects, has a site where you can talk to other jugglers, check out some tutorials, and look at cool juggling stuff. See what you can find! |
| Juggling Animations | |
| Juggling Lab | This is the official Juggling Lab website. This animator is really great; I use it on my juggling pages, and it just happens to come with a lot of useful features that are detailed on this web site. Get it for your site today! |
| JONGL | Oooh! This is a beautiful 3D juggling simulator that lets you play around with a lot of tricks, passing patterns, and a very nice rendered output. Just get it. It's more 3-D than anything else. |
| JuggleKrazy | The full version is pretty expensive, but you can already do a lot of interesting things with the free one. |
Programming | |
| HTML, XHTML, CSS | |
| htmldog.com | This is a pretty good - and good-looking - HTML and CSS tutorial site. Although it doesn't have the information about every possible value of every element that is a staple at many other tutorial sites, the guides here are very good and they explain everything you might have trouble with. I recommend this site. |
| W3 Schools | This site can teach you basically everything you need to know about web design. The tutorials are nice but, in my opinion, not quite as good as those on htmldog, although this site has the benefit of giving you some cool examples to play with. Use those frequently - it's a lot quicker and easier than making your own test page. |
| Flash ActionScript | |
| Actionscript.org | While it can sometimes be difficult to find what you're looking for in the long list of tutorials on this site, they tend to be high-quality, and so reading through all of them is a great way to learn tons of new actionscript concepts. |
Mathematics | |
| Reference and Computation | |
| MathWorld | MathWorld is a gigantic encyclopedia spanning every branch of mathematics and is a great way to get in touch with the latest and oddest mathematical developments. Although it's quite complicated, those in higher math courses may find its detailed discussions very useful. |
| Wolfram|Alpha | Wolfram|Alpha is a "computational knowledge engine" roughly built around the framework of the popular math program Mathematica. It can answer a great deal of questions, compare statistics, solve math problems, and do many other things too. |
| EqWorld | EqWorld is a pretty amazing math site, with a huge amount of information. This particular page gives exact, closed-form solutions to a great number of difficult problems (such as differential equations). Much easier and faster than trying to do them by hand, that's for sure! |
| Fractals and Cool Graphs | |
| The Mandelbulb | A recently discovered 3D object that has properties similar to the 2D Mandelbrot fractal. Amazing stuff, and some very beautiful pictures. |
| Communities and Summer Programs | |
| the Art of Problem Solving | This website is about problem solving, and contains a great math forum and a bunch of interesting and useful math books. Check it out if you're preparing for a competition or if you just want to have fun! |
| HCSSiM | This six-week intensive summer program is devoted to all kinds of math. It's also a really great place to meet people who are very interested and talented in mathematics. Although generally limited to students entering the later grades in high school, the program will welcome older and younger students if the teachers feel they will truly add something to the program. I went there, and I must say that it was amazing and very fun. |
| Math Competitions | |
| The AMC Home Page | The AMC, AIME, and USAMO are a series of fun and progressively more difficult math competitions which are designed to find out who are the best math students in the country. Although the questions are tough, the tests are fun. If your school doesn't hold it, ask your math teacher to get it organized. |
| The USAMTS | Now in the 22nd year, the USAMTS is a way to prove your math talent, even if you don't have good test-taking speed. You get a month to solve five problems, so go ahead! If you're into math, you should definitely try it. |
Origami | |
| Origami Basics | |
| Paper Creations: The Beginner's Origami Resource | This is a short article about the history of origami, but the really valuable part here is the list of links - enough information and tutorials to go from a beginner to a serious folder. If you're interested in learning more about paper folding, this is an amazing resource. |
| Geometrical Origami | |
| Origami Cloud | This site has diagrams for a number of simple and yet interesting/cool origami patterns. Those of you who like geometrical patterns will not find this site wanting! |
| Tom Hull's Origami Mathematics Page | Tom Hull is a mathematician who loves origami and applies mathematical theorems to it whenever possible. I had the opportunity to take an origami class with him, and it was extremely informative and fun. Take a look at the math here - it's only part of what Tom knows, but it's a rather good part. |
| Origami Tesselations | |
| Origami Tessellations at flickr | You may know that flickr is a place for sharing photos, but you may not know that it is also the home of an amazing and gigantic origami tessellation group. There are a huge number of beautiful pictures posted. There aren't very many diagrams, but it's often possible to figure out how to make |
| Andy's Tessellation Page | Andy has created a large number of cool and unique origami tesselations. Although there are no diagrams, they're still cool to look at, and if you do ever learn to make tesselations you can come back here and try to make some of them. |
Linguistics | |
| Alphabets | |
| Omniglot | Omniglot is a comprehensive guide to the alphabets, abjads, and syllabries of the world's languages. Some of them are really amazing and definitely deserve to be checked out! |
| Specific-Language Resources | |
| Dictionnaire des synonymes | This is basically a perfect French thesaurus. Although it's in French (which shouldn't be a problem if you're learning French already), it does a great job by not just giving you synonymes but also their various relevance. You may have to copy-and-paste in special characters, like è, though. |
| Multi-Language Resources | |
| Verbix | Verbix has a quite good conjugator in 85 different languages, including some weird and rare ones. It's a great conjugator resource when you can't remember a certain conjugation for your language class! |
| Alcor Software Rhyming Dictionary | Ever had to write a poem in your modern language class? Use this site for help. It's only got a rudimentary rhyming dictionary (it doesn't save the words phonemically, just checks the end of the word for having the exact same letters), but it can be pretty useful if you can't think of any rhymes yourself. |
| Bilingual Translators | |
| J-Talk | This is a Japanese parser that is a great resource for decoding Japanese writing, including kanji. Use the fourth option for a word-by-word English translation! |
| Animelab.com: Japanese -> English Dictionary | A great dictionary for Japanese stuff. Very useful if you want to find some kanji phrases! This is also a great resource for decoding text in an image - make a guess, see if any of the kanji match, and check for phrases with them in it. |
| Universal Translators | |
| Langtolang | This isn't really a translator, but more of a dictionary. There are 18 languages that you can search between, so it has a pretty wide scope. |
| InterTran | The site wants you to buy things, but this is a way to get your translations for free. You can use any of a whopping 29 languages! The only problem is that this site is so good that sometimes it's so busy you can't even see the page. |
| WorldLingo | This is a stellar free machine translator. There are only 13 common languages here, but it will do websites as well, and the translations are quite decent when going from Asian languages. |
| Systran 5.0 | This is a pretty good translator for most purposes. You can go to and from 13 languages, and do web sites. Check it out if the others aren't working, or simply use it for comparative translatory analysis. |
Reference Works | |
| Dictionaries and Encyclopedias | |
| Wikipedia | If you haven't heard of this, you've been living under a rock. Wikipedia has over 1,000,000 articles that are user-edited to guarantee constantly-updated, reliable articles. This is a great place to get information on literally all kinds of things. |
| Merriam Webster Online | Although teachers will often caution you against using online dictionaries, this one is not a let-down in any way. The online dictionary and thesaurus here are high-quality and very accurate; indeed, unless you are looking for exceedingly rare words, you should not need to use any other English-language online dictionary. |
| World Records | |
| The International World Record Breakers' Club | A pretty interesting website, set up by a club of people who have all set world records. They host a lot of sub-pages listing specific types of records. Quite complete and informative. |
| Guinness World Records | The counterpart web site to the book. Used to be better, but it's still a pretty good resource. |