What's in my pocket?

February 13, 2009 8:06 AM

I've been asked to take over a small games/trivia section in our department newsletter. Asking for ideas and a copyright question inside!

Our department of about 200 people has a newsletter that comes out every 3 months. We had a small trivia section that had trivia questions about staff members (questions included matching a person with their first job, a list of staff members and what they had in common (all had met spouses at work), a couple of baby pictures that you had to match with staff members, and guessing the year a picture of a couple of staff members that had know each other forever was taken). The people who had been writing the questions have run out of ideas, and I've been asked to take over after I came up with inauguration trivia questions for a cookie hour. Here's what I'm looking for:

Ideas for general trivia questions that aren't too, too googeable. They don't have to be impossible, but I want people to have to work at it at least a little.


Ideas for more staff-related trivia.


Other games that it might be ok to use. For instance, I have a book of those word-picture puzzles (you know, like this:

mind
matter

and the answer is "mind over matter"). Is it ok for me to copy one or two to put in the newsletter? What about ones that I find on websites, can I copy those?


Lastly, the next newsletter comes out in March, so I was thinking of putting in some college basketball team logos and having people identify the teams. Is there anything sketchy about using the logos without permission of the team or anything like that to be aware of?

posted by amarynth to grab bag (5 comments total)

No, generally you can't copy published material in puzzle books. Generally it's protected by our copyright laws. You don't have the right to copy. (The answer might vary depending on the specific book.)

Regarding copying what's on websites, you seem to think that's different from copying from books. Again, in general our copyright laws prohibit us from copying other people's stuff. In the case of websites, sometimes the owners expressly waive their rights, right there on the site, or will do so on request. The thing about a website is that it's easier to contact the owner than it is to contact a book publisher. So ask for permission.

You should have no problem with team logos, assuming you're not using them to identify a basketball-related business of your own. But this is not legal advice and you should not follow it, since I don't know the details of your business or your newsletter plans.

No comment on what "sketchy" means, or what might be the legal effect of "sketchiness."

If you have a department of 200 people, you must have a pretty large company. Your legal department is there for you.
posted by JimN2TAW at 8:28 AM on February 13

For one of those "team" events, I once put together a book of different puzzles based on our team. For example, I created cryptograms out of things like project mission statements, crypto-families out of words related to our projects, logic problems based on things like assigning staff members to projects, etc. None of these were particularly hard to put together, and they amused people moderately.

If you grab a book of Dell Pencil Puzzles and Word Games and flip through it, you can get a ton of ideas for different types of puzzles. Just think about how they can be adapted to use the names of real people, real bits of text from your business, real projects, etc.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:34 AM on February 13

Sorry, I was rushing and wasn't clear. I didn't mean copying directly from the book, I meant doing my own with the same solution -- The "mind over matter" example is one that's seen everywhere -- it's in this book, which was published in 2003, and I remember seeing it as a kid in elementary school, so would I be violating copyright if I did my own "mind over matter" image (not that I would, because everyone's seen that one)?
posted by amarynth at 8:40 AM on February 13

Brain Food has a number of puzzles in the public domain.
posted by mikepop at 9:46 AM on February 13

I work on our company newsletter, and recently I tried putting in a crossword and everyone loved it. Our newsletter goes out to all 250 employees in 10 or so departments, so each time I have a crossword it is going to feature a different department.

We also do regular trivia, and we're pretty sure everyone just Googles the answers. The Rebus (word play) puzzles are a little better because they are harder to Google!
posted by radioamy at 7:32 PM on February 13