What is WGR?

What is WGR? A brief history of the magazine that cannot be named

In late 1983, I started irregular publication of a print magazine (you remember those, they were made of paper), whose full name I am not legally allowed to use anymore. It had the initials WGR, frequently referenced on many of the pages on our site, as many of the articles here originated in the magazine. The first ten issues were produced on a 1982 vintage IBM PC, and stored on 5-1/2" floppy disks (it's a miracle the original files still exist). The earliest issues were printed on a daisy wheel printer (essentially a computer-controlled typewriter) with graphics pasted in; only the final issue was laser-printed with more modern fonts and graphics. (Some people criticized the early issues for their plain appearance, which is funny since some of those critics were producing publications on dot matrix printers).

At its peak, right before it folded, it had a circulation of well over 300, scattered all over the world (about 25 countries besides the US). The magazine lost money over its run and was barely turning a profit even at the end. On March 17, 2000 (a Friday afternoon), I received an e-mail from an organization (which I will not name) who claimed my title infringed on their trademark (possibly true; though in 16 years of operation I did not even know their organization existed). They also made a completely false and baseless accusation of copyright infringement. Without any legal representation, I asked knowledgable friends for advice, but I was told that I could well lose a trademark lawsuit and be liable for substantial damages. I had no option but to suspend publication. I never heard anything from the organization since, though I found that they wanted to use my title for a publication of their own.

WGR published articles on a host of varied topics in the game and puzzle field, many of them in areas not covered heavily by other publications. Issues 9 and 10 were both special issues devoted to one specific topic. When WGR13 appeared, I was just starting to get seriously involved in card solitaire, and Giza first saw print in English there. Special issues were planned on card solitaire and cryptarithms, but never appeared. Some of the highlights of the thirteen issues which exist are listed in the table below:

Num	Date	Pages	Highlighted contents
1	Nov 83	27	taxonomy of games, Pyraminx, Risk, backgammon openings, Mem
2	Mar 84	33	Latino, Morra-Board, Super Crazy Eights, Skewb, Avalanche Chess
3	Sep 84	32	Orion, the world's best games, polycubes (start of regular feature on polyforms)
4	Feb 85	30	Collective Hangman, ImpossiBall, dice games, metagames
5	Sep 85	27	Realm, Risk, Sparkle, solitaire Lap, Baconian cipher, Ultima
6	Sep 86	52	cumulative index, postal games, Hexomino problems
7	Oct 87	33	domino constructions, large polyform sets, Rubik's Magic, new chess variants
8	Jul 88	38	cryptarithms, Lachaino, peg solitaire, new sports games and card games
9	Dec 89	28	Polyforms: The Birds and the Bees, polyarcs, an 82 year history
10	Jun 91	99	Chess Variants: index, bibliography, rules, inventors, sample games
11	Jun 92	38	polyform interior holes, Castawords, mail order catalogs, peg solitaire
12	Jan 94	52	index (7-12), puzzle reviews, Amazons, Super Crazy Eights For Two, Palabra
13	Feb 98	38	game and puzzle fonts, Giza, dice games, chess variants, The Great Dalmuti
		527

As I do not think that specialized print magazines are viable anymore in the Internet age, it is unlikely that WGR will ever be physically published in any form (also, I eventually came to hate every second of the physical process of binding and mailing a printed paper magazine). However, a long-term goal of this website is to publish old articles from WGR (revised as needed) and articles that exist in electronic form but which were never printed.

One full issue and several compilation articles have now been posted, particularly:
WGR Index of Chess Variants     Corrected version of WGR10.
Puzzle Laboratory Guide to Hexominoes    Original version of the supplement published in WGR6, with new diagrams, additional hexomino material from WGR, and previously unpublished solutions.
Puzzle Laboratory Presents a Guide to Twisting Puzzles Rubik's Cube and its variants, Pyraminx, Skewb, ImpossiBall, and many more.
Solving and Composing Cryptarithms   Greatly expanded version of the article in WGR8, with additional material intended for a special issue that was never published.   Over 600 original puzzles.

Others are planned for the future:
The WGR Index of Chess Variants. Expanded and corrected version of WGR10 with added material from other issues (including Paul Yearout's series on Avalanche Chess and Ultima), unpublished material, and an updated resource guide
The Puzzle Laboratory Guide to Latin Square Puzzles. Detailed resource guide to Sudoku and its many variations, and related puzzles.