Witch Match Puzzle is a popular type of puzzle game that involves matching different elements or objects to complete a level or progress in the game. The game typically presents players with a grid or board filled with different elements, such as colored potions, gems, or other magical objects. The objective is to match three or more of the same elements either horizontally or vertically by swapping adjacent tiles or pieces. The gameplay mechanics of Witch Match Puzzle are relatively simple and intuitive. Players can usually make matches by swapping adjacent elements with each other to create a line of three or more matching elements. When a match is made, the elements are usually cleared from the board, allowing new elements to fall from the top to fill the empty spaces.
There are very talented authors listed here and I give a quick take on what makes each book special, so let’s get started!
Religion and the Decline of Magic by Keith Thomas Thomas shows how belief in magic and witchcraft were woven into the way people made sense of the world in the 16th and 17th centuries. Here, we get an account of how the trials affected Puritanism, the role of the church in the early American experience, and how commercial capitalism played a part in the hysteria of the trials.
When a match is made, the elements are usually cleared from the board, allowing new elements to fall from the top to fill the empty spaces. This often leads to chain reactions and cascading matches, resulting in higher scores and more progress in the game. Witch Match Puzzle games often feature various power-ups or special elements that can aid players in advancing through the levels.
Top 10 books about witch-hunts
‘I t is easy to blame the dark,” Sylvia Plath writes in Witch Burning. Stories of witch-hunts show us how the dark is given a name; they talk to us about anxiety and belief and our hunger for scapegoats. All those pious fantasies of women suckling their familiars! Witch-hunts are just a metaphor now, we hope, but we’re drawn to them as much as we ever were.
The White House witch-finder might like to tweet that he’s the hunted, but in reality it’s the marginal, the outspoken, those who lack a voice or upset their neighbours who get pursued. Those least responsible become most at fault: the wanton, the widow, the shrew. Because most of all, witch-hunts have been about controlling women’s sexuality and their tongues. When “one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs”, Virginia Woolf wrote in A Room of One’s Own, “I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet”. Women writers, in particular, are recovering these voices.
The books take us back to earlier times of crisis and blame – the Reformation, the English civil war, Puritan New England. My new novel The Wheelwright’s Daughter was inspired by a landslip in 1571 that tore down part of Marcle Ridge in rural Herefordshire. It became famous; it’s still called The Wonder on OS maps. In 1586, William Camden wrote that the hill roused itself up as if out of a deep sleep and moved, roaring, for three days together. What a figure, I thought, for the terrifying dislocations of the Reformation. How might it have been understood, how might people have looked for a scapegoat? Writing in the Brexit era, with looming climate catastrophe and the rise of populism, the parallels with contemporary Britain were inescapable.
The books and stories below variously, wonderfully, follow the threads of the witch-hunt.
1. The Discoverie of Witches by Reginald Scot (1584)
“Truelie I denie not that there are witches,” Scot insists in his Epistle to the Readers, before spending 560 pages doing just that. He meticulously piles up the arguments of the witch-mongers and knocks them down; charmers, soothsayers, alchemists, conjurors and occultists aren’t in hock to the devil, he says, they are charlatans. Shakespeare drew on Scot for Puck in A Midsummer’s Night Dream and the witches in Macbeth. King James I had the book burned. I couldn’t resist giving Scot a walk-on part in my book.
2. The Daylight Gate by Jeanette Winterson
The Pendle witch trials of 1612 led to the deaths of 12 people, including the enigmatic Alice Nutter. My Lancashire grandmother liked to say that we were descended from her but she told a lot of tales. Winterson’s defiant Alice made me wish it was true. The book bristles with magic – there are talking heads, raining teeth and deals with the devil, but there is also a fierce analysis of power and its abuses. Winterson’s stark, poetic prose ensures this stays with you long after you’ve finished reading.
Circe Invidiosa (1892) by JW Waterhouse. Photograph: Alamy
3. Circe by Madeline Miller
I thought I knew the story of the witch who turned Odysseus’s men into pigs, but Miller’s magnificent novel gives Circe her own epic. A daughter of the sun, she is banished to Aiaia where, part-god, part-herbalist, she teaches herself magic. She needs it, for it’s not only men who threaten: the gods, too, can be witch-hunters. The writing shimmers and figures including Daedalus and Odysseus are threaded beautifully into Circe’s story as she learns not only sorcery but love, and what it might mean to be mortal.
4. The Faerie Queen by Edmund Spenser
In Book II, Canto XII, Sir Guyon valiantly hunts down the witch Acrasia in the “Bowre of Blisse”. Acrasia is wily; she stupefies men with sex and turns them into pigs, but her bower is all music, all delight. “Gather the Rose of love whilest yet is time,” a minstrel sings - and all the birds echo his song. Nevertheless, Acrasia gets tied up and Sir Guyon trashes her bower. What keeps me coming back to Spenser’s Elizabethan masterpiece, in all its archaic lushness, is its ambivalence – it lingers wistfully over the garden it condemns.
5. Religion and the Decline of Magic by Keith Thomas
Thomas shows how belief in magic and witchcraft were woven into the way people made sense of the world in the 16th and 17th centuries. The voices of ordinary people ring out from almost every page: Ursula Clarke in 1667 hoping William Metcalfe would “waste like the dew against the sun”; Lodowick Muggleton declaring that issuing curses “did him more good than if a man had given him 40 shillings”. At 800 pages, this is a bible of a book: dip in and in again – it’s worth it.
6. The Witchfinder’s Sister by Beth Underdown
“Once, I scarcely believed in the devil,” Alice Hopkins begins, before widowhood forces her to go and live with her brother Matthew Hopkins, who is collecting names. We follow Alice’s attempts not only to document but to fathom her brother’s cruelty. “Turn over the stone,” she says, “and find another history, struggling to escape.” We need more of these histories.
‘A warning of tyranny on the way’ … Samantha Colley as Abigail Williams in the Old Vic’s 2014 production of The Crucible. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian
7. The Crucible by Arthur Miller
No list of witch-hunt books would be complete without Miller’s play. Through the story of the Salem witch trials of 1692-93, the play indicts 1950s McCarthyism – and Trump, and Farage, and … When the play is suddenly a hit somewhere, Miller observed, it’s “a warning of tyranny on the way or a reminder of tyranny just past”. Read or watched, the visceral clarity of Miller’s writing lingers like a catch in the breath, abolishing any reassuring sense that witch-hunts happened then, not now.
8. Lois the Witch by Elizabeth Gaskell
When orphan Lois Barclay lands in New England in 1691 she finds the ground as unsteady as the water. And well she might. Gaskell shows us a community in terrified opposition to its native forests and people. I love the way she refuses to condescend or simply condemn – she puts the reader in the middle of the panic, feeling it spread. The novella has been overshadowed by Gaskell’s novels, but it’s a small, bright gem.
9. I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem by Maryse Condé
Tituba, the “black” witch convicted in the Salem trials (she was in fact probably Arawak) tells her own story: a life that began when her mother was raped on a slave ship called Christ the King. Tituba is flawed and passionate; the Puritans denounce her, but we see her as a witch on her own terms, rejecting America: “A vast, cruel land where the spirits only beget evil!”
How to Hang a Witch by Adriana Mather
These power-ups can be earned by making matches with specific elements or through other gameplay achievements. For example, matching four or more elements may create a special potion or gem that can clear a whole row or column of elements when activated. In addition to their casual and entertaining gameplay, Witch Match Puzzle games often include visually appealing graphics and captivating sound effects or music. The game may also incorporate a variety of themes and settings, ranging from witchcraft and magic to fantasy or adventure themes. Witch Match Puzzle games are available on various platforms, including mobile devices, web browsers, and gaming consoles. They are generally well-received by players of all ages and are considered ideal for short bursts of gameplay or as a way to relax and unwind. The genre's popularity has led to the development of numerous variations and spin-offs, each offering its own unique twist on the matching puzzle gameplay..
Reviews for "Witch Match Puzzle: A Spellbinding Twist on Traditional Match Games"
- Sarah - 2 stars - I really didn't enjoy playing Witch Match Puzzle. The gameplay was repetitive and boring, with no real challenge or strategy involved. The graphics were also quite basic and not very visually appealing. Additionally, I found the in-app purchases to be way too expensive, which made the game feel more like a money-grab than a fun experience. Overall, I would not recommend this game to others.
- David - 1 star - Witch Match Puzzle was a huge disappointment for me. The levels were way too easy and it felt like I was just mindlessly swiping my finger across the screen without any real purpose. The game also had a lot of annoying pop-up ads that interrupted the flow of gameplay. I quickly grew tired of the repetitive music and sound effects as well. It's safe to say that I uninstalled this game pretty quickly and won't be revisiting it.
- Emily - 3 stars - Witch Match Puzzle was just okay for me. The concept of matching witch-themed items was fun at first, but it quickly became monotonous and lacked variety. The power-ups and boosters didn't add much excitement either, as they were too easy to obtain and didn't really make a significant difference in the gameplay. I also found the game to be quite glitchy at times, with items not responding to my taps or disappearing randomly. Overall, it's not a terrible game, but there are definitely better puzzle games out there.