The best place to get high is outside, where you can feel the air and look for cool bugs under logs or whatever. My coworker Drew and I recently climbed a mountain and got stoned, and it was fun as hell. Sadly, not everyone lives near a park or forest or beach where you can easily and discretely smoke the Devil’s lettuce, so your options for post-weed activities are decidedly more confined. Maybe you like to play video games, or just catch chill vibes, both are good options (so long as you don’t call the cops on yourself).
If you’re the introverted cerebral sort after you’ve smoked weed, well, someone made a book for you. An author credited as Dr. Blaise Kushman filled a book called The Stoner Puzzle Stash with word searches, coloring, DIY action, figure-making, and a whole shit-bunch of other puzzles to solve and games to play while you’re high. So in honor of 4/20, I got just as stoned as I like to on other days, and took the book for a test drive. It was chill as hell.
The stoned Pencil Pete pictured on the cover—a weird, graphite-laced cousin of the California Raisins, no doubt—is the first character you’ll meet. “I’m your forever friend,” he’ll tell you. Don’t trust him.
Next you’ll be prompted to create your own Mount Kushmore, an imaginary monument to the headiest of heads. This seemed like it would be easy before I realized that I have no stoner idols—artists and public figures whose brand is “weed, brah” tend to be eyeroll-inducing or the Kottonmouth Kings, and as much as I liked Inherent Vice, I ain’t putting Doc Sportello on the mountain. So I decided my four were Snoop Dogg, my friend Ben from high school, the guy from Dazed And Confused, and the lady from Weeds. Then I got distracted by something and accidentally moved on after only drawing in the eyes.
After a spirit animal quiz—it turns out that mine’s a fox—and a “Find the Object” game that took way too long, you’ll hit your first word search puzzle. The crosswords are too involved and I blew mine off after two answers, but the word search was just enticing enough to sucker me, but too concentration-intensive for me to truly nail. I spent probably 20 minutes on the first one, and I got way too delighted to find the word “pugs” in there. Then, I met my match.
This one fucked me up. It took me an embarrassingly long time to find “top” at the end, and I got derailed watching this hippo video. Great puzzle.
Later in the book, you’re urged to trace your face, which is actually harder than it seems. I somehow managed to mess it up when I tried, at least. I put my nose on the page and started to trace the outside of my face while trying to smash my face into the page. This was a dumb idea, and I realized halfway through that i probably should just outline the front of my face, down the center from the chin to the forehead. I can’t explain why both tracings look the same. (In retrospect, being stoned while watching someone else try to do this is probably pretty fun.)
Page 17 asks: “Can you find nine things wrong with this prehistoric earth?” Yes. Next question.
Hell yeah, time for coloring! I searched my apartment for some colored pencils or crayons, but because I am a Business Adult apparently, I only own two highlighters. (Luckily, they are blue and yellow, which combine to make green.) I used them to color some Reagans:
Is that the turtle’s dick?
I survived another word search and made a mad-lib about vaping, then brought the boys back to town. Pardon my handwriting, which looks like a drunk 12-year-old’s. For some reason, I tried to rush through as many of these as I could, before the inevitable weed nap hit.
I drew a square in a Stanford hat, but it was in the wrong box, and at one point tried to draw a bong made out of an avocado, a Birkenstock, and an outboard motor, which turned out really quite bad. My blue highlighter started to die and I felt like The Martian from The Martian who carries on bravely in the face of dwindling supplies.
After a look alike game that took me a while to sort through, I discovered that I have the sickest, dankest, most partying-est horoscope here.
I was really starting to lose steam at this point, and was disheartened to discover in a reggae guessing game that I have never listened to reggae before. I wearily flipped the page:
Holy shit.
YEAH!
OH YEAH!
God damn it.
At this point, I was reeling from my trip back to black-and-white. I managed to complete two more challenges before reaching my favorite page of the book. I didn’t even fill out the blanks but let me assure you: I can identify these celebrity bud doppelgänger just fine. Doppelgängers are among my greatest fears but these ones were super chill.
I lasted one more puzzle then went to sleep.
After my first round, I think I’ll revisit this again the next time I’m indoor-stoned without anything to do. That’s what it’s here for to begin with. Not to mention that the back of the book features two construction paper stoners you can assemble along with a couch and a TV. (This was frankly too much work for me, but if you have a lot of energy after you get high—and can handle scissors with precision, which, as I found out earlier in the book, I cannot—these activities would probably rule.)
You are presented a diploma at the back of the book, which I will someday earn. Before that happens, I need to get some crayons.