Kappa Publishing Group, Inc. is a

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-based publishing company concentrating on adult puzzle books and magazines as well as children's magazines and maps. It is a private company founded in 1955 with $11.5 million in annual sales.

History

In January 2012, Kappa announced that they had acquired Modern Publishing.

Subsidiaries

It has a number of subsidiary companies, such as London Publishing or GAMES Publications. It original owner, H.L. Herbert ("Larry") founded his puzzle business, Official Publications in Manhattan with titles including Teen Word-Finds, Superb Word-Finds, Variety Word-Finds and countless crossword puzzle, crosspatch and fill-it-in titles. Sons Anthony Herbert (Editorial Director) and Paul Herbert (Sales) helped the business grow to the success it became. Edward Tobias was the Editor. Prior to Mr. Herbert, Sr.'s passing in the 1980s, he sold the business to Nick Karabots, who owned the printer where the titles were being printed. The business was then moved to

Ft. Washington Fort Washington, also known as Fort Washington Park, is a historic site at 95 Waverly Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was built by soldiers of the Continental Army under the orders of George Washington in November 1775. It is the oldes ...

, PA. Top word-find contributors in the early 80's included Rich Latta and Frank J. D'Agostino.

Brands

Kappa Publishing Group has a number of brands used for publishing magazines and books for puzzles and games. * GAMES, which is used for

GAMES Magazine ''GAMES World of Puzzles'' is a puzzle magazine formed from the merger of Games and World of Puzzles in October 2014. The entire magazine interior is now newsprint (as opposed to the part-glossy/part-newsprint format of the original ''Games'') an ...

and other magazines and books * Official, such as for Official's Logic Puzzles and Official's Variety Puzzles * Blue Ribbon, such as for Blue Ribbon Word Find * Children's Fun Puzzles

Kappa Map Group

Kappa began acquiring map publishers in 2007 with the acquisition of Universal Map. It acquired

Mapsco Mapsco was a privately held publisher of maps and atlases, and was based in Addison, Texas. Universal Map Group, LLC, an affiliate of Kappa Media Group, Inc. acquired the assets of Mapsco, Inc. from Dallas-based Rupe Investment Corp. in March 2010 ...

in March 2010 and the map division of travel publisher

Langenscheidt Langenscheidt () is a German publishing company that specializes in language reference works. In addition to publishing monolingual dictionaries, Langenscheidt also publishes bilingual dictionaries and travel phrase-books. Langenscheidt has lan ...

in August, including its brands ADC (Alexandria Drafting Company), Arrow Map, Hagstrom Map, American Map and Trakker Map. The Kappa Map Group suddenly ceased operations in early 2022 when the group's Managing Director departed for another position and no so-called "white knight" was found to re