Introduction to Writing Good Puzzle Hunt Puzzles

Summary

Introduction to Writing Good Puzzle Hunt Puzzles Version 1.0 - 2014-02-24 - cleanup, add metapuzzle and solving tools sections Version 0.9 - 2014-02-18 0. About This Document This document is advice for writing puzzles. It is specifically geared toward the MIT Mystery Hunt, though the techniques and ideas will likely be useful in other puzzle-writing. The target audience is those who have participated in one or a few puzzle hunts, but not written a substantial number of puzzles before. I will attempt to explain not just some good practices, but (in the interest of "teaching how to fish") try to explain why they are good. Most of the references to specific puzzles are from the 2014 MIT Mystery Hunt, for the simple reason that I'm the most familiar with those puzzles. 0a. Authorship, Influences, License This document was originally written by David Wilson in 2014, though a lot of this content is my explanation of other people's advice that I've encountered. An incomplete list of influences: Foggy Brume's posts giving tips on puzzle creation (see sec. 7) Puzzlecraft and the ideas/philosophy of Selinker and Snyder (see sec. 7) A puzzle-writing seminar given to my Mystery Hunt team by Chris Morse Numerous in-person and email interactions with members of my Mystery Hunt team (whose 2014 name was [Alice Shrugged]), with special recognition to Erin Rhode and Dan Katz. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License. 0b. Spoiler Warning This document CONTAINS SPOILERS for numerous puzzles in previous Mystery Hunts, mostly but not exclusively 2014. You have been warned. 1. Introduction: The Goal Why do solvers participate in puzzle hunts? The nominal answer might be "to find the coin" (in the Mystery Hunt), or "to win", or for a non-competitive team "to solve puzzles". But this is a surface goal. Every solver's ultimate goal is to have fun. What makes an experience fun varies from solver to solver--on a large, comp...