Introduction to Writing Good Puzzle Hunt Puzzles

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)

and the ideas/philosophy of Selinker and Snyder (see sec. 7) A puzzle-writing seminar given to my Mystery Hunt team by Chris Morse

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