List of Puzzle Elements

A puzzle element is an essential building block or characteristic of a puzzle. This list is intended to be an early first draft of an ongoing community project to catalogue and organize puzzle elements into a hierarchical and useful taxonomy, and should eventually catalog every page that is a member of Category:Puzzle Elements.

Contributors are strongly encouraged to make edits to this page and to start discussion topics in the accompanying Talk page. The following is a list of suggested editing conventions:
 * for each proposed Puzzle Elements (these can link to blank pages while this taxonomy is evolving)
 * italics for new additions
 * strikethough for deletions
 * Supported, Neutral , and Opposed suggestions - Used as discussion prompts for things like name suggestions or Talk section discussions).

=Presentation Elements= Presentation Elements refers to the surface form of a puzzle (how it is presented to the solver). These elements should all be characteristics that a lay-person or non-puzzler can identify and describe, without hunt experience or puzzling knowledge. Because they are surface level characteristics, structure elements should never require any spoiler warnings.


 * Accessibility -  &   tags
 * Media type - Elements that deviate from a "pen-and-paper" medium, or printable / static web page:
 * - Audio file or collection of such files
 * - Video clip or collection of such clips
 * - Physical object that requires manipulation or examination
 * - Interaction event that requires physical and live presence. Could be subdivided further into Event, Runaround, Scavenger Hunt, etc
 * - Game applet, interactive fiction, mods or levels for external video games, ClueKeeper app, augmented reality, etc. Could be subdivided further particularly for Interactive Fiction
 * - Puzzle appears somewhere in the real world, likely deliberately synchronised so as to be released concurrent with the puzzle (i.e. published newspaper crossword, live podcast, art installation, etc)
 * - Executable code that requires compilation or interpretation [Better name?]
 * - Downloadable archives (.ZIP, etc) [Better name?]
 * Others - ?
 * Presentation - Top level, and most immediately apparent appearance of the puzzle
 * - Choose Your Own Adventure, Walkthrough, Checklist, Script, Diary
 * - Puzzles where extremely little information is apparent
 * - Image clues, Numbered clues, Unnumbered clues
 * - May include,  ,
 * Instructions - Nature of instruction provided with the puzzle
 * - Instructions are provided explicitly as part of the puzzle
 * - Examples are provided as part of the puzzle, but deduction of rules is intended to be a part of the puzzle
 * - Flavortext is provided, which may provide some cryptic allusions to the nature of the puzzle
 * - Special category of puzzle where a narrative element is posed within the puzzle and answer provides a resolution to that question
 * Completion - Submission mechanism that deviates from a regular answer checker
 * - Mechanism for submitting answers to sub-puzzles for intermediate confirmation
 * - Completion of puzzle is contingent on finalizing a particular task
 * - Completion of puzzle is contingent on finalizing a particular task

= Content Elements = Content Elements refers to techniques that are encountered during the solving of a puzzle. Due to their size, these have been separated into three Subgroups:

Puzzle Type
Puzzle Type is the main categorisation of a puzzle and the categorisation that is most likely to help solvers find other similar puzzles


 * - See Crossword variants for major variants including:,  ,   ( or "Criss-Cross" ),  , but also would include  ,   and   as common puzzle hunt occurrences, and  could be a possible catch-all for all remaining gridded word puzzles
 * - Puzzle variations that are presented in a  presentation, that involve some sort of word or letter pairing / manipulation / extraction step. May include sub-categories such as   and.
 * - All word play variants that involve unscrambling letters or words. Would include,  ,   ( or perhaps   to be more generic and include anagrams, sentence reconstructions, etc) ,
 * - Includes regular word searches as well as
 * - Substitution ciphers, specifically, with subpage.
 * Note that  is probably more related to a Solve Path element (i.e. see  ).
 * Note that  is probably more related to a Solve Path element (i.e. see  ).


 * - This puzzle type has a HUGE collection of subtypes (see Cross+A, James Marshall's, or Angela and Otto Janko's puzzle summaries) and care ought to be taken to curate a manageable list from this set. Common sub-categorisations may be,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,
 * - Regular logic deduction like the Zebra Puzzle, but also may include game state reconstructions, murder mystery deductions and games like Mafia and Werewolf, induction problems, etc
 * - All puzzles with reconstruction elements (i.e. jigsaws, tangrams, etc). May include subcategories for,  ,  , etc)
 * - Games like Sam Loyd's sliding puzzle, Rush Hour, the Century puzzle, etc
 * - Special puzzle type that relies on other puzzle answers. May include  and   as subcategories
 * - Includes  as incredible convoluted instructional puzzles
 * - (Note: are Rebus puzzles Word Puzzles? Or unique enough in structure to justify being separated?)
 * - Half characterized by presentation (Questions with specific answers) and half by content (Questions about various subjects)
 * - Special puzzle type that relies on other puzzle answers. May include  and   as subcategories
 * - Includes  as incredible convoluted instructional puzzles
 * - (Note: are Rebus puzzles Word Puzzles? Or unique enough in structure to justify being separated?)
 * - Half characterized by presentation (Questions with specific answers) and half by content (Questions about various subjects)

Solve Path Elements
Solve Path Elements attempt to categorise the process and intermediate stages through which the puzzle's solve path proceeds. These have been separated into two types:

"Atomic" Solve Path Elements - individual elements whose scope is that of an individual step
 * - Identification of provided elements as an initial step. Can include,   and   (though this may be redundant given the Media and Presentation elements)
 * - Sets of clues that specifically pair up. Alternate ways of categorising this could be Connecting Sides (left and right hand sets of clues that explicitly pair),  (words form sets based on specific transformations),   (partitions into distinct sets, no necessarily pairs) or   (answers form a connected chain).
 * - Puzzle elements undergo some form of transformation. Again, there is a large number of potential transformations that may occur (see NPL's List of flat) and it may be prudent not to categorise further, but some common subcategories may include,  ,  ,  ,   (or  ),  ,  ,  ,  , etc)
 * - Some element is embedded into the puzzle elements that allows for a reordering prior to extraction (i.e. Alphabetical particularly with 26 unique letters, chronological, consecutively numerical, physical locations, etc)

"Holistic" Solve Path Elements - Higher-level elements whose scope is more about overall nature of the solve path itself (Better name? "Sequence"?)
 * - Solve path involves one sub puzzle provides information required to solve the next,...
 * - Solve path includes deliberate (either clued as such, or unclued) red herrings
 * - Solve path involves multiple repetitions of itself until a final answer is obtainable
 * - Solve path involves reversal of a particular process, with the answer being related to its original state
 * - Puzzle for which (part of) the solve path is not feasible without first combining some additional piece of information

Extraction Elements
Extraction Elements refers to the techniques that are common to hunt puzzles which allow the "extraction" of a final answer from a puzzles that are not necessarily designed to result in a word or phrase


 * - Unsure of the difference to "Alphanumeric" below <-- (We've had at least one case of A-Z or A-Whatever being based on a non-26-member list, instead mapping to, say, a 4x6 grid of colours like in The Scottish Display. Might be worth it to make some new name for this whole-cloth.)
 * - A1Z26 or similar mappings, including other lists with at most 26 elements with canonical ordering
 * - 5-bit alphanumerical code, or 7 to 8-bit ASCII code
 * - see Braille
 * - see The Adventure of the Dancing Men or here
 * - see Morse code
 * - see Pigpen cipher
 * - see Flag semaphore
 * - see Sign language
 * - Pixel art letterform or pictorial representations
 * - May have a fair degree of overlap with
 * - see Connect the dots
 * - Silhouettes, shadows, perspective shifts
 * - Transparencies, OR & XOR additions
 * - Use of double letters, or strings of matching length with exactly 1 letter in common, or letters appearing in special substring patterns
 * - Colored or enumerated letters, Marked or overstuffed grid spaces, Marked entries, etc
 * - Nth letters are extracted from component answers, where the value of N is either supplied, or somehow derived
 * - Appearance of answer within an ordered arrangement of answers. May include,  ,  ,
 * - Answer is related to an item that is identifiable missing from the puzzle's otherwise completed set
 * - Instructions are provided (either explicitly, or via an intermediate answer phrase) that directs the extraction of the final answer. This may includes  where the answer is provided as a "reward" upon the completion of a task and , and instructional extraction that indicates an incorrect solve path.
 * - Appearance of answer within an ordered arrangement of answers. May include,  ,  ,
 * - Answer is related to an item that is identifiable missing from the puzzle's otherwise completed set
 * - Instructions are provided (either explicitly, or via an intermediate answer phrase) that directs the extraction of the final answer. This may includes  where the answer is provided as a "reward" upon the completion of a task and , and instructional extraction that indicates an incorrect solve path.

= Flavor Elements = Flavor Elements elements refer to either the topic (the subject matter of a puzzle) or the theme (the presentation of a puzzle) but either way provides identification of elements that may attract solvers with special interests, knowledge, or areas of expertise.

''This listing is a deliberately selective list, extracted from the much more exhaustive listing in the original Google Doc link here. The intention is for a more "bottom-up" approach that can be expanded up to the desired level of detail.''


 *   - Could be combined to make "Arts & Literature"
 * - All styles
 * - Live theater (Musicals, Shakespeare). For screen theater, see  under
 * - Color & Color theory including palettes.   could be separate, but RGB manipulation is found under Content\Intermediate steps
 *   - Cultural trends not easily classified in other topical areas (hairstyles, fashions, etc) can go here
 * - Puzzles that reference previous, or other hunts
 * - All things MIT specific (Course catalog, floor plans, etc)
 *   - Cooking, Recipes, Mixology, etc
 * - Locations, Countries / Cities, etc.  is a likely sub category of this
 * - Mountains, Climate, Weather, etc
 * - Map specific concepts (real or fictional)
 * - Sub categorisations are possible here but are yet to be finalised (genres like, studios like  , and other things like  , etc)
 * - Sub categorisations are possible here but are yet to be finalised (genres like  & , specific shows like  , etc)
 * - Sub categorisations are possible here but are yet to be finalised (genres like,   or  , elements like   or  , etc). However music extraction elements like   and   are categorised under Content Elements
 * - Webcomics, Youtube series, etc.  may be another useful sub-categorisation with overlap to Culture category above
 * - Fictional deities and belief systems. Some overlap with
 * - Babylonian, Egyptian, Chinese, Roman, Dark Ages, etc. For Heiroglyphs or Cuneiform, see
 * - World explorers, Military figures, Battles, War
 * - Presidents and political figures
 * - Sub categorisations by language is possible (i.e.,  ) as is   (Australian / British colloquialisms, Cockney), etc
 * - Klingon, Quenya, Conlangs like puflantu, etc
 * - Fonts, etc
 * Word constructs such as homophones, palindromes, pangrams, rhymes, false friends are categorised under Content elements
 *   - Could be combined to make "Arts & Literature"
 * Sub categorisations are possible here but are yet to be finalised (genres like, authors, or series like  )
 * is a potential sub categorisation here, potentially split into  and Eastern Zodiac
 * - Constellations, celestial bodies
 * - Periodic table of elements, molecules, etc
 * - Medical, Botany, Zoology
 * - Recreational mathematics, Large numbers
 * - Electronics,
 * - Coding exercises, algorithms, hacking
 * - Shares a lot with  and may not need it's own categorisation
 * Specific sports and hobbies are possible here but are yet to be finalised (, ,  , etc)
 * - Specific board games are possible here but are yet to be finalised (, , etc)
 * - Specific card games are possible here but are yet to be finalised (, ,  , etc)
 * - Specific video games are possible here but are yet to be finalised (, , etc
 * - Knitting, crocheting, stitching, etc
 * - Origami, etc
 * - Shares a lot with  and may not need it's own categorisation
 * Specific sports and hobbies are possible here but are yet to be finalised (, ,  , etc)
 * - Specific board games are possible here but are yet to be finalised (, , etc)
 * - Specific card games are possible here but are yet to be finalised (, ,  , etc)
 * - Specific video games are possible here but are yet to be finalised (, , etc
 * - Knitting, crocheting, stitching, etc
 * - Origami, etc
 * - Knitting, crocheting, stitching, etc
 * - Origami, etc