Glossary of Puzzle Hunt Terms

(Redirected from Illegal Puzzle)

This is a glossary of terms used in puzzle hunts. Some entries have standalone articles; these are linked in the term name.

A[edit | edit source]

A1Z26[edit | edit source]

A very common code and extraction method used in puzzle hunts, where numbers are mapped to the letter in that position and vice versa. For instance, 19 would map to S, because S is the 19th letter in the English alphabet. Also called Alphaconvert.

Acrostic[edit | edit source]

A word puzzle typically consisting of a long sequence of numbered blanks, representing a quotation or other text, and a series of clues and numbered blanks representing the letters of the answer to said clue. The clued blanks’ numbers correspond one-to-one with the blanks in the long sequence, and blanks with the same number have the same letter; the goal is to fill out all the blanks. The first letters of correct answers may also spell out a message.

Aha[edit | edit source]

For a puzzle, an insight or intuitive leap which is necessary to make progress. This can be towards the start of the puzzle, or midway through it. Ahas often form bottlenecks in puzzles, due to their nature of being required by the solve path. Sometimes also called an "Aha moment" or "Eureka moment".

Named after the sound a solver would make once they figure out said insight.

American crossword[edit | edit source]

Typically, a type of crossword featuring “straight” (non-cryptic) clues and a blocked grid (one using black squares) in which every square is checked; or such a crossword grid. Contrasts with: British crossword, Barred crossword.

Anagram[edit | edit source]

To rearrange the letters in a word, phrase, or sequence of letters; or a word/phrase produced by doing so.

Outside puzzlehunts, this term is mainly used for two words/phrases that have some punny or humorous relation to each other, e.g.: “DORMITORY is an anagram of DIRTY ROOM.”

Answerphrase[edit | edit source]

A phrase of the form, “THE ANSWER IS (answer)”. A degenerate form of the cluephrase.

Arepo[edit | edit source]

One inelegant component of a construction that allows the whole thing to work. Named after the Sator Square, the 5×5 square of letters which forms a meaningful phrase in Latin when read horizontally, vertically, or backwards, but only if you accept “AREPO” as the name of some person. This usage in the context of puzzle hunts was coined by Ian Tullis in his 2014 GC Summit talk, "Advice From (and for) a Puzzle Snob".[1]

S A T O R
A R E P O
T E N E T
O P E R A
R O T A S

Australian-style[edit | edit source]

Loosely describes a set of puzzle hunt operating conventions in which puzzles and pre-written hints are released at fixed times each day over several days. Named after the triad of Australian puzzle hunts MUMS, SUMS, and CiSRA, which ran with peak reliability around 2009–2013.

B[edit | edit source]

Backsolve[edit | edit source]

To solve a feeder puzzle by using constraints from a metapuzzle to guess its answer.

There is a spectrum of backsolving. In extreme cases you might ignore the puzzle entirely and guess the answer simply based on how it fits into the metapuzzle. In milder cases, you might have a constraint like you know a few letters or a theme from the puzzle and also a constraint from the metapuzzle, and combine the two to find the answer.

Puzzle and meta authors will sometimes try to design metapuzzles to prevent backsolving or make it harder, since if you backsolve a puzzle you manage to circumvent the entire puzzle itself, which somebody probably worked really hard on.

Contrast with: forward-solve, McFly, sidesolve.

Barred crossword[edit | edit source]

A type of crossword grid in which there are no black squares, but there are thick borders separating entries. The presence of unchecked squares varies. Contrast with: Blocked crossword. See also: American crossword, British crossword.

Bigram[edit | edit source]

A pair of letters, generally adjacent, usually used to describe wordplay modifications or relationships between words. You can insert a bigram into SCALES to get SCYTALES, but not SCALPELS.

Contrast with: Trigram

Black box[edit | edit source]

A broad category of puzzle in which the goal is to determine the inner workings of something by only interacting with it.

Blocked crossword[edit | edit source]

A type of crossword grid that uses black squares and blanks. Contrast with: Barred crossword. See also: British crossword and American crossword.

British crossword[edit | edit source]

A type of blocked crossword grid using black squares in which entries typically lie on every other row and column and every other blank in each entry is checked; or a crossword using such a grid. Often (but not always) uses cryptic clues.

Contrast with: American crossword.

Brute force[edit | edit source]

Solving or trying to solve a puzzle by blindly trying all possible solutions and checking for correctness, rather than figuring out the solution in the intended logical or creative way. When the search space is relatively small and the anticipated solve time is relatively large, a solver might determine that the solution could be obtained faster through brute force than by solving. As an extreme example, if a solver needed to solve a 100x100 crossword to get a 2-digit combination to a lock, the solver might decide it was faster to try all 100 combinations of the 2-digit lock (if that is allowed) than to solve the 100x100 crossword. As the number of combination digits goes up, and the size of the crossword goes down, brute force at some point becomes counterproductive. Computers and creative programming have made brute force attacks much quicker, and depending on the nature of a particular Hunt, brute force attacks might be viewed either as cheating or at least as against the spirit of the competition (though in large-scale Hunts, typically any solving method not expressly prohibited is permitted).

C[edit | edit source]

Caesar cipher[edit | edit source]

(Also: shift cipher.) A cipher in which each letter is replaced with the letter N positions after it in the alphabet, wrapping around the ends (A comes after Z), for some fixed number N. Rot-13 is the special case where N = 13, and is notable because it is its own inverse.

Capstone puzzle[edit | edit source]

A puzzle with particular significance in terms of hunt progression or unlocking, like a metapuzzle, but that doesn’t directly use the answers of any feeder puzzles.

Cheater square[edit | edit source]

A black square in a crossword that, if removed, would not cause the word count to decrease.

Check[edit | edit source]

In a crossword, for a blank cell to be part of more than one entry, which is a run of blank cells in which an answer should be written in. A cell that is only part of one entry is unchecked. In typical American crosswords, all squares must be checked; in typical British crosswords, around half of the squares in each entry are checked. Cells that are somehow part of three entries may be called triple-checked, and so on.

Cheese[edit | edit source]

An unintended way of solving a puzzle that often short-circuits large parts of the intended solution. For example, using the number of blanks given to determine whether an extracted letter is between [a-i] or [j-z], and then taking the topmost Nutrimatic result.

Cluephrase[edit | edit source]

A phrase that suggests the final answer, or more generally just the next step in a puzzle, usually extracted from earlier information in the puzzle.

Coin[edit | edit source]

The prize at the end of the annual MIT Mystery Hunt, which is often, but not always, a physical coin that members of the winning team can keep as a trophy. Here is a historical gallery of Mystery Hunt coins.

The end prize or object to find (when there is one) in any puzzle hunt can, by metaphorical extension, be called a coin.

Cryptic clue[edit | edit source]

A specific genre of clue for words or phrases that consists of a definition and a wordplay-based description, or a crossword using such clues. There are many styles and conventions surrounding cryptic crosswords. Wikipedia: Cryptic crossword

D[edit | edit source]

Diagonalization[edit | edit source]

Taking the Nth letter of the Nth item in a sequence: the first letter of the first, the second letter of the second, and so on. A moderately common extraction technique, more so when all items have the same number of letters.

Diagramless[edit | edit source]

A crossword where you’re only given the clues (typically with numbers), but not the grid. The grid is still usually numbered in the standard way and is also likely rotationally symmetric, which can be used to restore it.

Ditloid[edit | edit source]

A type of word puzzle in which a phrase has had most of its words abbreviated, typically with common words like prepositions and articles preserved and with numbers preserved but written out as digits instead. Solvers must deduce the original phrase. For example, “24 H in a D” solves to “24 Hours in a Day”.

The name itself is a ditloid, where "1 DitLoID" can be expanded to the book title One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

Dropquote[edit | edit source]

A type of word puzzle where a phrase, quotation, or other series of words has been concealed in a crossword-like grid reading left to right, top to bottom, and then the letters in each column have been removed and provided in sorted order at the top.

E[edit | edit source]

Eigenletter[edit | edit source]

An extraction method where the (usually unique) letter that appears at the same index in two words/phrases is taken. More common if both words/phrases have the same number of letters. Also called Crashing (SPACE and TRICK "crash" at the C).

"Eigenletter" was first attested in the puzzle This Anagram Does Not Exist from Teammate Hunt 2020.

Elision[edit | edit source]

Often applied to cryptic clues, the act of removing whitespace in a clue. For example, using "trailhead" to clue "T" (since the typical cryptic parsing would need to be "trail head"). Sometimes frowned upon as this increases the possibility space that solvers have to consider.

Enumeration[edit | edit source]

A number or sequence of numbers describing how many letters there are in an answer or each word thereof, often written in parentheses and occasionally with additional annotations. The enumeration for “EXAMPLE” might be (7). In multi-word phrases and other answers with spaces in them, the spaces may be noted with commas (typical in cryptics) or left as spaces; for example, the enumeration for “ORANGE JUICE” might be (6,5) or (6 5). Other punctuation is typically left verbatim; the enumeration for “JACK-O’-LANTERN” might be (4-1’-7).

NPL flats have more specific rules for enumerations; asterisks are prepended to enumerations for words that are “inherently” capitalized, while carets are prepended to enumerations for words that are capitalized due to their context, such as being part of a multi-word name, among other annotations. THE DRAGON OF WANTLEY might be enumerated (^3 ^6 2 *7). These are not particularly common.

Some puzzles also feature “word enumerations” such as “(2 wds.)” that tell you how many words are in an answer, but not the number of letters; when they exist, they are usually only added to answers with more than one word. These may be used in American crosswords, where enumerations are not usually provided, as an additional hint; they may also be used in cryptics with gimmicks where some entries require modifications before entry into the grid, and providing the exact enumerations would give too much away about which entries are being modified.

Extraction[edit | edit source]

A step in a puzzle solution that condenses its information; often, but not necessarily, the final step. Typical example involves extracting one letter from each clue answer or subpuzzle and having the letters spell out the answer or a cluephrase.

F[edit | edit source]

Feeder[edit | edit source]

A puzzle whose answer is used in a metapuzzle (or the answer itself).

In most hunts, every feeder is used by exactly one metapuzzle. Sometimes, this matchup is clearly indicated (for example, the puzzles may be grouped into a “round” which has only one metapuzzle); sometimes, deducing the matchup is part of the puzzle hunt. In rare cases, a feeder may be used by multiple metas.

It is possible for a metapuzzle to be itself a feeder to a higher-level metapuzzle (sometimes called a metametapuzzle).

Fish puzzle[edit | edit source]

A fairly straightforward puzzle that is significantly easier than the rest of the Hunt. These puzzles usually require fewer ahas and can be solved by a single person in a reasonable time. The term is most relevant to Mystery Hunt because of its large number of puzzles.

Named after the School of Fish round from Mystery Hunt 2015.

Flat[edit | edit source]

A genre of word puzzle that clues wordplay-related words through context, usually in a verse. Most well known for appearing in the National Puzzlers' League’s publication, The ENIGMA. The term "flat" derives from the fact that the answer can be written in a line of test (effectively one-dimensionally), as opposed to puzzles such as crosswords where the physical positions of the answers are important (and which, when minimal additional elements are involved, can be called "forms," the counterpart to "flats").

Flavor text[edit | edit source]

Text in a puzzle that’s typically displayed right after the title and distinguished from the rest of the puzzle (usually by being italicized). Flavor text usually does not contain clues or puzzle components that are mechanically necessary for solving the puzzle (no letters will be extracted from them, for example), but may obliquely hint at a puzzle mechanism or be used as a component of the meta. Flavor text may also simply be irrelevant text that integrates the puzzle into a story or theme (to provide “flavor”). (This is unlike the usage in, say, tabletop games, where typical flavor text is entirely mechanically irrelevant.) Not all puzzles have flavor text.

Forward-solve[edit | edit source]

To solve a puzzle “normally”, without using information from a metapuzzle.

Contrast with: backsolve, sidesolve, McFly.

G[edit | edit source]

Gimmick[edit | edit source]

A novel puzzle mechanic applied to a familiar concept. Most commonly used when referring to crosswords in which some words must be entered in a non-standard way. Examples include crosswords in which: some squares accept a bigram or multiple letters; some squares accept different letters for the across or down clue; some words are not in a straight line; etc.

Green paint[edit | edit source]

Typically in crosswords, a phrase that’s grammatically and semantically sensible, but consists of components that aren’t more meaningful or notable together than they are apart. Self-describing: green paint certainly exists, but nothing is especially notable about paint that’s green in particular instead of any other color (or green paint in particular instead of any other green object).

An example of a phrase that isn’t green paint is “red tape”. Although tape can indeed be red or any other color, the phrase “red tape” has a specific metaphorical meaning that isn’t shared by other colors of tape or other red objects.

I[edit | edit source]

Identify, Sort, Index, Solve (ISIS)[edit | edit source]

A loosely defined, common puzzle type consisting of those four steps in order: identifying some puzzle-provided objects or clues, sorting them in some order based on the identification, indexing by a provided number to produce a cluephrase, and using the cluephrase to solve the puzzle.

Coined by Foggy Brume in 2010.

Illegal puzzle[edit | edit source]

A puzzle that breaks what one might expect a puzzle to be, or otherwise goes against "traditional puzzlehunting convention". The term comes from teammate internal parlance and was mainly used outside the team in context of multiple puzzles from MIT Mystery Hunt 2023.[2]

Indexing[edit | edit source]

To take the Nth letter from a word or phrase, or more rarely the Nth word from a sentence or just any Nth term from a sequence, for some given N. When indexing to extract letters, spaces and punctuation are typically skipped in the count. A common step in extraction.

Instruction phrase[edit | edit source]

(Also intermediate phrase.) A phrase which hints at the next step of the puzzle. Usually more involved than a simple clue (which are considered cluephrases), but can range from an instruction to extract the puzzle, to hinting an entire second half of the puzzle.

K[edit | edit source]

Keyring Problem[edit | edit source]

An asserted flaw that at one or more points of a puzzle there are several reasonable things to try, with the required solution path not standing out among the others or at least a small subset of the others, so that solving the puzzle at that point feels akin to having a keyring of keys with no good way forward other than to try all the keys until one fits. Not only is that typically viewed as problematic by solvers, it can also lead to inaccurate testsolving data -- the fact that a puzzle with a keyring problem is successfully solved by one or two testsolvers may not translate to it being solved as easily by others, as the one or two testsolvers might have gotten lucky and tried the right key near the beginning, whereas other solvers might go through 10 keys without success and conclude they are doing something wrong because none of the "most reasonable" (to them) solve paths worked, so they might abandon the keyring (and thus the correct key) to try to do something very different. Also called the Taipei Problem, after a puzzle called Taipei in the 1999 MIT Mystery Hunt that a number of people felt exhibited this issue.

Konundrum[edit | edit source]

(Also: Duck Konundrum.) A puzzle consisting of a sequence of detailed instructions that the solver must faithfully follow or simulate to solve the puzzle. The instructions are often unrealistic but easy to simulate, e.g. involving animals or fictional beings making complex decisions. The genre-defining example is The Duck Konundrum from MIT Mystery Hunt.

L[edit | edit source]

Lather, rinse, repeat[edit | edit source]

(Also known as recursion.) A shorthand for describing, or reminder while solving, the final stage of a puzzle where the solver must "do the same thing again" to some intermediate result. For example, if the theme of the puzzle is replacing animals with the names of their young, and that leads to a seeming nonsense answer phrase of SLIDOG, if you "lather rinse repeat" what you've learned you'll get the intended answer SLIP UP.

Logic puzzle[edit | edit source]

A puzzle relying primarily on logical deduction. Subgenres include Nikoli-style grid logic puzzles like Sudoku, which take place on a grid with clues and involve filling out the grid according to some abstract rules, and Einstein’s riddle—like logic puzzles, which typically consist of several lists of equally-sized things and a list of statements about how they are matched up.

M[edit | edit source]

Mangled clues[edit | edit source]

(there isn’t a consensus term; other phrases include “cluetations”, “word transformers”, “tortured clues”, "altered states") A puzzle type in which clues are typically given without spaces and where each word has been modified according to some orthographic rule, things like “change all As to Bs”, “insert a Q after the second letter”, “Caesar shift the last letter forward by four”, or combinations thereof. Typically, the answer to the clue will then be modified by the same rule or its reverse.

McFly[edit | edit source]

(v.) To forward-solve a puzzle you previously backsolved, usually after the hunt for fun.

Metapuzzle[edit | edit source]

(often shortened to “meta”) A puzzle that uses answers from other puzzles. Typically unlocked after regular puzzles. Usually important for progressing through a hunt; the answer to a metapuzzle may have plot significance in that regard and is also often humorous or punny. The opposite may be called a “regular puzzle” or, when the relationship to a metapuzzle is being emphasized, a “feeder”.

When the correspondence of metapuzzles to feeders is not provided and must be determined by solvers, the process is usually called “meta(puzzle) matching”.

N[edit | edit source]

Namystic[edit | edit source]

A kind of puzzle in which the letters of the alphabet are arranged around a central shape (typically a triangle or circle) and then a path is drawn connecting adjacent letters in a word, phrase, or name. The path may then be filled in to obscure some of its segments. The goal is to determine the original word, phrase, or name. From Games Magazine maybe?

Natick[edit | edit source]

When two unguessable answers, typically obscure names, cross in a crossword, such that the square at which they cross cannot be determined by the solver; or the square in which they cross. From Rex Parker commentary.

Nutrimatic[edit | edit source]

(often shortened to "Nutri") A powerful regex-based word search engine, which sorts phrases based on commonness in the Wikipedia corpus.

P[edit | edit source]

Partial[edit | edit source]

(Also: confirmation.) An intermediate phrase obtained from a puzzle that produces a special response when entered into the answer checker. The response may guide the solver to the next step, or may simply provide nothing more than confirmation that that phrase is correct, e.g. “Keep going!” Not all puzzle hunts provide partial confirmation.

Postsolve[edit | edit source]

To solve or to finish solving a Hunt after it is over. This is usually done if the solvers missed the Hunt while it was live, or if they could not finish it within the timeframe. Postsolving has become more common recently and is more applicable to large hunts, especially Mystery Hunts.

Pure meta[edit | edit source]

A metapuzzle with no or minimal content (e.g. only flavor text) in and of itself; the metapuzzle consists of just the answers that feed into it. Contrast with a shell meta.

Puzzle trail[edit | edit source]

A linear sequence of puzzles where each one leads to the next, often by changing a component of the URL to the answer. The ur-example is notpr0n.

Q[edit | edit source]

Qat[edit | edit source]

A word finder website, hosted and maintained by Quinapalus.

R[edit | edit source]

Random anagram[edit | edit source]

(Also: randomgram or unclued anagram.) An anagramming step in a puzzle without a motivation, a provided order of the letters, or confirmation of the result.

Used pejoratively when describing the construction of a puzzle. It is generally considered good practice that every expected step in the puzzle should be clued or motivated in some way.

Occasionally used to describe a solver’s practice of skipping a step by unscrambling a word or phrase when the intended solve path was to obtain the ordering another way.

Red herring[edit | edit source]

Any false path in a puzzle, e.g. an unintended message that can be extracted from the puzzle data or a coincidental pattern that isn’t actually relevant to solving the puzzle. Some red herrings are surprising enough to become enshrined in puzzlehunt history, e.g. “BE NOISY” from the 2002 Mystery Hunt. Putting intentional red herrings in puzzles is frowned upon because they aren’t fun to be stuck in, and solvers are fully capable of unintentionally discovering their own.

Some puzzles may use the literal phrase “red herring” or synonyms (“scarlet swimmer”, etc.), or a picture of a red herring, in places where including some message or image is necessary to make the puzzle work, to explicitly indicate that there’s no further meaning to that choice.

Reverse image search[edit | edit source]

(Sometimes abbreviated to RIS.) A tool to automatically identify images, often used for puzzles that contain many images of people or less commonly used things.

Rosetta Stone[edit | edit source]

A specific data source that is required in order to solve a puzzle, much like the real Rosetta Stone was used to decipher hieroglyphics. A book cipher is a kind of Rosetta Stone.

Runaround[edit | edit source]

A puzzle that generally involves following instructions to move around a physical space (by running or otherwise), typically to gather information in a puzzly way.

By analogy to the puzzles giving the location of the coin in the MIT Mystery Hunt, "runaround" may also refer to the final puzzle of any hunt, regardless of whether it meets the first definition.

S[edit | edit source]

Scrip[edit | edit source]

(Also: nuke, answerberg, manuscrip, free answer, or numerous other words)

A token or other reward that automatically solves a puzzle during a hunt. Scrip is commonly given when a hunt is significantly harder than planned, such as Galactic Puzzle Hunt 2019 and multiple Mystery Hunts. In the Mystery Hunt, scrip is also often used as a reward for "event" puzzles.

"Scrip" was originally short for manuscrip, referring to the rewards given for event completion in MH22. "Answerberg"-- a portmanteau of "answer" and "adviceberg"-- was the name for this type of reward in Galactic Puzzle Hunt 2019, which had Antarctic exploration as its first-round theme. A number of other terms for this type of reward have been used outside of specific hunts, such as "nuke", or simply "free answer".

Shell meta[edit | edit source]

A metapuzzle with content other than its flavortext and the answers to other puzzles. This content is referred to as the “shell”. Contrast with a pure meta.

Sidesolve[edit | edit source]

A partial backsolve and partial forward-solve, in which information from both the puzzle and its meta is used.

Solve-to-work ratio[edit | edit source]

A rough and somewhat subjective way to describe how much time a solver will spend using creative mental effort (solving) as opposed to doing mechanical tasks (work). It is meant both as a goal that should often (but perhaps not always) be kept in mind when constructing a puzzle, and as a shorthand in describing a puzzle during or after solving, with a high Solve-To-Work ratio typically being preferred to a low one, and a ratio under 1 meaning the puzzle might feel more like work than play. What counts as solving and what counts as work is ultimately in the mind of the constructor and solver, with the original idea being that work is something you could instruct a non-puzzler to do and they would do it roughly as well as a puzzler could, with examples being transferring letters from clues to grid in an acrostic, counting large numbers of things when there's no trick or insight to doing so, or performing straightforward but laborious research (such as finding episode numbers of TV episodes matching certain descriptions). Solvers might disagree significantly on the Solve-To-Work ratio of a particular puzzle -- for example, some solvers might find ungimmicked word searches to be enjoyable, while others might think that, for them, such puzzles have a Solve-To-Work ratio of near zero. But as between solvers with similar tastes, it can be one useful way to characterize a puzzle, and for constructors, it is a quantity that might usefully be kept in mind.

Solvepath[edit | edit source]

A step-by-step description of how someone is expected to or actually does solve a particular puzzle. Generally touches on individual deductions that should lead solvers to each part of the puzzle.

Spam[edit | edit source]

To submit many guesses at the answer to a puzzle within a short period of time, usually in the form of guesses based upon theme, answers suspected to be needed for a meta, or answers extrapolated from having extracted a few letters. While a small number of guesses is often inevitable, excessive spamming as a way around several puzzles is often viewed as outside the spirit of the game, and sometimes "antispam" methods are used to prevent abuse (such as rate-limiting answer submissions, locking out further submissions after a set number of incorrect guesses, or even just a message from Game Control asking a team to please stop spamming).

Surface[edit | edit source]

Of cryptic clues: the literal meaning of the clue. Theoretically irrelevant for solving the clue, but valued for aesthetic purposes, and can also be more or less misleading. Most people would probably say that “Side-mounted component in dealer’s car (4)” has a better surface than “Part of Voldemort example (4)”, even though both clue the same word (DEMO) with the same wordplay (containment), because the arrangement and literal meaning of words in the first clue are more coherent and more grammatical.

T[edit | edit source]

The Error That Cannot Be Named[edit | edit source]

(Usually abbreviated TETCBN.) A mistake in which the answer to a puzzle or clue literally appears in the puzzle or clue. So called because naming the error as such and then fixing it would give away the answer to the puzzle or clue.

Token[edit | edit source]

A (usually) meta-relevant object awarded after the solve of a puzzle. A meta that primarily uses tokens (as opposed to the puzzle answers) to solve is known as a token meta.

Transaddition[edit | edit source]

Adding a letter and then anagramming, or a word/phrase produced by such a process.

For example, MEGAPLEX is a transaddition of EXAMPLE because it can be formed by adding the letter G and rearranging them.

Transdeletion[edit | edit source]

Removing a letter and then anagramming, or a word/phrase produced by such a process.

For example, EXAMPLE is a transdeletion of MEGAPLEX because it can be formed by removing the letter G and rearranging the rest.

Trigram[edit | edit source]

A triplet of letters, generally adjacent, usually used to describe wordplay modifications or relationships between words.

Some puzzles consist of a list of trigrams, typically sorted, and possibly an enumeration, with the goal to rearrange the trigrams into a coherent phrase or sentence, fitting the enumeration if one exists. This puzzle type is sometimes jocularly called “trigram hell”.

Contrast with: Bigram

V[edit | edit source]

Variety[edit | edit source]

Used to signify that a puzzle is not a basic type. For example, a "variety cryptic" has one or more gimmicks going on beyond a standard cryptic, and often will contain one or more payoff messages at the end. A "variety crossword" might allow 1, 2, or 3 letters per box, or might involve entering every answer into the grid scrambled, or might have a meta puzzle that extracts a payoff message at the end (though this last is arguably just a "crossword with a meta"). More broadly, a "variety puzzle" suggests that it is toward the "more unusual" end of the spectrum of common to unique -- a plain word search is probably common enough that it is not considered a variety puzzle, whereas a Rows Garden or Marching Bands crossword, even though an established puzzle type, might reasonably be called a variety puzzle or variety crossword.

W[edit | edit source]

Wheel of Fortune[edit | edit source]

To guess answers while knowing, or having guesses for, only some of the letters and their positions. Named after the American game show.

Often abbreviated WoF.

Width[edit | edit source]

(Also beam, diameter, or girth) The number of puzzles that a team has open at a given time.

References[edit | edit source]