Instructional Puzzle
Instructional Puzzles usually don't have a lot of difficulty in figure out what to do. The trick is actually doing it.
As the name implies, instructional puzzles give you at least partial instructions for how to accomplish a particular task, or solve a particular puzzle. Sometimes these are numbered, sometimes they're jumbled together, but the most important thing is that they tell you what you need to do. These types of puzzles usually follow similar guidelines, but come in a few notable packages:
- Conundrums - A list of instructions, usually involving props, sometimes involving characters, and with the occasional waterfowl making an appearance.
- Runarounds - Whether physical, virtual, or metaphorical, these take solvers on a journey that starts with many steps.
- Gimmick Road Rallyes - A board game where public streets are the board and your car (or google street view) is your game piece. It's not the destination that matters, but getting there in exactly the right manner.
- Transformation Chains - Taking a word or phrase, and changing it multiple times in a row via specific transformations to get to a particular final result.
Notable Examples
Other instructional puzzles that don't fit into these categories exist, of course. Some examples of puzzles that don't fit in the above groupings are:
- Tax... In... Space (MITMH 2012)
- An Erratic Puzzle (GPH 2019)
- Guidebook (Puzzle Potluck 4)
