List of Puzzle Elements

Revision as of 13:00, 5 March 2022 by CoreyPlover (talk | contribs)

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 organise puzzle elements into a hierarchical and useful taxonomy, and should eventually catalog every page that is a member of Category:Puzzle Element.

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:

  • <code>[[Name]]</code> 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 such as 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 - Accessibility Friendly & Content Warning tags
  • Media type - Elements that deviate from a "pen-and-paper" media, or printable / static web page:
    • Audio - Audio file or collection of such files
    • Video - Video clip or collection of such clips
    • Physical - Physical object that requires manipulation or examination
    • Interaction - Interaction event that requires physical and live presence. Could be subdivided further into Event, Runaround, Scavenger Hunt, etc
    • Interactive - Game applet, interactive fiction, mods or levels for external video games, ClueKeeper app, augmented reality, etc. Could be subdivided further particularly for Interactive Fiction
    • Code - Executable code that requires compilation or interpretation [Better name?]
    • File Archives - Downloadable archives (.ZIP, etc) [Better name?]
    • Others - Spreadsheet?
  • Presentation - Top level, and most immediately apparent appearance of the puzzle
    • Image Heavy
    • Text Heavy - Choose Your Own Adventure, Walkthrough, Checklist, Script, Diary
    • Minimalist - Puzzles where extremely little information is apparent
    • Clue Centric - Image clues, Numbered clues, Unnumbered clues
    • Grid Centric - May include Circular Grid, Spiral Grid, Hexagonal Grid
  • Instructions - Nature of instruction provided with the puzzle
    • Explicit Instructions - Instructions are provided explicitly as part of the puzzle
    • Example Instructions - Examples are provided as part of the puzzle, but deduction of rules is intended to be a part of the puzzle
    • Flavortext - Flavortext is provided, which may provide some cryptic allusions to the nature of the puzzle
    • Asked And Answered - 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
    • Sub-answer Checking - Mechanism for submitting answers to sub-puzzle for intermediate confirmation
    • Task Completion - Completion of puzzle is contingent on finalising a particular task

Content Elements

Content Elements refers to elements, techniques that are encountered during the solving of a puzzle.

  • Puzzle Type - This is the main categorisation of a puzzle and the most likely categorisation that helps solvers find other similar puzzles
    • TBC
  • Intermediate steps - Common solve path elements and stages that are utilised during the solve
    • TBC
  • Extraction - Techniques that are common to hunt puzzles which allow the "extraction" of a final answers from a puzzles that are not necessarily designed to result in a word or phrase
    • TBC


Flavour Elements

Flavour 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.

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