List of Puzzle Elements

Revision as of 16:50, 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 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 - 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. 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

Solve Path Elements

Solve Path Elements attempt to categorise the process and intermediate stages through which the puzzle's solve path proceeds through

TBC

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


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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