Puzzle Writing Resources

This is a list of resources specific to writing hunt puzzles and running hunts. Community Resources gives a list of community resources, while Puzzle Solving Resources gives resources tailored for solving puzzles; many of these resources are helpful when constructing puzzles as well. (for instance, if you want to find words that fit a certain pattern when filling out a grid)

Wisdom and Guidance

Puzzle Event Hosting Wisdom

• Suggestions for Running a Puzzlehunt by Rahul Sridhar
• BAPHL wiki
• How to Host a BANG
• A Puzzlehunt Tech Checklist
• Game Control Summit (videos from a now-defunct mini-con)
• mystery hunt timeline by Lumia Neyo, a timeline of things involved in running Mystery Hunt generally.

Puzzle Writing Wisdom

• How to write a fun puzzle, by Jay Lorch
• Introduction to Writing Good Puzzle Hunt Puzzles
• Puzzlecraft, a paid resource but contains tips on creating many specific genres of puzzles.
• How to Write a BANG Puzzle
• Foggy Brume's Blogs on Puzzle Construction - Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
• RT3 Hunt Epilogue by Jack Lance
• Brett Kuehner's list of escape room design links includes lots of general puzzle wisdom
• How to Hint, a hinting guide by Scott Handelman
• 30 Puzzle Design Lessons by Elyot Grant - Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Software and Websites

Standalone Answer Checker

• Calling it in
• Puzzlehunt.net checker

Hunt Writing Workflow Managers

For smaller hunts, a spreadsheet may be sufficient for tracking progress.

• Puzzletron, hunt organization software used by MIT Mystery Hunt writing teams from 2011 to 2020.
• Puzzlord, an updated version of Puzzletron, written by ✈✈✈ Galactic Trendsetters ✈✈✈ for MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 and Galactic Puzzle Hunts.
• Puzzup, a fork of Puzzlord, used by Palindrome for MIT Mystery Hunt 2022. It was forked by teammate for MIT Mystery Hunt 2023.

Hunt Website Servers

• CCXC Engine
• Ephesus by betaveros (Wiki link), a simple way to host your hunt online (without learning a full framework)
  • Myus (Wiki link), a public fork of Ephesus to do the same thing.
• gph-site, used by Galactic Puzzle Hunt
• hunter2
• Infinity ∞, used by InteGIRLS
• puzzlehunt_server, used by Puzzlehunt CMU
• tph-site, used by Teammate Hunt
• wizard, a tool created by weeklies.enigmatics.org for creating Discord-based unlock structures

Spoilr

• Spoilr, written for MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 by Alice Shrugged and passed down the years.
• silenda Fork of spoilr, written for MIT Mystery Hunt 2021 by ✈✈✈ Galactic Trendsetters ✈✈✈.

• Version of spoilr used for MIT Mystery Hunt 2022 by Palindrome
• Fork of spoilr used by teammate for MIT Mystery Hunt 2023

Grid Logic Editors/Players

• puzz.link
• Penpa+
• Amuse Labs Creator

Crossword Construction Tools

• Crossword Compiler (paid, Windows only)
• CrossFire (paid, runs on Windows, Mac OS, or Linux)
• Amuse Labs Creator (free, browser-based)
• Crosserville (free, browser-based)
• Crosshare (free, browser-based)
• CrossHatch (free, browser-based)
• Exet (free, browser-based)
• Phil (free, browser-based)
• Qxw (free, Linux/Windows)

Word lists

See also: Comparison of word lists

These word list resources may be helpful for constructing word puzzles (such as crosswords), as well as defining what words are legal for interactive puzzles and games.

• National Puzzlers' League Wordlists lists many, mostly unscored word lists
• An r/crossword post by Rex Parker lists many crossword-oriented downloadable scored word lists
• WordNet is a venerable word list with semantic connections between words
• Spread the Word(list) - Freely available wordlist updated quarterly
• SCOWL and friends - Various wordlists usable for word games
• [1] - Contains some additional wordlists

Other Puzzle Construction Tools

• Puzzle JS, for setting interactive JS based puzzles in HTML.
• Extraction Finder, for checking whether a target answer can be extracted by indexing into a given list of strings