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
• Brett Kuehner's list of escape room design links includes lots of general puzzle wisdom

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

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

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