Puzzle Writing Resources

This is a list of resources specific to writing hunt puzzles and hunts. Puzzle Resources gives a list of general 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)

Guides

• GC Summit

Puzzle Writing

• 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

Puzzle Hunt Event Hosting

• Suggestions for Running a Puzzlehunt
• BAPHL wiki
• How to Host a BANG

Hunt Organization

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

• Puzzlord, an updated version of Puzzletron written in Django by Galactic Trendsetters
• Puzzletron, hunt organization software used by MIT Mystery Hunt writing teams from 2011
• Puzzup, a fork of Puzzlord, maintained by Palindrome

Puzzle Construction Tools

• Qxw, for gridding
• Extraction Finder, for checking whether a target answer can be extracted by indexing into a given list of strings

Hunt Website Frameworks

• gph-site, used by Galactic Puzzle Hunt
• hunter2
• infinity, used by INTEGIRLS
• puzzlehunt_server, used by Puzzlehunt CMU
• silenda Fork of spoilr (written for MIT Mystery Hunt 2014 and passed down), used by MIT Mystery Hunt 2021
• tph-site, used by Teammate Hunt
• wizard, a tool created by weeklies.enigmatics.org for creating Discord-based unlock structures