Puzzle Writing Resources

This is a list of resources specific to writing hunt puzzles and running 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

Hunt Website Frameworks

• gph-site, used by Galactic Puzzle Hunt
• hunter2
• 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

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

Wordlists

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

Scored wordlists

• Peter Broda's Wordlist
• Spread the Word(list) - Also includes other links to wordlists in resources page.

Unscored wordlists

• [1] - Contains ENABLE, UKACD, and YAWL wordlists
• SCOWL and friends - includes 12dicts, 3of6game