Solving Strategies
While not really elements one decides to put into a puzzle, solving strategies can play a big role in how people approach a puzzle, and are something that can be both planned for, and references within puzzles if done correctly. Often, these kinds of puzzles have a general feeling of being meta (not to be confused with actual metapuzzles), due to referencing or drawing attention to aspects of puzzling outside of the puzzle itself.
Some examples of notable solving strategies and terminology include:
- Wheel of Fortune - Solving a puzzle without all of the letters being revealed. Can occur with as little as an enumeration, although this is relatively rare and truly a miracle. This is not to be confused with Puzzler's Intuition or Taking Shortcuts.
- Puzzler's Intuition - Solving a puzzle (especially a meta) using only the flavourtext or general theme of a puzzle to take an educated (and often punny) guess without touching the puzzle itself.
- Taking Shortcuts - Skipping parts or a puzzle when solving it, often due to a recognition of an aspect that would normally be locked behind a cluephrase mid-puzzle. Most often applicable during Step-By-Step puzzles.
- Backsolving - After solving a metapuzzle, returning to the feeder puzzles for it and using information from the meta and its constraints to guess the answers to any unsolved puzzles.
- McFly - A post-backsolve strategy, most helpful for hunts in which the method of solving is important for metametas or other puzzles/events. It involves using a known, backsolved answer to assist in a forward-solve, using the expected result to determine the solve path. Named as such due to its nature as a Backsolve-to-the-Futuresolve.
