Word puzzle

Word Puzzles are, as the name suggests, puzzles revolving around words and wordplay. Certainly one of the most common puzzle types (if not the most common puzzle type) found in puzzle hunts. This popularity and prevalence in the hunt community is likely due to both the accessibility of them (linguistics, particularly the English language, being a well-documented topic), and word puzzles' long history of public consumption, with some of the earliest word puzzles dating back to at least the first century AD.

Similar to Logic Puzzles, there's a very wide range of established word puzzle types, as well as new ones being invented relatively often. The ones that this wiki has catalogues are as follows:

Clues, Clues, and More Clues

• Crosswords - With two key components: Words, and Crossing! Available in classic, or variant styles:
  • Criss-Cross - Fewer words, less crossing, yet it takes up a lot more space.
  • Cryptic Crosswords - More words, around the same amount of crossing, but clues that do twice the work, using both definitions and wordplay.
  • Diagramless Crosswords - Probably equal in words and crossing to the average crossword, but that's really up to you to decide.
  • Something Different Crosswords - Somewhat of the opposite to Cryptic Crosswords; these clues don't even solve to real words!
  • Marching Bands - Words travel across rows, but also in concentric rings around the grid.
  • Rows Gardens - Using a unique triangle-based grid, usually has words travelling across, but also around hexagonal "flowers"
  • Some Assembly Required (SAR) - Someone broke the crossword puzzle! Thankfully, whoever did it was kind enough to make all of the pieces also valid words. Perfect for people who like both crosswords and jigsaws!
• Acrostics - Clues and a grid, but individual letters get mapped to different spots in the grid via a numbering system.
• Tortured Clues - Clues that have been transformed in some way; figure out what happened and repeat it on the answer!
• Connecting Sides - Clues pair up somehow, but they're stuck on opposite sides of the page! Drawing lines to connect them usually helps.
• Before And After - Connecting answers at shared letters, usually resulting in a difficult-to-pronounce mess.
• Word Ladders - Getting from GOAT to MEAD in 5 easy steps! Click to revealGOAT, GOAD, GOLD, MOLD, MELD, MEAD.

All Jumbled Up

• Dropquotes - All of the columns' letter are there, they just need to be put into the correct spaces.
• Trigram Hell - Words, Phrases, and Sentences, all broken down into three-letter chunks and rearranged.
• Fill-In-The-Blanks - Like Mad Libs, but with wrong answers.
• Interwoven Strings - Two strings of text that make sense get woven together into one long, confusing string.
• Anagrams - Requires you to Nag A Ram, or perhaps find Agar Man.

Others

• Wordsearches - Finding particular words among a grid of letters.
• Cryptograms - Substitution ciphers that got a big boost in popularity.