Puzzles
I like writing and solving puzzles of all sorts, especially the kinds of puzzles in puzzle hunts and escape rooms. I once wrote for and commentated a crossword tournament.
Below are some of the puzzles I’ve written for puzzle hunts. These puzzles usually don’t come with any explicit instructions; if you “figure out” what the puzzle is getting at, there is a natural path to a single answer word or phrase from each one. To see how this kind of puzzle works, have a look at the solutions.
It's really just a game. Type the words to the beat!
A benign-looking but extremely difficult word puzzle. This puzzle is designed for a group of experts.
- Big Branch (solution)
- Make Your Own Crossword Puzzle (solution)
- Morse Code (solution)
- Let’s Get This Bread (solution)
- Mini Cryptic (solution)
- Zoomer Jumbles (solution)
- High Precision (solution)
- Blank Squares (solution)
- Petroglyph (solution)
- Me, the Worm (solution)
- Not to Scale (solution)
- Mixed Message (solution)
- Fridge Magnets (solution)
- Cuspidation (solution)
- Where are They? (solution)
- Special Snowflake (solution)
- o ea / Wrd Srch (solution)
- Learn to Play (solution)
- Hobbyists (solution)
- A Day in the Life of Cobot (solution)
- Numbered Hexes (solution)
- P vs NP (solution)
- My First Computer (solution)
- Hello from the Outside (solution)
- Pivots (solution)
- DMCA Takedown Notice
- Land Grab
- Evolutionary, My Dear Watson
- Please Share This Image
- World Pieces
- Alpha Equivalence
- Collage Application
- Nonverbal Communication
Other
- I wrote a bunch of crossword puzzles for the Chicago Maroon (the University of Chicago’s student newspaper) which you can solve here.
- Minus Square cryptic crossword with a mysterious layout and a 5-letter answer
- DFA crossword made for STOC 2022