Balancing Difficulty and Length of Puzzles

Creating puzzles seems like a basic idea but it is one that requires multiple trial and errors to get the desired outcome.

Even after a year of having a room open, I am still amazed that participants are finding new ways to complete puzzles or even break the logic. There are unintended sequences in the room that complete a completely different puzzle or people can logically use brute force to complete the puzzle.

Puzzle designers need to account for difficulty, length, how many participants, technology and what other puzzles coordinate with it. This week I will discuss difficulty and length of puzzles.

Difficulty: There are many facets of this from how minute the details are to length of the puzzle and what tools they have to assist them. Not giving someone a calculator or something to write with would make a puzzle more difficult compared to having those items available.

Length: This determines how many steps to completing the puzzle. A puzzle could be a simple combination of a wall safe or could be a multi layer/have to solve other puzzles to get the pieces to complete the main puzzle.