Puzzlecraft: The Ultimate Guide on How to Construct Every Kind of Puzzle

by Mike Selinker, Thomas Snyder

Solving puzzles is fun, but the real challenge lies in creating them. "Puzzlecraft" has been a popular series in Games magazine for years, and now all the instructions have been compiled and updated (along with brand-new sample puzzles) to teach you everything you need to know to construct puzzles of all kinds, from crosswords to word searches to sudoku. Guided by Mike Selinker and Thomas Snyder, two pros who really know their stuff, you'll be making puzzles and entertaining your friends in no time.

Genres: Game Design, Nonfiction, Games, Puzzles, Role Playing Games

192 pages, Spiral-bound

First published October 2, 2012

Reviews

[Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not only is the content of the book fantastic for constructing basically any puzzle you can think of, the footnotes of this book led me down further rabbitholes that have really enriched my puzzle enjoyment. Thank you Mike!

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good overview of the different types of modern puzzle and how to create them. The author is an experienced puzzle designer, well known for his column in Games Magazine - I believe the essays in this book were first published as columns in that magazine.

The only shortcoming is that the inclusion of so many puzzle types means that he doesn't go into great depth about any of them.

[Adrian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not a book to be "read" per se. Lots of information about crafting lots of different puzzle types, but the puzzles inside err more on the difficult side (aside from mazes and word searches, which are impossible to make hard).

Generally a useful font of information, but also assumes a lot of knowledge on the part of the reader, which I get not everything can be provided, but perhaps a little more wouldn't have hurt. Particularly when some of the examples required solving the sometimes difficult puzzles to understand how to make them. Hmm.

[Thomas Gizbert · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wish it had been more general, providing frameworks instead of prescriptive, step-by-step guides for specific types of puzzle, some common, others super niche. I know it's *the* key puzzle design text but I don't think I'll get a lot out of it for this reason.

[Jenni Powell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I use and will use this book for reference A LOT. So happy it’s available to me.

[Spiegel · Rating 3 out of 5]

It seems that making puzzles is its special kind of puzzle, because the makers are clearly getting a kick out of the difficulty of getting all the rules to work. The other message that I got from this book is that, for god's sake, you must make sure it has only one answer.
I solved some of the puzzles as I went along (that was fun!), but some were hard to annotate in ebook form and everything involving puns or american sports went right over my head.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was a first of its kind for me. The author breaks down puzzles and gives you insight on construction. It is a reference book for puzzle construction! Even though I will probably never use any of it, knowing how these things are constructed is still useful (I think).