Some of the most satisfying puzzles are lateral thinking puzzles, where you look at the whole puzzle, ponder it, and…

Aha! I’ve got it!

But while lateral thinking puzzles can be very satisfying, they are also hard to make, and can easily leave players stumped. If you want to make a large number of accessible puzzles with a nice difficulty curve, your best option is to make what I call a “piece-by-piece” puzzle – a puzzle that can be solved gradually, in a non-linear fashion.

Some classic examples would be crosswords, Sudoku, and Minesweeper. For this guide I’m going to be making a Slitherlink. If you have no idea what that is, read this real quick.

So without further ado, here are the steps for building a piece-by-piece puzzle:

Pick your software. Whether you are going to print out a pencil puzzle, upload a standalone puzzle, or code a puzzle game, you probably want to initially create your puzzle in a vector image program like Illustrator or Inkscape. Or you can use good old pencil and paper.

Decide on constraints for the puzzle. The typical constraint is that puzzles have a single solution that can be found without using trial-and-error. In some cases, you will also have additional constraints – perhaps you’re making a vocabulary word search, or encoding a secret message in your Sudoku. I’ve decided that my Slitherlink is going to be in the shape of a runner.

Create the “base” of the puzzle. Often this is just a grid, but in some cases, like my Slitherlink, this will include the solution to the puzzle.

Make a few easy sections, to ease the player into the puzzle. Make sure that these easy parts are easy to spot, or are put in places where players are likely to look first – you don’t want players starting at the toughest part and getting stuck! I’ve added a hint at each corner, each of which allows the player to fill in or cross out multiple lines. For a later puzzle in a collection, this part can be optional.

Add some difficult parts. In order to avoid a difficulty bottleneck, you should include several different ones, that can be solved in any order.

Save a copy of your puzzle. You might want to revert back to this point.

Slowly fill out your puzzle, until it is complete. (In this case, until it is solvable.) To make a challenging clue-based logic puzzle, make sure to squeeze every bit of information you can from each clue.

Remove the solution and make sure your puzzle really is possible and fun, and the solution is unique.



Test! Find a couple of people who aren’t you and have them try to solve the puzzle. If it’s too easy, see if there are any hints you can change or remove. If it’s too hard, try adding another hint at the point where your testers get stuck.

And that’s it – just keep testing and fine-tuning until your puzzle’s ready to go!