I had originally planned to have my first few posts be about ciphers. Ciphers, after all, are a great puzzle mechanic that can be easily incorporated into a TTRPG. But as I tried to wrangle my ideas into words, I kept coming back to a basic question: Why is a cipher a puzzle? Or, more accurately, what exactly is a puzzle?

The fact is, I don’t really know, not yet. That’s one of the reasons I’ve started R&R: to help me clarify my ideas on puzzles! So I decided to actually start by thinking about that question, to at least have for myself a working definition of what a puzzle is. That will help me as I start writing about puzzle mechanics and what is “fun” in RPGs. I expect I’ll revisit this topic at some point, as my understanding evolves, but for now, here goes…

The first thing that I think of when I think “puzzle” is that every puzzle has a secret. Its solution must be obscure or nonlinear. If not, then it isn’t a puzzle, it’s just a task. (Or maybe a quest, if it’s big enough.) For example, I don’t think that a math problem is a puzzle; it’s just a math problem. Being asked what I want to eat isn’t a puzzle, it’s a lunch order. For something to be a puzzle, its solution must not be obvious; I have to think creatively to solve it.

This makes me realize something else: A puzzle must have a solution. If it can’t be solved, then it isn’t a puzzle, it’s just an obstacle, like an impossibly high wall. If this seems obvious to you, it wasn’t to me, at least not until I wrote that last paragraph. A question without an answer can still be interesting and thought-provoking, like a Zen koan, but I don’t consider those to be puzzles. So now I have two criteria: A puzzle has a secret, but also has a solution.

Well, mysteries have secrets and solutions. Is a puzzle a mystery? That doesn’t feel right. I wouldn’t say that Sherlock Holmes solved puzzles, although he certainly did; I’d say that he solved mysteries. I wouldn’t call Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch books puzzles, I’d call them mysteries. So what’s the difference between the two?

What separates a puzzle from a mystery on the surface is its scale. A mystery can be massive, spanning cities, continents, eons. A mystery tells a story. A puzzle, on the other hand, is localized. It is a thing or a problem, usually in a place. A game can be a puzzle. A riddle can be a puzzle. A button panel can be a puzzle. These things are usually small and specific.

As I think about it, I also realize that a puzzle can be a piece of a mystery. For example, can my character find the hidden key to the duke’s desk so that I can read his secret papers? The duke’s current loyalties are the mystery; and getting into his desk is a puzzle that helps me solve that mystery. Or, what in this photograph of an apartment tells my character why someone killed the baker? The mystery is who killed the baker; the photograph is a puzzle that, when solved, gets me closer to solving that mystery.

This helps me see a third criterion, that I actually already alluded to without realizing it: A puzzle must be an obstacle or challenge. In my example above, to find out the duke’s loyalty, my character must first find the desk’s secret key. The puzzle of the secret key is an obstacle standing between my character and what he or she wants. Such obstacles can stand alone, but they can also be assembled into quests or mysteries (indeed, most good mysteries have more than one puzzle). This is part of what makes puzzles so useful: They are versatile building blocks that contribute to all sorts of stories.

Okay, so that’s my working definition of a puzzle: An obstacle or challenge that can only be solved through nonlinear thinking. Back to writing about how to design cipher puzzles and use them in TTRPGs!