Really, It’s a Puzzle

It’s puzzling.

One of my responsibilities at my day job is writing and designing the company newsletter. Since newsletters, even the best of them, can be boring, and I figured it couldn’t hurt to put something in each issue that clients would want to look at. A reason to open the pdf that shows up in their mailboxes.

So I added a monthly puzzle.

The type of puzzle varies from issue to issue. I’ve done basic word-finds, as well as crossword puzzles and sudokus, but also double acrostics and labyrinth puzzles. Anything I can think of.

I was working on this issue’s puzzle the other day–a labyrinth puzzle. The player is faced with a grid and a list of words, and must put the words in the correct places on each line so that, a path of shaded squares leading from the center will spell out a sentence, a clue to the key of the puzzle.

As the puzzle’s creator, I know exactly what that key is. I know what the clue needs to be to solve it, and all I need to do is lay out the grid and pick the random words accordingly.

Really, it’s a lot like plotting a story.

In fact, I think the reason I’ve enjoyed doing these puzzles all these years is because I like knowing the answers. I like having the inside knowledge as to how everything works together. You can layout a crossword-puzzle grid like a Scrabble board and then, when it’s full of interlocking words, you come up with the clues … but unlike everyone else, you know exactly what the finished puzzle is going to look like. Or you plot in all the words for a word find and then throw in random letters (or, better, almost-words to through the puzzle-seekers off). Interested in Sudoku? Fill in a completely blank grid and then subtract numbers to the minimum needed for solutions.

Puzzle-creating is backward-engineering.

You start with the solution and work backwards to what will be the beginning point for everybody else.

The tricky part is that you have to be careful. If your clues are too obscure, nobody will be able to solve the problem. If there are too many complex steps, the players will be scared off. If it’s too hard, they won’t play at all.

Similarly, when you’re writing, you know exactly where you’re going, and you need to take your readers along, step by step.

If you throw too much at them at the beginning–too many facts, too many characters, too many twisting, winding paths embedded with clues–they’re going to get lost or give up. You need to make the early clues easy, to draw them in, get them hooked. If you need a Phd to solve a crossword puzzle, the puzzle’s creator has failed. (Unless the puzzle was designed strictly for, say, a specific university department and is meant to be highly detailed, but you know what I mean.)

Plots, like puzzles, need to hold together under scrutiny. All the pieces need to interlock correctly so that the finished piece can stand on its own, even if a reader has missed a clue. You can make them as multi-layered and complex as you like as long as you never, ever, ever forget that you have to make the ultimate solution accessible to a reader who doesn’t know all the ins and outs of the story like you do.

You are the mastermind, the puzzle master, but if you make your puzzle impossible for everyone else, you’ve failed. If your plots are too outrageously complex, or if you make a crucial step too obscure, you’ve failed. Your object, as the creator, is to be standing at the finish line, at the center of the maze, ready to congratulate your readers as they arrive.

In other words, writing is exactly like creating a puzzle.

See? Maybe this whole plotting business isn’t as puzzling as you thought!

What do you think?