Puzzle CV
Creating puzzlehunts has been one of my primary hobbies since I joined Puzzle Hunt CMU (Carngie Mellon's puzzle-writing student org) in 2017. I went on to be co-president of the org for two academic years from 2018-2020, and helped the club organize five student puzzlehunts. Meanwhile, I had started solving the MIT Mystery Hunt with teammate, and in 2020 I joined the sub-group that was organizing the first Teammate Hunt. I contributed some art and puzzles to this hunt, but got more heavily involved in their next three hunts: Matt & Emma's Carnival Conundrum (2021), The Puzzle Factory (MIT Hystery Hunt 2023) and Matt & Emma's Deep-Space Disaster (2025). I acted as the head of the art and story team for all of these, and I pitched the ideas for Carnival Conundrum and Deep-Space Disaster.
I like to explore puzzlehunts as a medium for storytelling, integrating the setting or plot directly into the puzzle-solving experience as much as possible. When writing, I often take inspiration from a puzzle's in-universe context. I also have a special fondness for wordplay, interactivity, and metapuzzles. Below is a list of puzzles I've co-written, which can almost all still be accessed and solved online. My favorites are marked with stars. Potential spoilers are hidden like this — [example spoiler] — but can be revealed by hovering over them. Internet research (besides reading a puzzle's solution) is also considered fair game when solving any of these.
Because Matt & Emma's Deep-Space Disaster is currently still playable online, links to puzzles in this hunt will only work if you are logged in as a team that has unlocked that puzzle.
Puzzle | Hunt | Year | Complexity | Notes / Mechanics | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
★ | Stock→Pile | Matt & Emma's Deep-Space Disaster | 2025 | ●●○○ | English wordplay graph | |
Pangrams | Matt & Emma's Deep-Space Disaster | 2025 | ●●○○ | English wordplay, crossword clues | ||
Built to Spec | Matt & Emma's Deep-Space Disaster | 2025 | ●●●○ | Metapuzzle for the Tool Bench round, requires feeder puzzle answers and interaction with the round's structure. | ||
★ | Paingram | Matt & Emma's Deep-Space Disaster | 2025 | ●●●○ | English wordplay, benefits from familiarity with Pangrams | |
Plot a Course | Matt & Emma's Deep-Space Disaster | 2025 | ●●●○ | Metapuzzle for the Navigation round, featuring a 3D maze and requiring feeder puzzle solutions. Also requires information from another part of the hunt: the comic after the end of the Spacewalk round | ||
A Haunting Conclusion (last page of packet) |
CS50x Puzzle Day 2024 | 2024 | ●●○○ | Metapuzzle for the whole CS50x hunt, featuring some English wordplay and requiring feeder puzzle answers | ||
★ | Scicabulary | The Puzzle Factory (Mystery Hunt 2023) | 2023 | ●●○○ | English wordplay, crossword clues | |
Collage | The Puzzle Factory (Mystery Hunt 2023) | 2023 | ●●○○ | Funny Farm (word association web), interactive. This puzzle later appears as a key part of the Wyrmhole round. | ||
Artistic Vision | The Puzzle Factory (Mystery Hunt 2023) | 2023 | ●●○○ | Metapuzzle for the Art Gallery round, featuring some research and requiring feeder puzzle answers | ||
Art Restoration (not solvable online) |
The Puzzle Factory (Mystery Hunt 2023) | 2023 | ●●○○ | This was an in-person interactive event in which teams participated in a set of three art and communication challenges, such as drawing on transparent sheets that would later be stacked to form one image. The event page includes the information necessary to re-run this event. | ||
Loading Puzzle... (no longer available) |
The Puzzle Factory (Mystery Hunt 2023) | 2023 | ●○○○ | This puzzle was embedded in the loading screen before each puzzle in the "museum" part of the hunt. Submitting the answer into any answer checker would lead to "breaking" out of the museum hunt and into the Puzzle Factory. See the solution for more info. | ||
★ |
The Blueprint and the Hall of Innovation |
The Puzzle Factory (Mystery Hunt 2023) | 2023 | ●●●● | The Blueprint is the metapuzzle for the Factory Floor round, featuring English wordplay. In addition to feeder answers, solving this meta requires interacting with items on the factory floor webpage and in the Hall of Innovation round. | |
Circuit | The Puzzle Factory (Mystery Hunt 2023) | 2023 | ●●○○ | Logic puzzle, some English language | ||
The Filing Cabinet | The Puzzle Factory (Mystery Hunt 2023) | 2023 | ●●●○ | Almost pure metapuzzle for the Office round, featuring some research and requiring feeder puzzle answers | ||
Reactivation | The Puzzle Factory (Mystery Hunt 2023) | 2023 | ●●○○ | Minipuzzles (various mechanics) | ||
Shared Characters | The Puzzle Factory (Mystery Hunt 2023) | 2023 | ●●●○ | Audio, research, film and theatre | ||
MATE's Team | The Puzzle Factory (Mystery Hunt 2023) | 2023 | ●●○○ | Interactive capstone, benefits from familiarity with most of this hunt | ||
Souvenir Photos | Matt & Emma's Carnival Conundrum | 2021 | ●●●○ | Image identification, research, pop culture reference, requires information from "Karaoke Machine" | ||
Karaoke Machine | Matt & Emma's Carnival Conundrum | 2021 | ●●●○ | Music identification, research, pop culture reference, requires information from "Souvenir Photos" | ||
★ | Time of Your Life | Matt & Emma's Carnival Conundrum | 2021 | ●●●○ | Cryptogram, origin of Timescript | |
★ | Hall of Mirrors | Matt & Emma's Carnival Conundrum | 2021 | ●●●○ | Metapuzzle for "entangled" puzzles in Carnival Conundrum, featuring English wordplay and logic. You'll need to set "Show all" (top left of Puzzles page) to SOLVED in the dark dimensions to see important shapes associated with each puzzle, so you know which feeder answers to use where. | |
Read and Write | Matt & Emma's Birthday Bash | 2020 | ●●●○ | Crossword with fictional conlangs | ||
Physics Test | Matt & Emma's Birthday Bash | 2020 | ●●●○ | Pokémon trivia, physics | ||
Powerful Metamorphers | Matt & Emma's Birthday Bash | 2020 | ●●●○ | Memes, Power Rangers research | ||
★ |
Stroke of Genius (currently broken) |
Getaway Hunt | 2020 | ●●○○ | Interactive, spatial logic puzzle, later expanded into Doodle Bugs game | |
Recalculating... | Getaway Hunt | 2020 | ●●●○ | Virtual run-around (online-only, but knowledge of CMU's campus helps) | ||
Spoiler Alert! | Getaway Hunt | 2020 | ●●○○ | Movie references (and spoilers), logic | ||
Climbing the Mountain | Getaway Hunt | 2020 | ●●○○ | Metapuzzle for some (not all) of the puzzles in Getaway Hunt. The puzzles whose answers are needed are Braving the Elements, Island Chef America, Archipelago, Stroke of Genius, Coconuts, Nonogram Crossword, and Horizons | ||
How Can We Communicate? (currently broken) |
Getaway Hunt | 2020 | ●●○○ | Metapuzzle for some (not all) of the puzzles in Getaway Hunt, featuring audio, research. The puzzles whose answers are needed are Stroke of Genius, Coconuts, Recalculating..., Splattered Printout, Nonogram Crossword, and Time Travel | ||
★ | Picture Imperfect | Anomaly Hunt | 2019 | ●○○○ | Rebus word search | |
anomalous_incidents.mp4 (currently broken) |
Anomaly Hunt | 2019 | ●●○○ | Video, research | ||
Welcome to [REDACTED] (no longer solvable) |
Anomaly Hunt | 2019 | ●○○○ | This was an in-person interactive event in which teams built a path from one side of the room to the other by laying letter tiles in valid intersecting words (like Bananagrams), and trying to land on spaces that would award them extra letter tiles. | ||
Depth Perception | Anomaly Hunt | 2019 | ●●●○ | 3D logic puzzle | ||
★ | Parallel Thinking | Anomaly Hunt | 2019 | ●●○○ | Maze, logic puzzle | |
Reconstruction | Anomaly Hunt | 2019 | ●●●● | Metapuzzle for the second half of Anomaly Hunt. Requires feeder puzzle answers, spatial reasoning. | ||
★ |
Un-Familiar (no longer solvable) |
The Quest for the Dragon's Riches | 2019 | ●●○○ | This was a run-around puzzle in which teams navigated a path through CMU's campus by arranging text-adventure-style commands (e.g. "push lower button", "take cookie") and responses. The solution describes the puzzle steps in more detail. | |
Roll Play (no longer solvable) |
The Quest for the Dragon's Riches | 2019 | ●○○○ | This was an in-person interactive event in which teams navigated a dungeon-themed maze. They would collect jumbo polyhedral dice and try to roll them onto certain spaces that would modify their roll values. | ||
Owlbear (currently broken) |
The Quest for the Dragon's Riches | 2019 | ●●○○ | English wordplay, requires interaction with the hunt's (currently broken) text adventure | ||
Six-Headed Dragon | The Quest for the Dragon's Riches | 2019 | ●●○○ | Metapuzzle for the second half of The Quest for the Dragon's Riches, requires feeder puzzle answers | ||
A Royal Mess | CS Hunt 2019 | 2019 | ●●○○ | Logic puzzle, inspired by the CMU CS class 15-112. The week 5 practice problem being referenced is a common programming exercise called the N Queens Problem. | ||
Barbo Herp Strikes Again | CS Hunt 2019 | 2019 | ●●○○ | Programming (SML), reverse image search | ||
Reversi-ble | CS Hunt 2019 | 2019 | ●●○○ | Konundrum (long list of steps), Othello game, inspired by the CMU CS class 15-150 | ||
★ | Definitely Forced Acronym | CS Hunt 2019 | 2019 | ●●●○ | Requires basic knowledge of deterministic finite automata, inspired by the CMU CS class 15-251 | |
Fine Print | Time Travel Hunt | 2018 | ●●○○ | Classic encodings | ||
Hacked! | Time Travel Hunt | 2018 | ●●○○ | Logic puzzle | ||
A Time Change | Time Travel Hunt | 2018 | ●●○○ | Logic gates | ||
Basic Image Editor (currently broken) |
Time Travel Hunt | 2018 | ●●●○ | Interactive metapuzzle for the first half of Time Travel Hunt, requires feeder puzzle answers | ||
Stealing the Plans (no longer solvable) |
Time Travel Hunt | 2018 | ●●○○ | This was an in-person interactive event in which teams split into two groups to solve an escape-room style puzzle with walkie-talkies. One group had to perform a heist involving (fake) pressure plates, trip wires, and safe-cracking, while the other group observed them with security cameras and consulted puzzling guides. | ||
Print Job | Time Travel Hunt | 2018 | ●●○○ | Crossword clues, trivia | ||
Three-l33t | Time Travel Hunt | 2018 | ●●○○ | Logic puzzle, sequel to Hacked! | ||
A Time Difference | Time Travel Hunt | 2018 | ●●○○ | Logic gates, research, sequel to A Time Change | ||
Body Scans | Apocalypse Hunt | 2018 | ●●○○ | Visual and spatial reasonings | ||
Strange Snowflakes | Apocalypse Hunt | 2018 | ●●○○ | Requires printer, paper-folding | ||
Not Just a Game (no longer solvable) |
Apocalypse Hunt | 2018 | ●○○○ | This was an in-person interactive event in which teams played a version of "The Floor is Lava" where they could place and jump between limited safe tiles. | ||
Aerial Shot | Aperture Science Student Testing Initiative | 2017 | ●●○○ | Logic puzzle, inspired by Portal 2 | ||
Mid-Test Surprise (no longer solvable) |
Aperture Science Student Testing Initiative | 2017 | ●○○○ | This was an in-person interactive event in which teams navigated a maze on the ground, revealing surprises when they reached certain locations. | ||
Guided Tour (no longer solvable) |
Aperture Science Student Testing Initiative | 2017 | ●○○○ | This was a run-around puzzle in which teams followed a series of posters around campus, and an AR app showed a "portal" at each poster connecting it to the next location. |