Puzzle resources | Maya Kaczorowski

These are the resources I tend to use when solving or making puzzles, plus links to some puzzles I enjoy.

See also puzzles I've written.

Wordplay

General

OneLook: words matching a pattern
qhex: various kinds of wordplay
Quinaplus and Qat: wordbanks, limited letter selection, words that can be reversed
Nutrimatic: pattern search
Related Words: find related words
Wordle Solver: solve Wordle puzzles

Anagrams

qhex: wordplay allows for transdelete and has a wider vocabulary list
Internet Anagram Server: uses full phrase
Scrabble Solver: only up to 12 letters
Scrabble Score Calculator

Cryptanalysis

A Collection of Word Oddities and Trivia
Secret Ada: common letters, short words, double letters

Cryptograms

quipqiup: cryptogram solver for substitution ciphers
Cryptogram Solving Tool: interactive letter selection

Ciphers and codes

Puzzled Pint code sheet
dcode
Rumkin
Cryptii
Boxentriq: historical ciphers and cryptanalysis tools, including steganography

Digital

ASCII table
CyberChef: 'recipes' including base64, hexdump and many compression algorithms
Regex tester

Crosswords

Crossword Parser: generate spreadsheet from crossword image

Crossword solvers

Crossword tracker: both clues & answers
Wordplays: Generate crossword clues
Wordplays: Guess crossword answers

Cryptic crosswords

Logic puzzles

LogicalSolver grid

Other

Specific searches

RhymeZone: rhyming dictionary
BrainyQuote: quotations
People by initials
Pun generator
TinEye: reverse image search
Google Books Ngram Viewer: popularity of phrases over time
Interactive clock: useful when trying to map clocks to a specific time
Musipedia: search music by entering tune
The Oracle of Bacon: find movies in common, Bacon number
Ptable: interactive periodic table

Spelling with a limited alphabet

Phone number spelling tool
ChemSpeller: spell words with chemical elements

Geography

US zip codes
SunCalc: sunrise by location and time
Shadowmap: shadows by location and time

Puzzle types

Collaboration tools

Google Sheets
Figma
Excalidraw
Felt: detailed map making and marking tool

Puzzle creation tools

Sudoku setter
Word search generator
Oh My Dots: mazes, connect-the-dots, and word searches

Puzzles

General, easiest to hardest

Cryptic crosswords

Hex (Cox & Rathvon)
Cryptic All-Stars

Escape rooms

Room Escape Artist's Golden Lock Awards

Physical game reviews and gift guides

Novel formats

Regex crossword
Spreadsheet escape room
LLM murder mystery: suppressing pink elephants