These are puzzles I’ve written.

If you want to get into writing puzzles, I can highly recommend Puzzlecraft. See also puzzle resources for resources I use to both solve and write puzzles.

Birthday cryptic for Diyang (Oct 2024)

I wrote my first (very small) cryptic crossword!

Birthday puzzles for Robin (Sep 2024)

I made a few little puzzles (and solutions) for my friend:

Birthday zine for Whitney (Sep 2024)

I made another zine based off of the Puzzlecraft workbook.

The zine includes puzzles (and solutions):

Reflector 0x1 (Aug 2024)

Part of my friend’s zine for Defcon 32. This was not released.

Birthday zine for Julia (Jul 2024)

I made a zine for my friend based off of the Puzzlecraft workbook.

The zine includes puzzles (and solutions):

Reflector 0x0 (Aug 2023)

Part of my friend’s zine for Defcon 31 (solutions not provided).

Defcon 30 Crypto & Privacy Village Gold Bug contest (Aug 2022)

I wrote some of the puzzles for the CPV Gold Bug contest (solutions not provided):

Defcon 29 Crypto & Privacy Village Gold Bug contest (Aug 2021)

I wrote some of the puzzles for the CPV Gold Bug contest (solutions from CTF write-up):

Kawaiicon cookbook SALT HASH AC1D HEAP (Dec 2020)

I wrote a puzzle recipe published in Kawaiicon’s SALT HASH AC1D HEAP pandemic cookbook:

Defcon 28 Crypto & Privacy Village Gold Bug contest (Aug 2020)

I wrote some of the puzzles for the CPV Gold Bug contest (solutions not provided):

Quote box for a friend (2020)

A little quote box puzzle for my friend’s mom:

Work swag (2019)

I ordered a mug as swag for our team that had a little secret message.

Solution It says STCURITY in Morse code. (It should have said SECURITY, oops.)
Defcon Rootz puzzles (Aug 2019)

A sheet of puzzles for kids at Defcon 27 (no solutions provided):

Defcon 27 Crypto & Privacy Village Gold Bug contest (Aug 2019)

I wrote some of the puzzles for the CPV Gold Bug contest (solutions not provided):

Submission to Mission Street Puzzles (Jul 2019)

I submitted this puzzle to season 5 of Mission Street Puzzles, but it was not accepted:

BSidesSF 2019 Crypto & Privacy Village Gold Bug contest (Apr 2019)

I wrote all of the puzzles for a mini puzzlehunt for CPV at BSidesSF (puzzles and solutions not provided):

My puzzle writing drastically improved in ~2019, and so I would not recommend doing my older puzzles. Maybe seeing where I started will inspire you to write puzzles too!

Defcon 26 Crypto & Privacy Village Gold Bug contest (Aug 2018)

I wrote some of the puzzles for the CPV Gold Bug contest (puzzles and solutions not provided):

Work stickers (2017)

I made a few stickers for security conferences that had little secret messages in them. I can’t seem to find any images of these sadly.

Defcon 25 Crypto & Privacy Village Gold Bug contest (Aug 2017)

I wrote some of the puzzles for the CPV Gold Bug contest (puzzles and solutions not provided):

No reason (2016)

This was one of the first puzzles I made as an adult, when I decided I wanted to try writing more puzzles.

Mayday crosswords (2006)

I wrote crossword puzzles for several issues of Mayday magazine, which was a free monthly circular in Hamilton, Ontario. It no longer exists and I have not been able to find archives.

Shad Valley application (2005)

I think this is the first puzzle I ever wrote! I wrote a short puzzle as part of my application to Shad Valley summer camp: