These are puzzles I've written. (My puzzle writing drastically improved in ~2019, and so I would not recommend doing my older puzzles. But maybe seeing where I started will inspire you to write puzzles too!)

If you want to write puzzles, I can highly recommend Puzzlecraft. See Puzzle resources for resources I use to both solve and write puzzles.

May 2025

Word ladder maze

Playing with new formats.

  • Word ladder mazeword ladder
Oct 2024

Birthday puzzle for Diyang

I wrote my first (very small) cryptic crossword!

  • A little giftcryptic
Sep 2024

Birthday puzzles for Robin

  • Alphabetweenalphabox
  • Charactersanagrams
  • Paraphrasequote boxmeta
Sep 2024

Birthday zine for Whitney

I made another zine based off of the Puzzlecraft workbook.

  • For You Pagematching
  • Tawaun Sayssimon says
  • Legaleseanagrams
  • Fossil Huntingword search
  • A Stitch in Timewordoku
  • Six Cornersmaze
  • Happy birthday Whitney!meta
Jul 2024

Birthday zine for Julia

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

  • A magical educationmatching
  • Program instructionssimon says
  • Decompileanagrams
  • Go and git itword search
  • Propagationwordoku
  • Thinking capmaze
  • Happy birthday Julia!meta
Dec 2020

Kawaiicon cookbook SALT HASH AC1D HEAP

Recipe published in Kawaiicon's SALT HASH AC1D HEAP pandemic cookbook.

  • The Five Pips
2020

Quote box

A little quote box puzzle for my friend's mom.

  • In the handquote box
2019

Work swag

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

  • PM teamcipher
Aug 2019

Defcon Rootz puzzles

  • Big Bad Wolfcipher
  • Night Marecipher
  • Frankenswinecipher
Apr 2019

BSidesSF 2019 Crypto & Privacy Village Gold Bug contest

I wrote all of the puzzles for a mini puzzlehunt for CPV at BSidesSF.

  • AppleWorks
  • Finder
  • Claris Resolve
  • Typestry
  • Taste
  • WriteNow
  • MindWritemeta
Aug 2018

Defcon 26 Crypto & Privacy Village Gold Bug contest

Part of the CPV Gold Bug contest.

  • Minipax: Code Black
  • Minipax: Hut 8
  • Minipax: How about a nice game of chess
  • Miniplenty: Your privacy is our priority
2017

Work stickers

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

  • Stickers
Aug 2017

Defcon 25 Crypto & Privacy Village Gold Bug contest

Part of the CPV Gold Bug contest.

  • iOS
  • ZX Spectrum
  • Atari 2600
  • Nintendo 64
  • Apple II
  • Playstation 2
2016

First adult puzzle

This is around the time that I started to do a lot of puzzles, and I thought, "I'd love to try my hand at that!". This was my first real attempt.

  • Brexit and Brentrance
2006

Mayday crosswords

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.

  • Crosswords
2005

Shad Valley application

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. This isn't the original, but what rendered in a modern pdf reader.

  • Creative page