Puzzle Potluck is a concept started by a group of passionate puzzlers who wanted to get better at writing puzzles.
The first Puzzle Potluck was held in August 2016. The idea was to create a mini puzzlehunt by combining individual puzzles written by each puzzler. One person would create a metapuzzle, then distribute answers for everyone else to write their own puzzle. All put together, the result was a full puzzlehunt that we solve as a group (while eating food, potluck style)!
Two more Puzzle Potlucks with this format took place in August and December 2017. We realized that while being able to solve hunts of our own creation was fun, they lacked a sense of cohesion and interesting themes that we enjoyed from other more "formal" hunts.
So, for the next Puzzle Potluck, we decided to split into two writing teams, and create two separate hunts that we could swap and solve during the potluck. We felt that this format would allow us to make the hunts feel more solid and less piecemeal.
At this point we had a good amount of practice writing puzzles, so we felt ready to share our Puzzle Potluck hunts with the public. We ran the first online Puzzle Potluck in November 2018, and were pleasantly surprised by the turnout and reception. We followed it up with Puzzle Potluck 2 in June 2019 and were pleasantly surprised again! We then ran Puzzle Potluck 3 in 2020, which was the first hunt that we wrote as a full team. You can find all of our past Puzzle Potluck hunts in the Archives.
We're really excited to run Puzzle Potluck again and hope you enjoy it. If you like it, didn't like it, have suggestions, or just want to say hi, send us a note at puzzlepotluck [at] gmail.com!
For those puzzlers out there that are interested in writing puzzles but don't know where to start, puzzle potlucks are a great way to practice with friends while getting the experience of solving an entire hunt. We'd love to see more puzzlers get into puzzle writing!
- The Puzzle Potluck Crew: Bradley, Curtis, Darren, Julz, Lindsey, Rajeev, and Stephanie