One of my hobbies is puzzle design. My first MIT Mystery Hunt was in 2005. After years of helping run Different Area Same Hunt (DASH), Boston Area Puzzle Hunt League (BAPHL), and The Game (Wartron East), I started constructing puzzles in 2018.
If you have a paying gig in puzzle design, let me know.
Underfoot
As part of the 2025 National Puzzlers League Convention in Minneapolis, I wrote a puzzle inspired by the local manhole cover art. It is still available in the Cluekeeper app. (Type MANHOLE.)
Slithering in Nathan Tufts Park
A Walk in the Park, one of my location puzzles for BAPHL that used some relevant location data, was reformatted for History on the Line, as part of Massachusetts 250.
Puzzled Pint Boston 10th Anniversary Swag
I was tasked with a design for the front of a credit card-sized code sheet. On a lark, I dashed off something simple that played to Boston sports fan stereotypes. It was the winning design.
2023 BAPHL (Boston Area Puzzle Hunt League)
No one had run a BAPHL since 2019. I wanted to promote the Green Line Extension. I am also a big fan of the sitcom Community, which takes place in Green-dale, thus we had a theme. The Greendale Flag logo was reinterpreted in the style of an MBTA map. A final diploma puzzle was modeled after the prop diploma from the show.
2023 BAPHL (Boston Area Puzzle Hunt League)
Adding themed flavor text can unintentionally mislead players. I was mostly limited to the round intro pages, which are clearly labeled: “This is Not A Puzzle”. I referenced the erstwhile MBTA excuse generator, and that teacher who wore the same outfit for decades of yearbook photos. I am particularly proud of how professor-like Larry Bird looks with Big Bird “hair”.
2023 BAPHL (Boston Area Puzzle Hunt League)
My solo location puzzle was reformatted for a Somerville event in 2025. I also compiled resources for several other location puzzles that were remotely constructed or co-constructed by others.
Stylized Semaphore art
Inspired while creating paper bag lanterns for the decentralized Ignite Festival 2020.
The extra background color is #dec0de because I am a giant puzzle nerd.
IKEA Or?
IKEA Or. In March 2020, I finally managed to get some of the IKEA self-assembly milk chocolate bunnies, as prizes for the annual Boston Bunny Bar Hop. I was developing a bar game where people had to guess if a word was an IKEA product or something else. Then, everything shut down. I readapted it for National Puzzlers’ League online parties. I eventually “sold” it to Lone Shark Games for remote corporate events. It’s basically several Sporcle puzzle ideas mushed together, supplemented by my own further research for sneaky sounding names. They liked how I curated the words.
Miskatonic University Game
I was part of the brainstorming crew who constructed this puzzle. I ended up drawing cartoon chalk outlines in the parking lot of a Gun Club on a Saturday night. The solutions are not yet public – sometimes Games are re-played.
2019 MIT Mystery Hunt
A puzzle based on Kitten Academy family trees was presented in a different format for the 2019 hunt. The KA community liked it so much that I have updated and maintained it ever since. Later versions has more data added that was not needed in the original puzzle.
2019 MIT Mystery Hunt
According to the known Hunt archives, there had never been a puzzle that used Tarot as a data set for anything other than the numbers, and canonical names. I wanted something that focused more on the artwork.
Another puzzle was inspired by discovering a friend actually owned an atl-atl. I’d only seen those in crosswords. So I had to use it in a puzzle, which ultimately required learning at least a rudimentary level of video editing.
2019 MIT Mystery Hunt
When teams solved the earlier portion of the Hunt, the “Run Team” visited them to celebrate their birthday, including a wordplay variant of pin the tail on the critter.
2018 BAPHL (Boston Area Puzzle Hunt League)
While researching the Greenway Armenian Labyrinth, I couldn’t help but notice the unusual carousel nearby. Some teams read “sea lions” and beelined for the Aquarium before noticing the non-aquatic animals in the puzzle.
The other constructors requested that location puzzles not involve too much walking, and necessary data had to be legible from several feet away. But solvers did not know that.
2018 BAPHL (Boston Area Puzzle Hunt League)
I had helped with previous BAPHLs, run by people who, unlike me, were not enthusiastic about location puzzles. I offered to construct at least one, based on the Greenway Labyrinth.
I eventually constructed four location puzzles. The two not illustrated here are Hanover Fist (pdf) & Glitched Connection (pdf).
The art I created for this puzzle was also used in the Miskatonic University Game.
2010 BAPHL (Boston Area Puzzle Hunt League)
BAPHL hunts almost always re-interpret the acronym. This theme was to figure out where to host the next BAPHL. I did the graphic design, but did not construct any of the puzzles.
2010 DASH (Different Area Same Hunt)
Proposed luggage decals for the different cities in the hunt.
The extra background color is #dec0de because I am a giant puzzle nerd.