Puzzle
A sliding-tile puzzle built from your Challenge Image. Solving the board completes the challenge; a 3×3 or 4×4 grid, optionally timed.
Puzzle challenges turn your Challenge Image into a shuffled sliding-tile board. There is nothing to type — solving the puzzle is the answer, and the app submits the completion automatically. A Timed option records how long the solve took.
What players experience
The challenge screen pins the reference image in the header so players can see the goal, and shows a "Solve the Puzzle" board below: the image cut into a shuffled sliding-tile grid (3×3 or 4×4, per your Puzzle Grid Size), with a running move counter. The shuffle is always generated solvable.
For Timed puzzles, a live stopwatch runs in the header from the moment the challenge starts. When the last tile slides home, the app submits automatically ("Submitting...") and the confetti "Challenge Complete!" modal appears with the point award; timed solves also show "Completed in {time}" on the completed challenge. There is no wrong-answer path — a puzzle is either unsolved or solved. If the challenge somehow has no image, players see "No puzzle image available" instead of a board (which is why the editor requires one).
Hints, access codes, and activation gates are available exactly as on other types.
Scoring & answers
- Answer type is Puzzle — solving the board submits a completion sentinel; there is no text comparison and no incorrect-answer modal.
- Points are awarded on completion: base points minus any Hint Cost used (never below 0), plus Speed Bonus for the first non-staff teams to solve, doubled by a live Double Down effect.
- Timed Challenge starts a stopwatch and records the completion time on the submission — visible to players ("Completed in
{time}") and organizers. Timing stops at submission. - Max Completing Teams retires the puzzle after N distinct non-staff teams solve it.
- Teams can abandon and return freely; once solved, the challenge is complete and cannot be resubmitted.
Configuring in the admin
| Section | Field | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Challenge Details | Name, Type (Puzzle), Difficulty, Points | Points default 100; Answer Type is Puzzle |
| Content | Clue, Hint, Hint Cost | The clue frames the image ("Reassemble the mural to see where to go next") |
| Puzzle Setup | Puzzle Grid Size | 3×3 (Easy) or 4×4 (Hard) |
| Puzzle Setup | Timed Challenge | Switch — runs the stopwatch and records completion time |
| Media | Challenge Image | Required — a puzzle cannot be saved without an image, because the image becomes the board (4:3 upload) |
| Location / Access Code | Standard fields | See the overview |
| Gameplay (event only) | Activation, Max Completing Teams, Speed Bonus | See Activation & Beacons |
The Puzzle Setup section includes a live preview beside the config panel, so you can check how the image slices before saving.
The image is the challenge
The editor enforces a Challenge Image on every puzzle — it's what gets sliced into tiles. Swap the image and you've swapped the puzzle.
Tips
- Choose images with distinct regions. Sky-heavy or repeating-pattern photos make tiles indistinguishable and turn "Hard" into "miserable". Landmarks, posters, and maps slice well.
- 4×4 is a real difficulty jump — 15 tiles versus 8. Use 3×3 for family events; save 4×4 for competitive groups, and consider pairing it with Timed Challenge so the effort shows up in the results.
- Puzzles are great mid-hunt breathers: no location knowledge required, so they work anywhere — including indoor/quiz-mode events with no map at all.