Designer Diary - Bumfuzzled #12 - Vertex Ruse
Hi Puzzle Friends,
Continuing on the Designer Diary trend, here's an overview of what was going on in my brain as I designed Bumfuzzled #12! This puzzle probably benefits the most from a diary, as at first blush, this one *looks* to have taken nearly zero design effort, but in reality, presented a number of design challenges that required a lot of careful thought to result in an enjoyable puzzle that I'm proud to have designed.
The Spark
This puzzle started with a simple idea: a puzzle where the connectors give nearly zero clues as to how to solve the puzzle. After some brainstorming, I landed on the idea of voids that would need to be properly matched, with the puzzle unveiling the shape of those voids as it was completed. The brainstorming also yielded some other ideas, which you might see in future Bumfuzzleds (wink, wink)!
Vertex Ruse has the distinction of being the only Bumfuzzled to date that required no hand-sketching, with the entire puzzle being laid out digitally. Once I laid out this grid, I almost scrapped it at the outset, as it was just so... plain. However, I was still intrigued enough about how the solve process for this type of puzzle would feel, so I forged ahead. Spoiler alert: I'm glad I continued!
Developing the Icon Set
The next step was coming up with 84 icons that would make for an interesting solve. While the overall final product might not feel like it took much thought, this is where I really needed to get it right, taking a surprising amount of thoughtfulness.
There are many icons/shapes that are symmetrical along one or more axes, so I wanted to ensure a mix of shapes that were symmetrical across at least 2 axes (the easiest to solve, as all 4 corners to solve it will look the same), symmetrical across 1 axis (medium difficulty), and not at all symmetrical (most difficult). I wanted mostly medium difficulty, with a smattering of easy and hard. The easy shapes would serve as good starting points, while the hardest shapes would make for a more surprising and satisfying reveal once they were solved.
I also wanted to ensure there were a good mix of different categories of images such as shapes, animals, plants, and other assorted random shapes.
Modifying the Shapes
Along the way, I also modified many shapes to ensure they were still somewhat symmetrical, but with twists. For example, adding a lemon wedge to a martini glass takes it from being purely bilaterally symmetrical, to keeping it bilaterally symmetrical for the bottom half of the shape, but no longer symmetrical on the top half. This takes the martini glass from medium difficulty to medium plus.
In some cases, merely rotating a shape took it from an easy, symmetric shape to a bit more challenging.
Arranging the Shapes
Now, I needed to take this slew of icons, and arrange them thoughtfully. As I arranged, my main two goals were:
1) "Easy" shape voids often appear adjacent to difficult ones. When a shape void is solved, it reveals half of all the adjacent shape voids, so the puzzle would almost play like a crossword puzzle, where the easy solves give clues about adjacent, potentially more difficult, solves.
2) Prominent themes like animals, shapes, etc, are fairly well scattered, avoiding clumps of similarly-themed shapes. This didn't go perfectly due to the above requirement taking precedence, but the various themes appear throughout the puzzle.
It also took a fair bit of resizing to ensure all the shapes have a similar visual weight. When you're gridding images like this, simply giving them the same vertical or horizontal dimension is not going to result in a uniform appearance; some will inevitably look smaller or larger than others. There's probably more of a science to it, but I just give it the ole eyeball test.
Coloring
I knew this puzzle would look super boring without some sort of color scheme, but how to color something like this?
My decision boiled down to the challenge level I was after. While I have a gut feeling, you never know how difficult you've made a puzzle until you receive the sample and try it out. In this case, I felt the puzzle was easy-ish, and that some sort of predictable color scheme (like a checkerboard pattern) would make it far too easy.
I also felt like a random dispersal of a few colors might make the puzzle a bit more challenging to the eye when searching for shapes, so I took that route. Side note: this seems to be anecdotally true, as I saw at least one person solved this puzzle on the reverse side of the pieces to eliminate the color challenge!
Initially, I selected natural, blue, or green, for each piece, simply using a random number generator for each piece, 1 was natural, 2 was blue, and 3 was green. I then massaged a few spots where one color clumped too much. After that step, it still looked a bit "meh" to me, so I added the smattering of pink pieces to pop a bit more.
The Result
Out of all the puzzles I've designed, I still wasn't sure this one would be *fun* until I received the sample. I was fully prepared to scrap it if it just turned out to be an experiment that wasn't fun.
But wow, was I pleasantly surprised! It really did have that crossword puzzle feel - something I'd never really experienced in puzzle form - and I felt engaged the entire solve. The difficulty level also seemed appropriate, which is always some mix of skill and luck as a designer, especially when trying off-the-wall ideas.
I hope you all enjoy it as much as I do, and that this diary sheds some more light on a deceivingly plain-looking puzzle!
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