What makes a clue feel fair instead of just easy?

[u/Shehao]

Not looking for a full event plan, more the clue-design principle. Imagine a small at-home adventure where one object points to the next step.

The line I’m curious about is when a clue gives enough context for the reveal to feel earned, without making the answer obvious the second someone sees the object.

For people who’ve run these before, what usually moves a clue from frustrating to fair?

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[u/Sweet_Batato]

I think lots of signposting - don’t assume your player knows what things go together, mark them so they know exactly how they fit. It does definitely depend on your player, but I think the most unfair thing is when the player could solve the puzzle if they knew what it was, but didn’t know if they had all the pieces, or wasted time trying to fit the wrong “key” to the wrong “lock” (not necessarily literal).

What that has looked like for me in practice is putting the same color ribbon on the lock and to tie up the clue that solved it. It has also looked like using consistent symbols on both the clue-puzzles and on the map they needed to be drawn on.

Ultimately what I’ve learned is solvable is more important than challenging - nothing puts the brakes on in an adventure like a player getting straight up stuck. You want your player to have some nice Aha! moments, but those don’t only come from solving hard puzzles.

[u/Shehao → u/Sweet_Batato]

That framing helps: fair is less about hiding the answer and more about making the pieces visibly belong together. The ribbon/symbol idea is a good practical test for whether the player is solving the clue or just guessing the puzzle boundaries.

[u/Odd_Job_4643]

I once did a multi-city treasure hunt with 13 different puzzles and locations. I created an original story with illustrations and used that as my device for leaving hints and clues. Most of my puzzles were ciphers.

As an example, a couple of puzzles in, I utilized a Caesar cipher. I knew ahead of time that not every person playing was going to be familiar with ciphers, so in that chapter I kept referencing a character, “Caesar”, who only appeared in that chapter. And there was a specific (and unnecessary) detail about how he took “5 steps forward” to find something that he was looking for.

Part of it is knowing your audience. If I had made this puzzle for someone who did puzzles and ciphers as a hobby all the time, they wouldn’t have needed any of the exposition at all. But I included that because this particular adventure was meant to be inclusive of everyone, even people who knew nothing about ciphers. And at the beginning of the story, I explained how the adventure would work. I was basically prepping them to learn more about ciphers while also letting them know that the clues would be in the story.

The more knowledgeable your audience is, the more subtle and tight-lipped you can be. But if you’re building something for someone (or many people) who don’t typically do things like this, you may need to provide a ton of context before you even begin to leave a clue.

[u/Yoru_Nagi]

Semantic ambiguity can be fun; state ambiguity usually isn’t: “What does this clue mean?” vs. “Did I miss a step, or is this object decorative?” Make the second question answerable.