Articles about constructing puzzles
Unsurprisingly, the League’s members have a lot of experience constructing puzzles, and a lot of thoughts about how to approach the task. Here are some articles written by Krewe members. Many of these were originally written for the Guide to the Enigma; others have been published elsewhere.
- Verse by Sybil. Most flats in the Enigma are written in verse; Sybil provides suggestions for anyone new to writing poetry.
- Guidelines for composing and solving puzzles by Hudu, Brillig, Treesong, and Sibyl. This article was originally written many years ago and has been updated over the years; this is a verbatim copy of the article in the guide in 2026; note that the current Enigma editors have provided their own guidelines for submission, which may be more useful to anyone constructing for the Enigma
- Solving and composing the rebus and rebade, by Treesong. a deeply detailed article with suggestions for both composing rebi (and variants) and solving them
- Composing forms by Ajax A short article about composing forms, with an example walking the reader through the solving process
- Cryptograms by Hudu, Brillig, Sibyl, and LeXman. Guidelines for writing cryptograms for the Enigma.
- Constructing medium difficulty crypts by Oz. A good overview of how to create challenging yet accessible cryptograms.
- Guidelines for composing cryptic crosswords by Sybil. An overview of the traditions approach to constructing cryptics; some of the guidance here aren’t necessarily followed by modern constructors
- Cryptic thoughts, 2016 by Hot. Includes thoughts about both traditional constructing and stretching the accepted boundaries, hosted on Hot’s personal page, so link will take you away from the NPL site
- Combining talents by Lunch and Quip. An article about collaborating to create puzzles.