Tour
Please join us for a guided tour of the puzzle portal! We would like to show you what you can find here!
The Puzzles
Draw a single closed loop along the dotted lines. The numbers in the cells indicate how many of the cell's edges are part of the loop – In the image you can already see three edges that are part of the loop.
The most important thing in the puzzle portal are the puzzles. Here you will find mostly logical puzzles: puzzles that can be solved by logical conclusions. The most popular type of logical puzzles is Sudoku, but there are many others - as you will see once you start browsing the puzzle portal. For example, if you click the portal image on the portal main page you will see a random puzzle. The box next to this text contains a little slither link puzzle. Can you solve it?
All these puzzles have been created and published by other puzzle portal users. Once you have gathered some experience solving puzzles you may want to create puzzles, too, even though this may seem unlikely to you at the moment. When somebody publishes a new puzzle it will be listed on the start page, and any portal users that have requested notification about new puzzles in their user settings will receive a notification mail.
Now you can view the new puzzle and try to solve it. Hints on how to do that can be found elsewhere in the help section. Let's assume that you managed to solve it. Now you can determine the solution code, a sequence of letters, digits or special characters that can be determined from the puzzle. A description of the solution code is part of every puzzle.
On the right hand side of the puzzle page you can see a box with useful data
about the puzzle and some links. If you follow the link Submit solution
you will be taken to a page where you can enter the solution code. If you do that
you will see if you got the solution code right or not. If you entered the wrong
solution code it is quite likely that you made a mistake solving the puzzle. If
you got it right your user name will be added to the list of solvers for this
puzzle immediately.
You can also comment on a puzzle. Comments are listed at the bottom of the puzzle page. You can choose if your comment should be visible to everybody or just to users who have solved the puzzle successfully. You can use these comments to ask the puzzle author questions.
After having solved the puzzle you can rate its beauty and difficulty. This information is collected and made available to the other users.
→ Help on solving puzzles
→ Help on publishing puzzles
Searching for Puzzles
Now that you have read so much about puzzles you may want to solve one. But which one? The portal contains thousands of puzzles, and you may feel lost between them. To help you we have provided two ways of getting started: the beginners' series focus on certain common types of puzzles, with hints on how to approach these puzzle types. We recommend you to start with these puzzles if you have no experience at all with logical puzzles.
If you do have experience solving logical puzzles and you just would like to familiarise yourself with the portal you could have a look at some special lists of puzzles. We hope that these lists help you get started without having to do complicated searches.
Now that searches have been mentioned: the puzzle portal comes with two search pages. The simple search takes only two inputs, and the advanced search comes with lots of useful options.
User Pages, Statistics, and Personal Settings
After having solved a few puzzles you might get curious about all the other people here in the portal who also solve puzzles. In that case you can look at their user pages. Here you can see the number of puzzles that a user has solved and published, as well as a list of his or her favourite puzzles. You can also introduce yourself on your user page using text and a picture.
Many puzzlers have an account in the Logic Masters Forum, too. The forum has a separate area for the puzzle portal, and many participants exchange private messages to discuss some puzzles.
There is also one page with all kinds of statistics about the puzzle portal. Most solvers will be interested in the Top 100: there are two lists, one for the most productive puzzle authors, and one with the most industrious puzzle solvers.
Last but not least: you can customise the puzzle portal to your needs in your user settings. There you can request mail notification, edit your user page, and manage various lists.
