For our 2024 series of interviews, we wanted to hear from puzzle creators about their design process, with a focus on what they learned about making a specific puzzle. Read on for our interview with Jill of All Trades and EnigMarch organizer Ossandra White.

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Can you tell us a little about your background as a puzzle designer?

In addition to this, I absolutely adored mysteries. I was in love with Nate the Great and Encyclopedia Brown as well as a host of other such tales. This made me want to write my own mysteries, too. Admittedly, some of them weren’t the best, but I managed to improve over time. Now, I still have that kind of drive to create, and so I do. I love to make riddles and puzzles that serve as hints to something that would otherwise not be related to puzzles at all. I used to leave fun treasure hunts around the house for my little siblings to find. I look for every excuse to make something that will bend people’s minds and get them thinking. I have also designed an audio escape room for Escape This Podcast.

Have you done EnigMarch before?

Yes. I have. I don’t think I was able to do many puzzles for the first-ever EnigMarch, but I created a whole puzzle book and related lore for last year’s challenge. I wasn’t able to actually output a puzzle each day, but I still ended up completing all the days. I really love the way EnigMarch is laid out. It’s a fun challenge, and even if you aren’t able to finish the prompts during the designated month, you can still complete them whenever you’d like. I’m personally thinking of taking the first year’s prompts and mixing them with this year’s so that I can say I completed them all. Or, I may make separate puzzles some other time. There are so many ways to go about the challenge, and that’s one of my favorite things about it!

Could you walk us through the design process of a specific puzzle you’ve made?

It was really fun to create the virtual escape room for Bill and Dani. I am a writer, so I knew that I wanted the room to be set in the universe of one of my characters. I decided on my current project: Secret Agent Someone. I also love audio dramas and sound design, so I figured I would incorporate all these things when crafting the puzzles. The room took a while to finalize, but I was quite proud when it was done. One of my favorite puzzles in the room involved finding Someone.

At the beginning of the room, the players find themselves trapped in the lower deck of an evil billionaire’s yacht. After exploring for a moment, they find Constance, who is a WILLOWISP agent. She informs them that her partner (Someone) should be on the boat as well, but she doesn’t know where he is. She realizes that she still has her communicator and so does he, so they are able to stay in contact. At first, this started off as more flavor and lore for the story (and an excuse to add dramatized audio snippets) but I realized that they would have to find Someone at the end anyways, so it would be fun if he dropped a hint to where he was each time they checked in on him. I wondered what these hints could be and how he could drop them instead of just outright telling them where he was…and then, I got it! It would be a sensory puzzle. Except, the players would depend on Someone else to tell them what was being sensed.

I decided to have him tied up and blindfolded so that he couldn’t do much besides talking, but with every check-in, he managed to remove a hindrance. He ended up telling them that he couldn’t see because he was in a pitch-black room, he couldn’t hear any outside sounds because the room was soundproof, he could feel a hard metal floor, and he could smell some kind of gas. I tried to work these facts into normal conversation so that it wouldn’t be immediately obvious that these sensory clues were necessary. But, once Constance and the players escaped from the room in which they were confined, they located a map that indicated different areas on the yacht. I had Constance try to check in one more time before Someone’s comm batteries ran out. This made the players have to remember back to the things he had mentioned before instead of allowing him to provide all the information again up front. Then, they referred to the map where I’d specified certain rules, such as rooms with food were to be far from chemicals and gasses, utility rooms were to be soundproofed, guest rooms were to have windows, and other such absolutes that helped the players to narrow down where Someone must have been. Since the cutscenes could be discovered in various orders depending on how the players decided to go about solving the room, I also had to gate some of his responses so that he couldn’t “take the blindfold off” in one scene and then mention that he still had it on in the next. This was aided by strategically choosing where to make the cutscenes happen. I really enjoyed crafting this puzzle, especially because it’s quite unconventional and not necessarily what one would instantly think of at the mention of the word “puzzle”.

Do you have any advice or closing thoughts you want to leave people with about making puzzles?

One of the things I always say to people is, just do stuff! It’s kinda my motto. Even if you think you can’t do it, just try, and don’t be a perfectionist about it. It may have mistakes. It may not be the best. It may be simple. But that’s okay! If you wait for something to be perfect, you’ll be waiting forever. Also, there’s no way to get better at something without practicing. Make a little something. Find a small community or just a single person to share it with if you’re shy. Or, just make it for yourself. You may end up sharing it eventually, or not. Who knows? Just have fun and be creative. I know you can do something amazing!

Where can people find your work?

https://www.wordigirl.com/ is my hub website where you can find all the links to my social media pages where I sometimes post puzzles. There are also tidbits on where I’ve been featured before, including the Escape This Podcast episode I mentioned and the EnigMarch website, because I help out a bit with this project. I accept commissions for puzzles, escape rooms, and murder/theft mysteries on my Ko-Fi page. You can always reach out to me directly as well, because I’m almost everywhere and it’s quite difficult to sum everything up!