Puzzles for RPG Adventures

• Do not block the players with the puzzle, the ideal is to let them choose how they will deal with the puzzle and if they cannot solve it immediately, let them do other things first.
• Avoid making it essential to pass the puzzle. Place a great reward, but do not oblige them to succeed, as they may become completely stuck on the puzzle.
• If the puzzle requires visual resources, present them to the players and let them analyze at will (or not if it is a memory challenge).
• For those who play online (or even those who bring their cell phones to the table), make a commitment with the players that they will not search the internet for the puzzle answers.


I will leave some puzzles that I found around for you to enjoy. Many are well-known, and I just changed the context. I can bring more if there is interest in this material. And here is a tip: if you know the answer, do not tell your friend (and much less post it on Facebook), let them try to guess.

The 7 Torches Challenge

There is a large round room with 7 pillars with torches along its edges. You must extinguish all 7 torches arranged in a circle. The rule is: once you extinguish a torch, the next ones also go out. If you extinguish an extinguished torch, it will light up again. So, if you extinguish a torch, it goes from lit to extinguished and vice versa (just like the torches on each side). How can you extinguish all the torches with the fewest "extinguishments"?

Solution (written below, select the text to read)

By extinguishing 7 torches you can eliminate them all, start with the first one and go around the circle extinguishing one by one, eventually, this method will relight several torches but will reach the point where all will be extinguished.

The Coin Riddle

You have 3 boxes (or jars, chests). One has gold coins, another has lead coins, and the other has both gold and lead coins. The first box is labeled "gold", the second "lead" and the third "gold and lead". All 3 boxes are labeled incorrectly, so you must determine the contents of each. You cannot look inside any of the boxes, but you can request a sample from any of them. How would you do this?

Solution (written below, select the text to read)

Go to the box that says gold and lead and request a sample, if a gold coin comes out you will know that this box corresponds to the gold box, because the label gold and lead is incorrect. With this information, you can determine that the box labeled gold corresponds to lead (since it is labeled incorrectly) and the onelabeled lead corresponds to gold for the same reason.

The Hourglass Logic Challenge

The players find 2 hourglasses in front of them. One measures 7 minutes, the other measures 4 minutes. How would you calculate 9 minutes using only these 2 hourglasses?

Solution (written below, select the text to read)

Turn both hourglasses simultaneously, when the 4-minute one runs out, turn it again, do the same when the 7-minute one runs out, one minute later the 4-minute hourglass will have run out again, and 8 minutes will have passed, when this happens turn the 7-minute hourglass again, as it will only have enough sand to count 1 minute of time, totaling the 9 minutes.


That's all for today, thanks for reading this far.


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