Gameboard Deep Dive

08/09/2026

Lotus: The very first attractor you see on login. There isn’t really a puzzle here, just some basic pointers on navigation and what is essentially a free solve to get you up and running.

Beholder: These are all stereograms that once viewed - with or without tools - will reveal something as a hint towards a required password, or next steps. This is the most well solved attractor, with even the hardest puzzle having a >10% solve rate. Whilst these puzzles aren’t intended to be particularly difficult, I think the solve rates probably benefit from the age of the puzzles (with most dating back to launch), and the fact that they are immediately to the right of the lotus attractor. Beware the geese...

Mycelium: The now infamous 'x x' (below) lives here. A puzzle which went unsolved for approaching a full calendar year prior to first solve, and more than a year until it fell again. Other notable puzzles here that have 'held up' include 'violet sky', 'lost in the blizzard...' and  'the code'. The fate of v3.6's 'insight' remains to be seen...

Spiral: At one point or another, I forgot that this attractor was called ‘spiral’ and had defaulted to calling it the ‘ascension’ attractor. Where the puzzle hints towards sorting a list in ascending order, that is ascending order from top to bottom - once you’ve figured out what values to assign to each list item that is.

Fern: The original idea for these puzzles was inspired by Android’s 3x3 pattern lock which, on reflection, was probably what led to the first puzzle being ‘3, 3’. I have a lot of fun making these puzzles, and they seem to be well liked by most players. My personal favourite is 'set traces'.

Chaos: All of these puzzles involve finding the correct words or names from within the randomised grid. There’s some validation against what you’ve typed at an individual letter level v the grid, but there’s no verification at the word / name level until the final submission. This attractor has, visually at least, changed more than any other – although the latest iteration is the most fitting.

Blackhole: This features three modern-haiku like puzzles, unlocked one by one with each requiring a different solution method.

Jellyfish: There aren’t too many ‘eggs’ in wyfio as connoisseurs of the online riddle would call them. Instead, there is a progressively unlockable hints system. The jellyfish attractor also includes the ‘Seer’s Eye’ feature (unlocked at level 40), as well as information unlocked at level 50 pertinent to the ‘Finding the Seer’ quest. 

Scale: This is pretty much the ‘miscellaneous’ attractor, but it also contains some of my favourite puzzles in ‘million dollar graveyard’, ‘white light’ (below), ‘love hertz’ and ‘in need of some refinement’. I’m not a huge fan of ‘only for genus’, these puzzles were both an experiment, and a reaction to the endless deluge of engagement baiting ‘only for genius’ puzzles commonly found on social media.

Rift: A one off with some complicated prerequisites.

Mountains: I really like the puzzles that use the periodic table here. I should probably make more of them. And I’ve had lots of really positive feedback about the scavenger hunt puzzles. As much as I like ‘a quest’, the mystica series (example below) are my favourites. Mountains might end up being the new mycelium, depending upon whether anyone has the flashes of insight required to solve 'mystica's dream' and 'the altar part ii' in the near future...

Bubbles: Contains the ‘différance…’ puzzle, an experimental format that also occurs elsewhere – if you can find it...

Eye: Another one off, and probably not a puzzle I would make today – the ways you can go wrong are more interesting to me than the actual solution :)

Petals: At one point in time, I used to get a lot questions about this mechanic. But once players get the hang of it, they tend to solve most of the puzzles quite quickly. The message that reveals the next steps (e.g. a password or a URL change) is obtained by positioning the polyline to the ‘correct’ position and then reading/interpreting the words at the vertices.

Diatom: All of these puzzles use image maps, where the correct segments need to be highlighted and solution. These are another set of experimental puzzles, but #4, #5, and #6 which incorporate some spellbinding diatom art, really stand out for me.

Wave: You could probably call this the ‘math’ attractor at face value, although there’s more to it than meets the eye. Some of the puzzles here were really just playing with potential mechanics that never got taken any further (e.g. ‘close enough’). I'm really pleased with 'n-gon and on...' here.

Luminescence: It’s hard to create interesting puzzles. And the kind of creative inspiration you need to make puzzles like these, isn’t really available ‘on command’ to me at least - so I have always been grateful when players come forward with ideas of their own. 

Plasma: All of the puzzles here require URL changes to progress. I do enjoy making these puzzles, although they’re quite tricky and time consuming to make – with the 8 puzzles to date having a total of >30 steps to solve.