No Puzzled Pint in your city? Start a group of your own!
A great way to get a feel for what it’s like to run a Puzzled Pint group is to host a Puzzled Pint party. Puzzled Pint parties are one-off events where you re-run one or more previous puzzle sets for friends and family.
All of our puzzles are released under a Creative Commons license. You can browse the full archives, print out puzzles, and solve them with your friends.
As long as you’re not trying to represent yourself as Puzzled Pint and you stick within the flexible licensing, you’re free to run parties without asking permission. But it warms our hearts to hear of them. If you run a party, we’d love to know.
Fun Fact: London’s Puzzled Pint started because someone ran a Puzzled Pint party. Folks got hooked on puzzles and now it’s an official location that regularly exceeds 70 attendees (as of early 2016).
Ready to run a monthly event?
If you’ve run a successful Puzzled Pint party or two, or you’re used to running similar events, then why not run a monthly event in your city? Here’s what it’s all about:
The Core Tenets of Puzzled Pint
Puzzled Pint must be:
- FREE to play
- At bar/pub or similar location
- Open to the public
- The same puzzles/day as other cities
- Please read our charter to learn all of the other details
Events take place on the second Tuesday of every month. We post a location puzzle on the website the weekend before, and the solution leads to a list of locations available that month. At the bar, the hosts (“Game Control”) hand out the month’s puzzle set and are prepared to hint puzzlers as needed. We encourage teams to take hints, as we want to keep Puzzled Pint friendly for beginners. There are no penalties for hints. We record the start and end times on the answer sheet, but most teams don’t pay attention to them.
How much work is it?
What we provide to you, the city Game Control (GC):
- the month’s puzzles, a few days in advance (and the solutions for you)
- logistical help, ability to answer questions, etc.
What you provide locally:
- At least two people to run the event – Do you know anyone else who may be interested? We can try to put feelers out as well, if you’d like.
- Find a bar for each month. Ideally, this rotates from month to month. Talk to the bar ahead of time, ensure they’re okay with serving a large number of people that night. We sometimes describe PP as similar to pub trivia, but quieter and more casual.
- If you want, promote the event. Do as much social media wizardry as you like. We recommend targeting specific audiences (tech groups, colleges and universities, board game enthusiasts, etc.). Word of mouth has generally been our best advertising.
- Before the month’s event, print puzzles for teams. And be familiar with the puzzles and solutions so you can help guide teams to the answers.
We’re pretty flexible with how you customize Puzzled Pint to your city, as long as it adheres to our core tenets as described above.
How do I find out more?
E-mail gamecontrol@puzzledpint.com. We will schedule a time to group video-chat with you and any co-conspirators you might have. If you don’t, we’ll try to help put out the word that your city needs another volunteer.
We encourage all new cities to have at least two GC members before they start organizing official events.