Origin Stories: Greek Temple

The first Greek Temple puzzle coincided with the first time that I tried to align the content of my puzzle column to the content of the magazine. Prior to the fall of 2004, I basically just created whatever puzzles I wanted to. Starting with Issue 12 of Imagine, I began creating puzzles that matched the theme of each issue. With the first issue being Archaeology & Paleobiology, this provided an opportunity to publish a new type of puzzle I had been working on for a while.

Unfortunately, back then I didn’t consistently keep very good notes about creating puzzles, so I don’t know exactly when I created the first Greek Temple puzzle. I do know that, prior to the fall of 2004, I had made an entire set of smaller Greek Temple puzzles based on the idea of linking the four possible state changes for the gateways (open, close, change, same) to the four possible options of moving between two tiles (alpha to alpha, alpha to beta, beta to alpha, beta to beta). While the graphical style of the puzzle has remained remarkably consistent over the years, I don’t remember how I came up with that original idea. The set of smaller puzzles has never been published, as they really belong together as a complete set; instead, each time a history or archeology issue comes around, I’ve chosen to create a new Greek Temple puzzle.

I did create a backstory for the puzzles to help me with some of the design details: A couple of archeologists have recently unearthed these ancient yet pristinely preserved structures. They accidentally realize that, with the introduction of a source of water, stepping on certain tiles at the entryway opens each temple’s doors via some sort of hydraulic mechanism. Yet they do not know why these structures are here, what they are for, or why they are the first to discover them in regions that have been thoroughly explored before.

GT Published Keys

Finally, each puzzle thus far has used a different pairing of gateway state changes and tile jumping options (see above). There are only a finite number of these, so I’ll necessarily need to start repeating, but some of the possible combinations keep the gateways open more often and some keep them closed more often. I’ve tried to stick to combinations that strike a balance. Regardless, it has been an interesting aspect of the design challenge to see how these combinations affect movement within the puzzle space.