GenerateRandomSearch

Printable Puzzle Book Generator

Making a puzzle book by hand means generating each puzzle separately, copying it out, numbering it, keeping a matching answer key straight, and then finding at the printer that half of them break across a page. This builds the whole book at once: sections you can find your way around, a difficulty that starts where you say and ends where you say, one run of numbers from the first puzzle to the last, an answer key numbered to agree with it, and page breaks worked out in millimetres for the paper you are printing on. Every puzzle is solved again after it is built, and no puzzle appears twice anywhere in the book.

What this generator does

Builds up to 250 puzzles of the kinds you choose, arranges them in sections, numbers them straight through the whole book, lays them out on the paper size you are printing on, and puts an answer key at the back under the same numbers.

How to use this tool

  1. Choose which kinds of puzzle to include, and whether each kind gets its own section.
  2. Set how many you want, and where the difficulty should start and end.
  3. Pick the paper size, print size and margin you are printing on.
  4. Give a seed — the same word always rebuilds exactly the same book.
  5. Print it, or copy the whole book out as text.

Understanding the controls

Which puzzles to include
Sudoku, mazes, word searches and nonograms, in any combination.
A section for each kind
On, and each kind gets its own run of pages in the order chosen. Off, and the kinds alternate through one section so the book keeps changing shape.
How many puzzles
One to 250. Two hundred and fifty takes about a second, because each puzzle is built rather than searched for from nothing.
Difficulty through the book
The same level throughout, starting gently and getting harder, or the same spread of levels shuffled — so a mixed book and a ramped book are the same work in a different order.
Starts at and ends at
Where the difficulty begins and where it finishes. Set them the same for a book at one level.
Paper size and print size
A4, A5, A3, US Letter or Legal, portrait or landscape, with the margin in millimetres and a compact, standard or large-print setting.
Word search theme
Which word list the word searches draw on. The other puzzle kinds ignore it.
Seed
The whole book follows from this word. Puzzle seven is the same puzzle whether the book holds ten or a hundred, so a book can be lengthened without reshuffling what came before.

Common use cases

  • A book of a hundred puzzles to print and staple
  • A booklet for a classroom, a car journey or a waiting room
  • A weekly set for a puzzle club, reproducible from the seed
  • Activity packs for a care home or a holiday club, in large print
  • A book that starts gently and works up, for someone learning
  • Producing the same book twice — one to solve, one to mark

How this generator works

Each puzzle is solved again after it is built, by the same rules that made it: sudoku grids are re-solved from their clues and confirmed to admit exactly one completion, mazes are checked to be a single connected tree with exactly one route between any two squares, every word search word is searched for again in the finished grid, and every nonogram is re-solved from its clues alone. Beyond that, the book is checked as a whole — the numbering runs straight through without a gap or a restart, the answer key carries the same numbers as the front, and no puzzle appears twice anywhere in the book. A puzzle that comes back the same as one already in is built again from a shifted starting point rather than dropped, so the book still comes out the length asked for. Where the sheets break is worked out in millimetres from the paper size, the margin and the print size, and a puzzle too tall for the page is named rather than quietly run off it.

Randomness and fairness

Nothing is drawn at random. Every puzzle comes from a seed derived from the one you give, so the same seed always rebuilds the same pack exactly. That reproducibility is deterministic, not cryptographic: the pack is a function of the seed, so anybody with the word can rebuild it exactly.

For how randomness is produced across the whole site, see how Generate Random works.

Limitations and good to know

  • Four kinds of puzzle. Other kinds on the site are not yet part of a book.
  • Puzzles are set in a monospaced face rather than drawn, so they print cleanly but do not look typeset.
  • Two puzzles count as the same only when they print identically. A sudoku that is another one rotated or with its digits swapped is not detected, though it does not look like a repeat to a solver either.
  • Word searches draw on built-in themed lists rather than words you supply.
  • The page breaks are worked out from measured heights, so a line here or there may fall differently from your printer's own idea of the page.
  • Nothing is stored between visits, so keep the seed if you want the book back.

Privacy and your data

The whole book is built in your browser. No puzzle, answer or seed is transmitted or stored.