clueslanguage

Clueslanguage is a domain-specific programming language designed for encoding, organizing, and solving clue-based puzzles and puzzle hunts. It aims to give puzzle designers a concise, readable syntax for representing clues, their text, metadata, and the logical relationships that govern when a clue is available or solvable. While not a mainstream language, it has found use in communities that build elaborate puzzle hunts and educational games.

The language emphasizes human readability and maintainability. Programs describe clues as entities with identifiers, prompts, answer patterns, and optional attributes such as difficulty, category, or location. Clue progression is expressed through conditions over previous answers, time, or external data. Clues can reference others, forming a directed dependency graph that guides solvers through the intended path.

Core features include basic types (strings, numbers, booleans), lists, and simple functions for string operations, pattern matching, and state mutation. The evaluation engine tracks progress, presents hints when conditions are unmet, and can export results to common formats for web interfaces or puzzle platforms. Many implementations support dictionaries, offline validation, and pluggable backends for randomness or external data sources.

Usage typically involves defining a set of clues, their dependencies, and the rules that unlock them. Puzzle authors can incorporate multiple paths, alternative clues, and checkpoints, while educators may use the same framework to model problem-solving activities and feedback loops.

Clueslanguage emerged in open-source puzzle communities in the 2010s and 2020s. It has no universal standard, but reference implementations and tooling exist, promoting interoperability between authoring tools and online judging platforms. Related concepts include domain-specific languages, constraint programming, and puzzle-hunt workflow systems.