Combine Puzzle Sets with the Catalog Merge Tool

Summary: Use the Catalog Merge tool in Puzzle Maker Pro to combine several exported puzzle sets — even different puzzle types — into one collection, then publish it as a single playable catalog on your WordPress site.

Overview

Each Puzzle Maker Pro export is its own catalog. Often you want one collection instead — a variety pack that mixes Number Trail, Queens, and Binary, or a single themed set built from a few separate runs. The Catalog Merge tool does exactly that: it loads puzzles from one or more exported sets, lets you title, order, and curate them, and writes a new self-contained set — including a ready-to-upload WordPress zip.

The merged zip uploads through the normal plugin flow, so finish with Publish a Puzzle Catalog: Export, Upload, and Show It on Your Site.

What You Need

Puzzle Maker Pro (the merge tool is in the desktop app, under the Tools menu).
One or more puzzle sets already exported as HTML / JSON — the same exports used in the publish tutorial. (HTML/JSON output is a Productivity Edition feature.

Open the Catalog Merge Tool

In Puzzle Maker Pro, open the Tools menu and choose Merge Puzzle JSON Catalogs. The Catalog Merge — Combine Puzzle JSON Sets window opens.

Import Your Puzzles

Click Import JSON… and select puzzle or catalog JSON files, or simply drag and drop files or whole folders onto the window. The tool is flexible about what you give it:

Drop a catalog file and it expands into all the puzzles that catalog references.
Drop a folder and it loads the puzzles through any catalog inside it (keeping their order), or every puzzle JSON if there is no catalog.
Import from different sets and different puzzle types in one list — that is how you build a mixed collection.

Duplicates are skipped automatically, so re-importing the same file twice is harmless.

Each imported puzzle becomes a row. The grid shows these columns:

Column	What it shows
File	The puzzle’s JSON file name
Puzzle Type	The puzzle type (e.g. Number Trail, Queens)
Grid	The grid size, such as 9×9
#	The puzzle’s own catalog number
Title	The puzzle title — editable
Description	The puzzle description — editable
From Catalog	The source catalog the puzzle came from

Curate the Collection

Edit Title and Description directly in the grid. What you type is written into each puzzle in the merged set, so you can relabel puzzles for the new collection.
Reorder with Move Up / Move Down. The list order is the order puzzles appear in the published catalog.
Remove Selected drops the highlighted rows; Clear empties the list.
Set the Collection title at the top — the heading the web player shows. The tool suggests one (the shared title when every puzzle matches, or the puzzle’s module name; “Puzzles” for a mixed set), and you can edit or clear it.

Choose the Export Options

Two checkboxes control the output:

Include index.html (web player bootstrap) — adds a standalone index.html for serving the set as plain files on a web server. It is not needed for the WordPress plugin (the plugin renders the page itself and skips index.html on import), so you can leave it off for a WordPress upload.
Display Credits — when on, the published collection shows the “Created with Puzzle Maker Pro” credit line; turn it off to hide it.

Export the Merged Set

Click Export Set…, pick a folder, and give the set a name (for example christmas mixed puzzles). The tool writes a self-contained set into that folder:

the puzzle JSONs, with your edited titles and descriptions,
any images the puzzles use, gathered into an assets/ folder,
a merged catalog (<name>-catalog.json),
the optional index.html (only if you ticked it), and
a WordPress upload zip, <name>-wordpress.zip.

A summary confirms what was written. If any image could not be found beside its source puzzle, the tool warns you and still completes the set — just re-export from that folder once the image is in place.

Publish the Merged Catalog

Upload <name>-wordpress.zip exactly like any other catalog — see Publish a Puzzle Catalog. A mixed collection is filed under the Mixed category with each puzzle type as a tag, so visitors can still find it by type.

Outcome

You can now combine multiple exports — across puzzle types — into one curated, retitled, ordered collection, and publish it as a single interactive catalog on your site. This is the same tool behind the plugin’s bundled demo, which is itself a merged mixed set.