Summary: This walkthrough takes you from an empty Number Detective screen to a finished set of puzzle pages with answer keys. You will set up the number chart, pick a level, decide between a one-culprit case and a find-all page, choose the clue kinds, style the page, add a title that fills itself in, and export the whole run in one pass.
Overview
Number Detective builds a chart of numbers and a short list of clues — “Even”, “Less than 25”, “Divisible by 8” — and the solver crosses out everything the clues rule out. By default every puzzle is a one-culprit case: exactly one number survives, and every clue is needed to get there. Switch that off and you get find-all pages, where two to ten numbers survive and the solver circles them all.
You do not write the clues. The generator draws them, checks the whole chart against them, and keeps a set only when it lands on the answer shape you asked for and every clue pulls its weight — a clue that rules out nothing new never reaches the page. Each puzzle comes with its answer key, and no two puzzles in a run share the same clues.
If you want the solver’s side first, read How Number Detective Puzzles Work.
Required Modules
Number Detective — the module itself. A free demo covers every current module: it makes one watermarked image at a time, so you can try the puzzle, the levels and the one-culprit and find-all pages before buying.
Number Detective (the Standard edition) makes every level, one-culprit and find-all pages, on any run of numbers from First to Last; exports JPG, PNG, SVG and print PDF; and includes Instant Puzzle Books and Puzzle Book Studio for one puzzle collection. Creative adds the custom number charts — numbers picked at random from a range, your own list, or a formula such as n*7 — plus random order. Productivity adds Time Saver for batch runs, JSON export, and Puzzle Book Studio Productivity for books that combine several collections. Creative + Interactive and Productivity + Interactive add online play, so the same puzzles become browser games on your own site. You can move up to a higher edition later — any higher edition, up the ladder or Interactive on top — so start with the one that fits what you are making today. See Puzzle Maker Pro Editions Explained.
Commercial rights: Number Detective, Creative and Creative + Interactive all let you sell the finished books, worksheets and printable packs you make to your own readers and customers, including KDP, Etsy and Teachers Pay Teachers. Productivity and Productivity + Interactive include that, plus selling or supplying the generated puzzles to other publishers and sellers.
Preparation
There is nothing to gather first: the generator writes its own clues, so open the module and you can generate. Decide three things up front:
- Who is solving. Very Easy on 1 to 50 suits early place-value and odd-and-even work, roughly grades 1 to 2. Medium’s divisibility and tens-digit clues fit multiplication and factors, roughly grades 3 to 4. Hard’s primes, square numbers and digit sums suit grade 5 and up — and adult puzzle books.
- One culprit or find-all. One culprit is the detective case; find-all suits a “circle every number that…” worksheet.
- How many puzzles. Every puzzle comes with its own answer key, so plan the count from your book layout: at one puzzle and one key per page, a 60-page section is 30 puzzles.
Step-by-Step Instructions
Open the Module
Pick Number Detective from the puzzle list. The module screen opens with the preset buttons across the top, a quantity box, and the Main, Settings, Style and Layout tabs. Main holds the chart, the level and the answer shape; Settings holds the bonus question and the clue-kind checkboxes; Style and Layout are the shared tabs you already know.
Set Up the Number Chart
First number and Last number set the chart, and Columns sets how many numbers sit in each row. The defaults — 1 to 100 in 10 columns — give the classic hundred chart. A chart holds 10 to 400 numbers, anywhere from 0 to 9999, and Columns runs from 2 to 20: 1 to 50 in 10 columns is a friendly half-chart for young solvers, and 100 to 399 in 20 columns makes a dense adult page. A range chart stops at 400 numbers, so Last number is capped at First number plus 399; to draw from a wider span, use Pick from range.
Below them, the Numbers on the chart group decides which numbers appear:
- Number source — Range (the default) prints every number from First to Last.
- Pick from range prints Count numbers picked at random between First and Last, so a chart can draw 100 numbers from 1 to 1000.
- Value list prints your own numbers — type them separated by commas, spaces or new lines. Duplicates are dropped, and the list needs 10 to 400 different numbers from 0 to 9999.
- Formula prints the formula’s value for n = 1 to Count. Use n, numbers,
+ - * / ^and brackets:n*7gives multiples of 7,n^2the square numbers,2*n+1the odd numbers. Every result has to be a whole number from 0 to 9999 — if one is not, the run stops with a message naming the term:n/2, for example, stops at n = 1, which gives 0.5. - Order — Low to high keeps the chart in order; Random shuffles it, which turns the hunt across the chart into part of the puzzle.
Pick from range, Value list, Formula and Random order are Creative features. On the Standard edition a preset that carries them still opens, and the chart falls back to the plain range in order with a message saying so.
A formula chart is the quickest way to tie a puzzle to a lesson. Set Formula to n*7 and Count to 12 for a 7-times-table chart, 7 to 84; leave Count at 50 or more for a multiples-of-7 challenge like the one below.
Choose the Level
Difficulty sets how many clues each puzzle gets and which kinds of clue can appear:
- Very Easy — 2 clues: even or odd, greater than, less than, between, ends in.
- Easy — 3 clues of the same kinds.
- Medium (the default) — 3 clues, adding divisible by, not divisible by, tens digit and number of digits.
- Hard — 4 clues, adding prime, not prime, square numbers, digit sums and repeated digits.
The clue count follows the level automatically. From Easy up, on a very small or patterned chart where that many clues cannot all be needed, the generator uses one clue fewer rather than printing a clue that does nothing.
To differentiate one lesson, keep the chart the same and run one Create per level — Very Easy, Medium and Hard — so every group works the same hundred chart at its own depth.
Choose One Culprit or Find-All
One culprit is on by default: the clues point to exactly one number, and the page is headed “Find the ONE number that is:”. Turn it off for a find-all page, headed “Find ALL numbers that are:”, where two to ten numbers survive. Both work at every level.
Choose the Clue Kinds and the Bonus Question
The Settings tab starts with Ask which clue eliminated the most. It adds that question under the clues and prints the answer — the clue number and how many numbers it removed — on the solution. The generator guarantees a single winner, so the question always has one right answer, and it makes a ready-made talking point for a class: the winning clue is a strong place to start.
Below it is a checkbox for each family of clue — Even / odd, Greater / less than, Between, Ends in, Divisible by (Medium+), Tens digit (Medium+), Number of digits (Medium+), Prime (Hard), Square number (Hard), Digit sum (Hard) and Repeated digit (Hard). All are on by default, and each label shows the level that brings the family into play: the Hard boxes only matter once Difficulty is set to Hard.
Turn families off to steer a section. Leave out primes in a book for younger readers, or, for a primes lesson at Hard, switch off a few of the easier families so more of each page’s clues test primes, squares and digit sums. Leave enough families on for the level’s clue count; if too few are ticked, the run says so and tells you to tick more.
Set the Quantity
Type your quantity into the box — this is the puzzle count, and each puzzle brings its own answer key. Preview always shows a single puzzle; the full run comes from Create.
No two puzzles in a run share the same set of clues, so make a whole series in one Create and split it into volumes afterwards — that way no two volumes share a puzzle.
Style the Page
The Style tab sets how the page looks: the Numbers font, the Canvas and Cell fill colours, the Grid lines, and the Answer circle — the red ring the solution draws around each answer, with its own colour and thickness. Darken the grid lines for a photocopied worksheet, or turn the answer circle black for a black-and-white book.
Set the look once and save it as a preset from the buttons at the top of the screen; Number Detective keeps its own preset list, so the house style comes back with one click on the next book. The full styling workflow is covered in How to Customize Puzzle Designs in Puzzle Maker Pro.
Set the Title
Titles live on the Layout tab. Pick a Smart Title option and every page in the run carries it, so a hundred pages label themselves without a hundred titles typed. Number Detective offers:
- Number Detective — e.g. “Number Detective”
- Case File — e.g. “Case File”
- Puzzle — e.g. “Puzzle”
- Custom — your own text (the default)
Case File suits the detective theme of a puzzle book. The same list fills the puzzle’s description field, which starts out as “Cross out every number a clue rules out.” — an instruction that fits one-culprit and find-all pages alike. How the control works, and how to add page numbering, is covered once in How to Create Smart Puzzle Titles in Puzzle Maker Pro.
The Layout tab also holds the puzzle-layout control, where the crop lives, and a Use branding toggle (off unless you turn it on) that paints your branding template onto this collection’s puzzle image.
Generate and Export
Press Create in the Create Puzzles panel. Each puzzle appears with its answer key, and the run writes both to your output folder in the formats ticked in the app’s shared output settings — JPG, PNG, SVG and print PDF; image size comes from the same settings. For a print book, the PDF and SVG files stay sharp at any trim size. The answer key circles every answer and prints the answer under the clues, along with the bonus question’s answer when that is on.
If the generator cannot build the puzzles you asked for — a Pick from range count bigger than its range, a value list with fewer than 10 numbers, a formula with a fraction in it, or too few clue families ticked — the run tells you why, so you can fix that one setting and run again.
On Productivity, tick JSON in the output settings and the same run writes JSON too. On Creative + Interactive or Productivity + Interactive, tick HTML and it also writes the web-playable version, so the puzzles you just made can go straight onto your own site as browser games: the solver picks a clue and crosses out what it rules out.
Scale Up to a Book
At every edition, one Create produces the whole run, and Instant Puzzle Books assembles it into a book PDF with a title page, a table of contents and footers that point each puzzle to its solution page; you set the trim size, the margins and the page layout. For a classroom pack, print the student pages and keep the answer keys as a separate teacher set.
Puzzle Book Studio, on every edition too, turns the run into a fully edited interior — front matter, page numbering, and the answer keys collected at the back.
Productivity adds Time Saver, for a book that needs several setups in one pass. Each row is a complete Number Detective configuration — its own chart, level and answer shape — so a graded book becomes a handful of rows: Very Easy cases on 1 to 50 to open, Medium on 1 to 100 for the bulk, and Hard cases on a bigger chart to close. The no-repeat guarantee holds inside each row, so give every row its own chart if the whole book must be free of repeats. Puzzle Book Studio Productivity then combines several collections into one book. The workflow is covered in How to Batch Create Puzzles with Time Saver.
Outcome
You have a run of Number Detective puzzles with matching answer keys, every one checked against its whole chart: one culprit (or two to ten survivors on a find-all page), every clue needed, and no two puzzles sharing a clue set. Drop the run into Instant Puzzle Books or Puzzle Book Studio and it comes out as a print-ready interior.
FAQ
Can I write my own clues?
The generator draws the clues and proves them against the chart, which is what guarantees the answer. You steer them with the level and the clue-family checkboxes on the Settings tab.
How do I make puzzles with more than one answer?
Turn One culprit off on the Main tab. Each page then has two to ten answers, and the heading changes to “Find ALL numbers that are:”.
Which edition do I need for my own numbers or a times-table chart?
Creative. Pick from range, Value list, Formula and Random order are Creative features; the Standard edition uses the plain range from First to Last.
Which edition do I need to batch-create a book?
Productivity, which adds Time Saver for running several setups in one pass. Every edition makes a whole run in one Create and includes Instant Puzzle Books and Puzzle Book Studio for one collection.
What formats can I export?
JPG, PNG, SVG and print PDF on every paid edition. Productivity adds JSON, and the Interactive editions add the web-playable version for online play.
Why did the run stop with a message?
The generator found it could not build the puzzle you asked for. The message names the cause — usually a formula result that is not a whole number from 0 to 9999, a value list that is too short, or too few clue families ticked — so fix that setting and run again.