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Twistile Cache Builder

Build a rotate-the-tiles geocache. Clear the levels, unlock the reveal.

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Free, just a username and passphrase, no email. Caches you build show up in My Caches so you can reopen and edit them without hunting for the edit link, and watch plays and wins. The same account syncs My Puzzle Texts across devices and manages your short links.

My Caches

Play your own cache before you publish it

Settings that look fair in this form can be brutal, or trivial, in the field. Finish the game yourself, start to end, on the kind of device your finders will use, and check that the difficulty, timers, hints, wording, and the final reveal all behave the way you intended. Every cache you create here comes with a play link and an edit link, so you can test it, tune it, and test it again before anyone else sees it.

Twistile is a rotation puzzle. Players tap a pivot, one of the corners where four tiles meet, and those four tiles spin one step clockwise. Line up a 2 by 2 block of one colour, or four of a colour in a row or a column, and they clear. Tiles above fall in and the board refills, so a good tap can chain. There is a move budget rather than a timer, and every tap counts whether it clears anything or not. Clearing your level goal reveals the final coordinates or keyword.

Levels are not all the same puzzle. Each one says which shape it is counting, shown as a small picture next to the counter: four in a row, four in a column, a 2 by 2 block, or any of them. Shapes that are not the one being counted still clear off the board, they just do not move the counter, so the board never clogs up. From partway up the ladder some levels also mark a few tiles with a dot, and those exact tiles have to be cleared as well as the tile target. The first two levels of every difficulty are always the plain "anything counts" version, so a player learns the spin first.

Every level is replayed on the server. The browser records the pivots a player taps, and the server rebuilds the same board and plays those taps itself before it accepts the level, so a level that was not really solved cannot be claimed. That includes the newer rules: the server counts the level's own target shape and its marked tiles exactly the way the browser did, so a run that cleared plenty of the wrong shape, or missed a marked tile, is not accepted either. Players are only ever given the board they are standing on, never the levels ahead, and your reveal is not in the page until the server sends it. Running out of moves is not fatal: the player gets a fresh board for that level and the levels they already cleared stay cleared.
Anything you create here is public to anyone with the link, and you are responsible for what you publish. Keep a copy of your edit key, it is the only way to change or delete your cache later.

Your cache

Shown to players as a link to your cache page.

Only the site admin can see this, in case they need to reach you about your cache. Never shown to players.

Puzzle settings

How many levels a player must clear before they can claim the reveal. 1 to 10. Every level uses the same 7 by 7 board, and the ladder gets harder in three ways at once: each level asks for more, later levels count only one shape instead of any, and later levels add marked tiles that have to be cleared.

More colours means the blocks and runs a player is hunting for turn up far less often, so the harder tiers ask for fewer tiles and give more moves to find them in. That is not a typo: at 6 colours a good player clears roughly a tenth as fast as at 4. Difficulty also decides how much of the ladder counts a single shape rather than any shape, and how many marked tiles turn up: easy stays on "anything counts" most of the way and sees a couple of marked tiles near the end, while hard is on a single shape almost throughout and marks tiles from level 3, low down the board where they take more work to reach.

Tiles

Every tile has its own shape as well as its own colour, so the board stays readable without relying on colour. The strip below shows the tiles this difficulty uses.

On solve, reveal

Shown only after a player clears your level goal. Reveal either the final coordinates or a keyword, not both.

Where can I host an image for free?

Paste a direct https:// link to an image. Free image hosts that give a direct link include ImgBB, postimages.org, and Cloudinary. A geocaching.com image link works too. The link must start with https://.

Keep your cache in play to keep it live. Share the play link so people visit it; unused caches are cleaned up over time.

Live preview

My Twistile cache
Clear the level goal to reveal the cache.
Levels: 3