Here is our list of the best team building puzzles.
Team building puzzles are exercises where your team works together to solve problems. For example, Rube Goldberg Machines and Escape rooms. The purpose of these puzzles is to provide opportunities for your team to bond and have a good time together.
These puzzles are a type of team building game, similar to team building riddles and team building problems, and are a good problem solving activity.
Specifically, this list includes:
- puzzles for team building activities
- team building puzzles games for work
- team building logic puzzles
Check out our list below!
List of team building puzzles
From riddles to complex challenges, these puzzles for team building activities cover a wide range of the teamwork and know-how necessary for your employees to triumph. Check out our list to find out more.
1. Escape Rooms
Escape rooms are games where players are “trapped” in a room and must solve a series of team building logic puzzles to break out. While there are plenty of virtual escape rooms to try and local equivalents too, you can also put together your own with a little ingenuity and resourcefulness. Escape rooms are great team building experiences because the puzzles often cannot be broken, without your whole team working together. For virtual teams, consider Murder in Ancient Egypt, where your team solves puzzles in a video conference meeting room.
Here is a list of DIY escape room puzzles.
2. Scavenger Hunt
At Teambuilding.com, we are big fans of scavenger hunts. This team building puzzle for adults involves your team racing to find items or complete challenges before time runs out. Playable both in person and remotely with some rule changes, scavenger hunts often encourage your team to think outside the box to find the answers. At the end of the game, you can compile the puzzle results into a cool collage or presentation for your team to reminisce over.
Here is a list of scavenger hunt clues.
3. Rube Goldberg Off
For the ex-Science Olympiad participants in your team, Rube Goldberg Off is a team building puzzle for adults that challenges teams to create the most complex Rube Goldberg contraption. Rube Goldbergs are intricate machines designed to fulfill a simple purpose, like the ones in Back to the Future or Wallace and Gromit. Rube Goldberg Off channels your team’s inventive spirit and brings everyone together to create the most wild apparatus possible.
4. Geography Puzzles
Based on this statistic claiming that only 36% of Americans can point out where North Korea is on a map, Geography Puzzle asks your team to enter the names of countries on a world map as quickly and accurately as possible. Simply print out blank maps for your teams to fill out. Geography Puzzles is a great team building puzzle for work because it takes little time or energy to set up, and requires your team members to pool collective knowledge to succeed.
5. Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes
Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes is a cooperative game where one player can see the “bomb”, while others must talk the player through defusing the bomb. Because of the game’s setup, this team building puzzle activity trains your team’s communication skills, while also building friendships through a nail-bitingly good time. For international teams that may prefer to conduct the game in a different language, the team behind Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes is currently working on translating their game manual into a variety of languages.
Check out Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes.
6. Rebus or Bust
For teams that are fans of riddles, Rebus or Bust focuses on getting your team to compete in solving the aforementioned rebuses. Rebus puzzles use letters, symbols, or illustrations to represent words or phrases. Rebus or Bust’s are excellent team building logic puzzles because they force your team to brainstorm together and think creatively outside the box. When playing, you can either have team members compete individually or you can split your group into teams.
Take a look at these rebus puzzles for inspiration.
7. Name That Anime Opening
If you are a fan of anime, then you know that every anime has a bombastic opening that lays down the basic show’s themes and aesthetic. My personal favorites are the Attack On Titan openings, which make you feel nationalistic about a fictional country. Name That Anime Opening plays on that trope by asking your team to name as many anime openings as quickly and accurately as possible. If your team is not a fan of anime, then feel free to substitute anime with popular TV show openings or movie themes.
8. Improv This
For creative teams, Improv This is a team building game where teams compete to get the most laughs out of an audience. Each round, two teams go on stage to play, while the rest of the group serves as the audience. These audience members provide the competing teams with opening lines, and the people on stage invent funny scenarios and act those scenarios out. Improv This works as a team building puzzle activity because teams need to collaborate and react off each other to elicit responses from the audience. The winning team of each round is the group whose scenario earns the most votes from the audience.
Here is a list with more improv games.
9. Robot Training
Robot Training is a team building puzzle for work, where team members guide each other to complete simple tasks purely through verbal instructions. Some examples of tasks that suit Robot Training include assembling a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, tying your shoes, or making a cup of coffee. Because this game relies so much on spoken directions, Robot Training develops your team’s communication skills and logical reasoning as your group members work together and cooperate to achieve a common goal.
10. Entrapment
Based on the 1999 movie Entrapment, this team building puzzle by the same name is a game where teams cross a room that has been dressed with red yarn “lasers”. Every time one of your team members trips a wire, the whole team needs to go back and try again. Entrapment is a wonderful team building puzzle for work because your team needs to help each other traverse the room safely. Whether it is through finding a way ahead or helping each other balance, this game brings your team together.
Final thoughts
Puzzles are great activities for teams because they include elements of teamwork and problem solving. You can do a wide variety of team building puzzles, including those on this list. We recommend starting with easier puzzles, and increasing the difficulty as you get better at collaboration.
Next, check out our list of team building brain teasers and this one with the benefits of team building activities.
We also have a list of the best problem solving books and a list of the best workplace riddles.
Jessica Chen