If you’re looking for a new way to enjoy Wheel of Fortune, there are other options than just sitting on the couch and staring at a screen. Enter: crafting. Creating your own custom puzzle is a great way to show your love for game shows. And it’s easy, too: just follow the steps below.
Pick your medium
When creating your custom Wheel of Fortune puzzle, the first decision you have to make is what medium to use. You can make a physical, custom Wheel of Fortune puzzle, or you can make one online. If you want to generate a digital game, you could make something up in photoshop or PowerPoint – or you could go the easy route and use our online Create Your Own Wheel of Fortune tool.
But if you want to create a physical puzzle, it’ll require a little more work. You can make a puzzle out of paper, string, and markers. Cardboard is also an option for the base of your puzzle. Really, the key is just to make sure you have something large and flat that you can write on. For the rest of the materials, you can swap out our suggestions for whatever you have on hand.
Decide if you’d like to reuse the puzzle
How you want to go about creating your puzzle depends on whether you’d like to be able to reuse it or not. If you just want to create one puzzle with a single answer, then the process is simpler than if you want to create a board you can use over and over again.
If you want to create a single-use puzzle, your first step should be to pick what word or phrase you want to use. Count how many letters are in that phrase, and outline that many boxes on your paper or cardboard. Then fill them in with the appropriate letters.
Feel a little transparent? Don’t worry: the next step of the craft is to take another material, such as paper, fabric, or cardboard, and create flaps to cover the squares. For instance, you might take a small square of paper to cover up the starting letter of your word. These covers will ensure your opponent can’t see your word until they guess the appropriate letter. But when they do guess, you can simply remove the covering. For this reason, we recommend attaching the covers with sellotape or another material. Superglue is probably not your best option!
If you would like to reuse the puzzle, you’ll need extra materials.
However, it can be a lot of work to make a custom Wheel of Fortune puzzle every time you want to play a physical game. Maybe you want to be able to use your puzzle over and over again, like a Scrabble game. In that case, you don’t need to pick your term before you start, but you will need more materials, including paper or cardboard, markers, fabric, a hole punch, string, and Velcro strips.
Begin by creating a grid on your base sheet. Exactly how large you’d like this grid to be is up to you, but we’d recommend creating something around 10 x 3 squares.
Next, you’ll create covers for your words. For a reusable set, we recommend using some kind of opaque fabric. Cut this fabric until it’s the same size as your squares. Then, using a hole punch, create a hole at the top of your fabric and a hole above each square of your board. Using string, tie each cover to your board. These covers will be key to hiding the answers to a Wheel of Fortune puzzle when you play.
Once you’ve created the board, you’ll need to create your tiles. Using paper or cardboard, cut out squares that are the same size as the squares on your board. You can fill these squares in with different letters. Again, exactly how many of each letter you create is up to you, but a good guide might be the number of types of tiles in Scrabble.
Finally, you’ll need to get some sort of reusable adhesive. We recommend Velcro strips, though tape can also do in a pinch. Attach one side of the Velcro to the backs of your letters, and the other side to the squares of your grid. When you’re ready to create a Wheel of Fortune game, simply attach your squares to the board to form your desired word. Then make sure that the fabric covers are hiding the answers to your puzzle. Now you’re ready to play! When someone guesses a letter, simply remove the fabric in front of that square to reveal the answer.
Other Wheel of Fortune Resources
If all of this sounds like a headache, don’t worry. You can check out our online Wheel of Fortune generator to make something a little simpler!
