Puzzle Guide?

Maybe this will do? It doesn't explain everything though.

...You know, it's a puzzle for a reason. Telling you the methods of solving them would defeat the point.

Well, I'm fairly new as well, but I think I understand the concept of puzzles pretty well.

Some puzzle creators give links to an itstoohard puzzle, where you can then guess answers to the questions provided.

There are other common 'puzzles,' such as bolding, italicizing, or linking certain letters or numbers in a post which would be combined to form the giveaway link. I won't mention any others. :P (only mentioned that one because it was the most obvious one and not really a puzzle)

All puzzles are different, and there will usually be enough clues or hints provided to solve the puzzle if it's not one of the two examples I mentioned above.
Hope this helped. :)

If you think it might be a puzzle, highlight the post text, right click and select "View selection source". Then in there you'll see the code that makes up just that. That will help you find hidden links, odd formatting that you may have missed, etc. Some people will hide a giveaway link in there that isn't normally visible, sometimes they'll hide a puzzle in there.

It also helps to check OPs profile to see if there is a current private giveaway, that usually hints that there may be a puzzle hidden somewhere.

"I was hoping someone could give me a brief run down of how the puzzles work and how you're supposed to figure them out."

I'm afraid you won't get any help from this crowd. They guard their secrets jealously.

The reason people make puzzles for their giveaways is to limit the number of entries in their giveaway. There are other ways of doing this, of course. The following is a list of examples.

--A high CV value will exclude those who can't afford it.
--A hidden link will exclude those who don't know how to find it.
--A coded link will exclude those who don't know how to decode it.
--A specialized-knowledge quiz will exclude those without the required information.
--A riddle will exclude those without the ability to figure it out.
--A "flash giveaway" will exclude those who aren't quick enough.
--A "hunter giveaway" will exclude those lacking sufficient patience.

What you are doing is asking those with the specialized knowledge of how to find hidden links to share that information with everyone. If they were to do that, there would be much, much more competition for said giveaways. Since these people don't want to hurt their chances to win, they will not divulge the information you ask for. A few bits of information are already widely known, so you will probably get those, but the rarer tricks will probably not be given.

Here is some information that might be helpful to you:

--SteamGifts pages use a five-character code with numbers and letters (e.g. EI5ty).
--ItsTooHard pages use an eight-character code with numbers and letters (e.g. 5Q09RD9a).
--Imgur pictures use a five- or seven-character code using numbers and letters (e.g. EFHxMdk).
--Pastebin pages use an eight-character code with numbers and letters (e.g. CCQCPdh3).
--Bitly (used to shorten links) uses a five- or seven-character code with numbers and letters (e.g. 6wgJO).
--Translator, Binary is useful for common coding.

here you go :>>