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These are a few ideas used in a Spelljammer campaign I run, though the riddle rooms and such can easily be used in any game.
The materials used are free for personal use, commercial use is forbidden (copyrights go to many of the creative heads at Dundjinni)
I assembled the maps and edited the textures as needed, with the next project being a puzzle box dungeon.
The goal is to cross the room by a safe path, the solution lies in the mirrored symbols
A simple riddle mechanism I used on a wall, the players had to choose the correct sequence for the empty field to open a door. The solution lies in the number of pogs.
The follow-up room was then a spike trap which used the same pattern of discharging as the pattern of the riddle tiles.
This room was kind of difficult for the party but the rules are well-known. Using a static setup for the room and a correctly scaled token to overlap the colored pillars, the goal was to get the sequence right. The token had a transparent point, allowing for one color to show as it gets rotated, displaying the sequence of colors. Since the GM can rotate the tokens at any speed, the difficulty level is adjustable. The idea was that with each correct step of the sequence, the players could disarm one portion of a trap (which was a prismatic wall) to then proceed further upstairs. A hovering magical platform carried them over to the corners of the room. Of course a more elegant/elaborate setup is possible but the idea resonated well with the group.
This room was a classic puzzle. The floor tiles had to be arranged properly to display a picture. I cut the picture up into tiles and turned those into tokens, giving the players an easy way to move the tiles around. They even solved it the "hard" way without using the extra space provided on the side. The walls were covered in twinkling lights, and when they solved the puzzle, one of them lit up especially bright, revealing a button that would unlock a small safe.
Devious...
The first adventure path was set on the Rock of Bral, a large city located on an asteroid. A pathfinder society delegation held a contest, the winners of which would be recruited into the crew of their ship. They are now exploring space but before that they had to run a derby. I created a map outlining a race track. In Spelljammer the grid is hex-based for space battles/movement. I littered the path with obstacles, like a windmill with loops on its wings that the derby racers had to fly through, while it would rotate one increment every turn. I let the players construct their own racer and used very simple tokens to run a few competitors against them. There was a section which ran under water through the Rock of Bral, with special obstacles like a lightning zappy giant eel or a large mine near the exit.
Obstacles like the mill would have worked a lot better with a FG-compliant symmetry as the triangle shape was hurtling. I also put up a few asteroid chunks and such in the way. I am struggling, in fact, with using tokens on the map to set up movable objects. One major problem is that player tokens which overlap onto the items the GM scatters about then get mixed up and become hard to target/move again. Either way, it worked out somehow.
Disclaimer I am not good at puzzles nor do I have the capacity to articulate what is in my brain most of the time so if you read all of this and like what you see I will happily answer questions and clarify anything I have left out. My DM style is have an outline then make up everything as we go, this kind of made its way into the puzzle I created but I will strive to put everything down.
Inspired by the Fifth Element below is something I worked on for my current 5E custom campaign, designed to challenge my group of level 21s but you can easily adjust for any level and you can make it work with almost any dungeon.
The trick is to get the right crystal in the right room and shatter it.
The basics are you have crystals floating about five feet above the floor. They are about the size of an ogre head they aren't attached to anything but only move along the lines in the floor(these lines can be represented by anything). Currently the lines in my dungeon are rippled stone carved tubing of sorts, but anything distinct will do. The crystals can be pushed as if they weigh nothing but continue to move with momentum, this allows anything to move them from hitting them, to a gust of air.
Each crystal glows of a primary color green, red, or blue, when two crystals are in the same room they both change to the color they would make i.e. green and red make yellow. Only two crystals can be in one room at the same time(I did this to keep it fairly simple). If you put two crystals of the same color in a room it just doubles the same effect/radius. Each room is separated by large stone or metal doors that easily swing open on their own when a crystal is near acting as a key of sorts.
What the colors do in my campaign, feel free to make up your own.
Red burns. 6d6 when ending turn in radius or on touch
Blue freezes. 4d8 entering the radius and on touch
Green Sleep. Sleep like the spell DC22
Yellow lightning. 10d6 Lightning damage that arcs between characters if they are in 10 feet of each other.
Purple exhausts or necrotic if exhaustion is too mean. On entering the radius one tier of exhaustion on failed Con save DC 24 and additional tier per two rounds in the effect, no save allowed.
Orange regenerates health each round or heals. Heals to full and removes exhaustion out of combat, in combat adds regen 20 to everything in range.
Each crystal has a radius of effect, in primary color form the radius is thirty feet, when combined it doubles to sixty feet. Again this is easily adjusted but worked well for the size of the rooms I was using, it allowed the party to push the crystals into the rooms using mage hand once they caught on and still avoid their effects(mostly)
My party has to deal with Iron Golems that spawn from the walls(yours can be any constructs of any CR), each golem has a base color that glows through them easily seen. So if a red golem is in a room with blue crystal they both glow purple(and give of the same effect), when the golems are glowing they have a massive amount of temp HP in my campaigns case 3200 but you should use something equally large to the relative damage of the group. If the party shatters a red crystal with a red golem the temporary HP is nulled and you are left with just a normal golem. The golems do not leave the room and heal to full if the party leaves the room. As I mentioned earlier the trick is to get the correct crystal in the correct room and shatter destroying the effect so the party can get the pieces of the key needed for whatever you choose, in my case it is a locked door that has caused them much grief.
To make things harder my crystals are immune to all damage except bludgeoning damage of a magic weapon and vulnerable to the spell Shatter. Even harder still is some rooms contain golems of different colors, I base the color of the crystal to which golem is closest to the crystal, and the golem furthest away remains its base color. This has lead to some hilarious encounters where the party would fall asleep then be burned awake repeatedly. But when the crystal is shattered the golem of the same color loses its temp HP shield and killed to drop a key piece, the other golem reverts back to its base color and continues the fight. If the party leaves the room that golem will return to its home in the wall. If the room resets the golem that was destroyed does not come back.
I have a side room dedicated to the formation of these crystals at the rate of as needed that don't glow and can be carried freely(though they weigh a good 150 pounds or so) until they get close to the lines on the floor then they snap in place and begin to glow at a randomly chosen color. The puzzle is "solved" once they party has enough key fragments to open the door.
Nice! Im always looking for more entertainment for my group, and riddles/puzzles are hard to come by. Maybe I can turn this into a challenge for them, thank you :)
My efforts to keep them busy are constant.
In the meantime, I've been working on some of my own puzzles, but the money I would pay to just have a puzzle module with a bunch to choose from. Time = Money and I have too much homework for this stuff. lol