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community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/758...(DMs_especially)?pg=1

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Here is a puzzle that you might like, when the characters go through a dungeon have their be writing on the wall of this story:

A Knight's indecision, a warrior's desperation walked the path ahead of him and turned left to bury his aberration. Lay in the shadows, croutched in the dark the dead Bishop rose with a spark and was carried North East two miles far. Found by the helper, put to rest by the pawn the men's work only takes them so far. Hollow is the castle, ruined is the rook fall did the tower and three more people it took anger of the gods for the ones that were dead. A Queen in olny title, her majesty she was not when it came to the mistress she is only one step up. A King of cold ambition, royal man indeed when it came to the bishop, he choose the black throne for his deeds. Tainted is the Knight, Dead is the Bishop, Worn is the Pawn, Collapsed is the Rook, Worthless is the Queen, Loathing is the King and Enlightened is the Traveler.
 
Have the PCs write this down for latter in the Dungeon they will encounter a room that looks like a chess board. They will have to decipher the tale in order to know which spaces to traverse  the picture will show you the path they would have to take. It is a short puzzle so don't expect much more than ten or so minutes for the players to try and solve it. When they solve it the floor peice they are on will rise up to the next part of the dungeon or to a treasure room if you feel that it should be.

Hello all, I'm completely new to the forums but I seen this and just wanted to throw in my 2 cents 

I ran a puzzle dungeon in my last campaign that turned out fairly well once my 2 pcs figured out the feel of it. I got the inspiration of it when I saw Jim Carrey's version of the Grench who stole Christmas. There's a scene that het gets onto a swing and flies up into further parts of his cave home. 

The group was traveling through a mountain/woods area when they seen an entrance, heading inside they see 4 swings in a circle all facing towards the center. In the center was a pedistool with a chiseled area in the middle that made it quite evident that a statue belonged there. Under the statue was a stone floor, upon further inspection (and a decent search/spot) they seen that the floor had a small crease in a circle around the pedistool. The rest of the room was made of stone, the walls have roots that were starting to break through and the surface was slimmy so that spiderclimb wouldn't work. Looking up all they could see was a dense fog.  After tugging on the swings, one decided to sit down (1st trigger), the other decided to do the same thing (2nd trigger). As soon as the 2nd one sat down the 1st ones swing flung into action and was taken to a ledge, after swinging himself onto the ledge he was taken to a door and had to answer a simple riddle. I made it to where it would be something stupid that they would have on them (what has a head, a tail and no body- a coin) placing the coin into the slot he was able to go into the room where there was a dragon statue.
I also had a diagram for myself so I knew which swing led to which floor. 4 floors, 4 swings, 4 statues.   The last room has a statue and a weird stone ball with a button in the middle. Picking it up it weighs about 5 pounds, but to press the button the players hand would immediately fall to the ground and stuck until he presses the button again. 
After the characters got back to the ground floor, they just had to look at the bases of the statues to figure out where the 1st one belonged. (BTW, the statues were of a wolf, a dragon, a cat and an eagle) Once the statue was placed the floor gives out and they both dropped.... and dropped... and dropped... (My smart-butted husband played the SpyKids bit of "How long have we been falling? I dunno, my watch doesn't tell time- just to give you an idea of how long they were dropping) FINALLY one decides maybe to bring out the ball and push the button, the ball drops into a sloping disk at the bottom and a button is triggered and finally after a somewhat padded landing they hit bottom. 
The room is huge (big enough for a dragon to live comfortable) and is in the shape of a triangle. There are rocks and broken pillars everywhere, as well as scorch marks and old blood stains and bones. In each corner is a pedistool to place a statue in (once again, indentation from the shapes of the bases) Once all are in, they hear a booming voice "Choose your opponent", after much debate and fear of fighting a dragon, they choose the cat. The cat turned out to be a chimera, after that fight they went with the Eagle which ended up to be a Gripphon.After defeating the gripphon,   they finally choose the dragon, which happens to be a friendly, wise dragon. No fight, they are granted 1 wish and after choosing are teleported out as the whole mountainside caves in.   

They really enjoyed that one, I'll post another one later when I get the time 

I ran this last night. The players had a blast. I have some thoughts to make this work for your game and avoid pitfalls I ran into:

Appropriateness:

• I think this works best with analytical players: My group had two programmers, a musician/tech support, a computer artist and a chemist.
• Be lenient with metagaming. Too much RP immersion might ruin the mood and timing.

Preparation:

• This is based on a software programmer's exercise called the Eight Queens Puzzle.
• The purpose is to put 8 queens in a chessboard so that none of them attacks each other.
• Get a chessboard (battlemat works fine, too), some tokens, and a 1-minute timer (hourglass for extra fun!)

Setup:

• Characters somehow end up in an 8x8 square trap room. When they finish entering the room, an appropriate number of tokens appear to make the total number of tokens + players = 8. Put them in ramdom locations.
• The tokens (I used them to represent 10 ft tall pillars) start to glow and flash at faster rates. Eventually each pillar pulses energy out in the directions of a queen (straight and diagonals). The first time this happens no one gets hurt (to give the players warning) but the rays pass through targets (PCs and tokens) as they hit them, hitting those behind them too.
• Let the players use their skills to figure out things. If a player passes an athletics check, they can move tokens for the rest of the encounter. Arcana check shows tokens emitting force magic. Perception will show that the players are starting to glow themselves.
• After a small while, the tokens and players pulse, d6 force damage to anyone in a tokens/players attack direction (Save to avoid)

The puzzle:

• Take out the timer and tell the players the tokens and themselves will pulse again in exactly 1 minute (real time) and start the timer. Pause the timer if they have to roll skill checks.
• Every minute, figure out who gets hit, and roll damage and saves. Restart the timer.

The solution:

• There are multiple solutions. Players have to find one of them.
• Let the players figure out what they need to achieve.
• Throw some hints if they are way off, so that they know the objective is for the trap not to attack anyone.
• A good hint would be to ensure there's only one queen per row, and one queen per column.

Feedback from my session:

• I used my watch to keep time. Calling the time left out loud at 30, 15, 5,4,3,2,1 kept things really exciting!
• One of the PCs jumped onto one of my pillars. Eventually I made the pulses cover the whole distance up to the ceiling to prevent a boring stalemate, but better to do that by design than ad hoc.
• Keep things fast and exciting. Pause the timer only when necessary. Do not do actual "attacks", just pass/fail saving throws. Use the same damage per attack
• Increase the damage as the puzzle goes along. After a while, only 0-2 PCs will get caught in the crossfire, decreasing the sense of urgency.

Improvements:

• Use a skill challenge for the PCs to disable the tokens from doing damage.
• You might just as well call off STR checks/movement rates after a while when the players start moving things around recklessly
• If you think the challenge might be too difficult, put actual queen chess pieces in the chessboard to give players a head start.

Illiandry, rather than put your comment in a thread about puzzles, could you make your own?  People often wont read 3 pages of a thread before posting, and yours will be lost.

That way I can make counters too.