If L considered investigating murders a puzzle/something to entertain himself, do you think that if he somehow got the Death Note (I remember your post about how Death Note/murder changes people) he'd use it to create crimes just for fun? Play the mind game with the police or with someone actually able to catch him like Light or Near?
Hmmm. I certainly do think that L would use the Death Note more experimentally than anything else, but I’m not sure it would be in the direction of creating crimes for humans to solve?
I think the existence of the notebook in itself is probably more interesting to him than anything man-made could be. I do think he’d use it to kill, but my thought is always that it’d be experiments on criminals to test the limits and properties of the Death Note and thus intellectually conquer the unknown.
With people, I think he definitely prefers the satisfaction of being the hunter who puts something to a permanent end. I don’t really imagine him as enjoying being chased nearly as much, especially when he’d be posing such “unfair” puzzles that are supernaturally made more complicated and harder to solve.
Of course, it’d be possible that someone like Light would notice L’s experiments on criminals and try to catch him anyway, but it’d be more of a side effect than something he intentionally set up. (It’d be hard though because L would likely use those criminals only he knows are guilty because he solved their cases himself - thus flying under the radar more.)
