The puzzlehunt starts on and ends on , at which point puzzle solutions will be available.
However, we will leave the website running until so teams can still submit answers and go through the hunt at their own pace (see the FAQ for a more detailed explanation).
Teams have a maximum size of 10. If you would like to include additional inexperienced puzzlers on your team, please email us at [email protected] and we'll consider your request.
You may not create multiple accounts or be on multiple teams.
A few puzzles will be available at the start, and the primary way to unlock new puzzles is by solving puzzles and progressing through the hunt. There are no timed unlocks.
Teams that complete the hunt will be ranked by the time at which they finish. Teams that do not complete the hunt will be ranked by number of puzzles solved and tie-broken by earliest last solve time.
Solving
Each answer is a string of letters A–Z. Lowercase letters will be changed into uppercase, and any other characters will be stripped before checking for correctness.
You have 20 total guesses for most puzzles, though this limit is higher for some puzzles. If you legitimately run out of guesses and need more, feel free to contact us, though we won’t grant your request if we see that you were, for example, guessing random thematic answers, or brute-forcing all 10-letter words.
Some puzzles have intermediate answer checking. This means that you may get confirmation for subpuzzle answers or cluephrases. Not every step will necessarily be checkable. Puzzles with intermediate checking will be noted accordingly. Correct intermediate answer submissions will not be counted towards the guess limit.
Scrolls (Hints)
Starting on , teams will receive 1 scroll every 12 hours. This will be increased to 2 scrolls every 12 hours starting on Friday.
You can use a scroll to get help on a puzzle or navigation challenge. This can be something like a nudge in the right direction (i.e. you give us your progress and we’ll try to get you unstuck) or an answer to a question (e.g. “Which of our answers are wrong?” or “Can we get an extra point?”).
You can only use one scroll at a time.
If you are not having fun and have no available scrolls, please contact [email protected] and we will see if we can help.
Other
You may use any external sources for help, including other people, as long as they aren’t helping other teams and aren’t actively participating in the hunt.
You may not publicly stream a solve of our hunt or post spoilers for the hunt in a place where other teams might see it when the hunt is live.
You may not look at source code for the navigation tool on round pages. You are welcome to inspect the source code on puzzle pages, unless otherwise specified. If you're not sure, please email [email protected] first.
Please do not write code that interacts with the website. You will not need to do this.
We reserve the right to disqualify any team for unsportsmanlike conduct.
We reserve the right to change any of these rules. If there’s a big change, we’ll announce it to all teams.
If you have any questions about these rules, or if you want to contact us for any reason, email [email protected]. We will get back to you as soon as we can.