Solving guide

What's a puzzle?

Broadly speaking, a puzzle is a collection of information which, by following a series of appropriate steps, can be turned into a final answer, which is almost always an English word or phrase. Puzzles mostly don't come with instructions, though often it's possible to approach them by recognizing familiar elements of their structure. For example, if a puzzle comes with a list of clues, you might want to solve them; if a puzzle has a familiar type of puzzle in it, like a crossword or a Sudoku, you could try solving it and seeing where it leads.

Puzzles also generally adhere to a consistent structure, comprising a title, flavor text and the main puzzle content itself.

• The title of a puzzle generally relates to the puzzle in some broad way; sometimes it just describes the puzzle content, but sometimes it's a hint or helps to confirm that you're on the right track. In general, the puzzles in this hunt have largely non-hintful titles.

• The flavor text of a puzzle manifests as some words just before the main puzzle content, and generally hints at some aspect of a puzzle, whether it's a step that has to be taken or some realisation that has to be made.

• The puzzle content contains the main meat of the puzzle and can be just about anything, from a crossword grid to a blob of text to a bunch of numbers. This is what you're working with!

The puzzles in this puzzle hunt also contain some extra story to give some context to the puzzles, as well as a question (in bold, right after the story) which can be answered by the puzzle's answer, to help you ensure you're on the right track.

Extracting an answer

Since a puzzle has to end in a single answer, there must be a way to translate puzzle information into a final answer (or a phrase that hints the answer, or even just a next step). Some common ways to extract an answer:

• Checking first letters can often reveal valuable information. A lot of puzzles spell out their final answer through first letters of answers to individual clues or something similar. Sometimes, the first letters of the clues might spell out a message as well.

• Some encodings show up often; common examples include binary, Braille, and Morse. These don't always explicitly in their typical form; black or shaded squares in a grid could represent Braille, for example. Puzzles will typically hint at the type of encoding used, if any, though; Braille often comes with references to blindness or otherwise being unable to see, while Morse code could be hinted at with mention of a "transmission" or anything "short and long". Here's a helpful codesheet (PDF) that may come in handy!

Calling in an answer

Answer guesses in this hunt can be submitted via the page linked at the top-right hand corner of each puzzle page! You should get immediate feedback on whether your answer was correct or wrong; if you're having trouble getting the answer checker to work, you can drop me a message and I'll see what I can do.

Need a hint?

If you need help with any of the puzzles at any point during the hunt, feel free to drop me a message detailing your current progress and I'll do my best to get you un-stuck!