How to Play

A Beginner's Guide to our Puzzlehunt

The following is a step by step guide for solving the puzzles in this puzzlehunt. If you’re already familiar with puzzles and/or the world of puzzlehunts, you probably won’t need this. If you’re a beginner, you’ll want to keep this handy and refer to it if you get stuck!

  1. Thoroughly read all the introductory text (known as flavor text) before starting the puzzle. Oftentimes, you will find instructions for how to go about solving the puzzle here, and sometimes there will be hidden instructions in this text that’s disguised as flavor text (text that tells the story of what’s happening).
  2. Take a quick glance at the puzzle, and start solving/filling in any answers that immediately come to mind. Try not to get hung up on difficult clues. If you solve what you DO know, that’ll help give you more context clues for what you DON’T know.
  3. Google is your friend! If you don’t know the meaning of a word, look it up! If you don’t know what something is referring to, sometimes a quick google search will provide the insight you need. There is no penalty for having to look things up, and in fact we encourage it!
  4. Check to see if there’s an interactivity element for this puzzle that you haven’t found yet. Many times, you’ll be able to click things and drag things to change the order or move around the page. Sometimes, it won’t be obvious that you’ll be able to interact with what you see until you try it!
  5. Look for hidden clues in the puzzle itself! Sometimes the introductory text won’t contain all the instructions you need, but the puzzle itself might provide that missing information, and can be hidden, sometimes in plain sight.
  6. Ask a friend! While this puzzlehunt is designed for a solo solver, sometimes it takes a fresh pair of eyes to help figure something out. Solving as part of a team can be fun too!
  7. Take a break/move on to another puzzle. Sometimes it helps not thinking about something, or thinking about something else for your brain to compute what it couldn’t while you were actively working on it. Maybe understanding how another puzzle works will help you understand something about a previous puzzle you were stuck on!
  8. Remember that the answer is an English word or phrase. Sometimes it might be a bit of an odd phrase, perhaps one you’ve never heard before. Try not to judge the answers you come up with, you have unlimited guesses, so guess away!
  9. Keep in mind that the last puzzle in each round is a Meta Puzzle. This means that your answers to the previous puzzles in that round will come into play. Try to make connections with your previous answers and apply them to the Meta Puzzle.
  10. Once you’ve exhausted all the above options, feel free to ask for a hint. You’ll be in touch with the real live people who helped create this puzzlehunt, and we’d be happy to give you a hand. It may take up to 24 hours for us to get back to you, but most times you’ll hear back in a few minutes. There's no limit to the number of hints you can ask, but if you start flooding our inboxes we might respond to you a little slower so that other folks can get some hints as well.

Remember, if you're super stuck on a round, the next round of puzzles will unlock for you after 24 hours of having unlocked the previous round. Good luck, and happy hunting!