The puzzle hunt starts on Saturday, October 9, 2021 at 1:00 p.m. EDT (17:00 UTC). It will remain available to be solved at any time once launched. Solutions will be available starting Friday, October 22, at 11:59 p.m. EDT.
Launch weekend (October 9-11, 2021) will be the main event, with constructors monitoring the site and hint requests throughout the day. After that weekend, teams can continue to solve at their leisure, but without hands-on support from the constructors.
Each solving team should determine an appropriate size for maximum enjoyment. It may be possible for an experienced solver to do this hunt solo, but it is intended for teams of 4-10 with a mix of solving experience. This hunt is beginner friendly.
A few puzzles will be available at the start, and the way to unlock new puzzles is by solving puzzles and progressing through the hunt.
Teams that complete the hunt will be listed alphabetically on the Teams Board under Mission Success. Kudos to you!
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.
We ask that you do not spam random guesses, as it is inconsiderate to other solvers and to the constructors. After 20 guesses on a single puzzle, you will be limited to 1 guess per hour.
Hints
Hint requests will be available via the Hint button at the top right of each puzzle page. Requests will be answered in the order they are received unless a team is sending too many requests at once.
During Launch weekend (October 9-11, 2021), constructors will be live during most of the day to answer hint requests, but not overnight. After launch weekend, hints will be available as time permits, up to Friday, October 22, at 11:59 p.m. EDT.
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.
It won’t be necessary to look at the HTML source/JavaScript/CSS on any webpages for any puzzle, but you’re welcome to look anyway.
We reserve the right to disqualify any team for unsportsmanlike conduct, including but not limited to harassing other solvers or hacking the website.
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 tacotortoise@gmail.com. We will get back to you as soon as we can.