The puzzlehunt starts on and ends on , at which point puzzle solutions will be available.
Please refer to the official registration rules. If there is a conflict between this page and the linked rules, the linked rules takes precedence.
Teams have a maximum size of 8. You may not 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, although puzzles may also be unlocked over time.
Teams under "Full ranking" 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.
Teams under "Partial ranking" will be ranked only by the number of meta puzzles they solve. Teams that solve the same number of meta puzzles will have the same rank.
Solving
Each answer is a string of letters A–Z. For each answer submission attempt from its puzzle page, lowercase letters will be changed into uppercase, and any other characters will be stripped before checking for correctness. Answers (including clue answers) will be in American English.
You are allowed up to 15 answer submission attempts for each puzzle. 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.
In some puzzles, you may get a clue phrase or word from solving. You can also submit these in the answer checker to verify them before continuing (and if verified, they will not count as an answer attempt).
This year, besides the puzzle PDF, each puzzle page also has a link to an online spreadsheet with copyable parts of the puzzle. You may make a copy of the spreadsheet as a convenience for collaborative solving. You should look at the puzzle PDF version first before solving, as it contains a complete representation of each puzzle. Note that images and some other components of puzzles may not be reproduced in the spreadsheet. In the event of any observed discrepancies between the spreadsheet and the PDF, please follow the puzzle PDF and inform Hunt HQ.
Hints
Teams under "Full ranking" will receive 2 hints on Sat 13 July 8pm, 2 more hints on Sun 14 July 9am, another 2 hints on Sun 14 July 2pm, and the last 2 hints on Sun 14 July 8pm.
Teams under "Partial ranking" will have unlimited access to hints. The interface will still display a number of remaining hints (starting at 20), but we will refill them if you run out.
Before a team has finished the hunt, hints can only be used on a particular puzzle after at least 2 teams have solved it. Once a team has finished the hunt, hints can be used on any puzzle. This is to avoid the usage of hints having an impact on the first team which finishes the hunt.
You can use a hint to get help on a puzzle. This can be something like a nudge in the right direction (i.e. you give us your progress on the puzzle and we’ll try to get you unstuck) or an answer to a question (e.g. “Which answers to these crossword clues are wrong?”).
You can only have one open hint request at a time.
Other
You may use any resources and references, printed or online, during the hunt.
You may not publicly stream a solve of our hunt when the hunt is live.
Please avoid spoiling the hunt or puzzles online.
Teams must work independently and not share puzzle information with other teams.
Teams can obtain referential help on individual puzzles from others not involved in the hunt,
but the external parties must not be active solvers or shadow members of the team.
It won’t be necessary to look at the HTML source/JavaScript/CSS on any webpages for any puzzle. For your own solving enjoyment, please do not attempt to reverse engineer the source code.
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 puzzlesmiths@sgpuzzlehunt.com. We will get back to you as soon as we can.