TTT Puzzle Hunt Rules


General


Teams must work independently from other teams.

Teams may use Google, online forums, and various other means to obtain required information to solve puzzles. They are, however, not allowed to post hints or spoilers through these means.

General discussions of the puzzles are allowed on the TTT chat box (e.g. progress, difficulty, etc.), but no discussion of the puzzles themselves (e.g. themes used, specific steps, words found, etc.) are allowed, even with spoiler words starred out.

Any misconduct or cheating will result in disqualification from the competition.


Registration


All players must have a valid TTT account. You can sign up for one here. Guest accounts are not eligible to participate.

You may register on the Team Sign-up page at any time from now until just prior to the start of Day 2, by providing your team name and your partner's username.

The competition is open to everyone without a previously issued ban from the TTT.

Duplicate registration attempts and teams with inappropriate names will be disqualified.


Schedule


There will be a total of 11 puzzles, consisting of a warm-up puzzle, three days of three puzzles each, and a meta puzzle.

All but one of the puzzles are new. One has been released in the past with zero solvers.

There will be two hints available for each puzzle, released 24 and 48 hours after the initial puzzle release, respectively.

The puzzles and hints will be released according to the following schedule, at 3pm PDT. Countdown timers are available on the Puzzles page to clear up confusions in time differences.

Warm-Up Puzzle - Tue May 5
Day 1 - Thu May 7 - Day 1 puzzles
Day 2 - Fri May 8 - Day 2 puzzles, Day 1 Hint 1
Day 3 - Sat May 9 - Day 3 puzzles + Meta, Day 1 Hint 2, Day 2 Hint 1
Day 4 - Sun May 10 - Day 2 Hint 2, Day 3 Hint 1, Meta Hint 1
Day 5 - Mon May 11 - Day 3 Hint 2, Meta Hint 2
Day 6 - Tue May 12 - Extra day to work on any unsolved puzzles

Submission deadline for all answers will be on Wed May 13 at 3pm PDT.


Solving and Scoring


All answers must be submitted on the Puzzles page.

All answers consist of one or more of the 26 lower-case letters of the English alphabet. There are no spaces, capital letters, numbers, symbols, or special characters. If the answer is a number, it should be entered as a word (e.g. "fortytwo" instead of "42"). The answer box is programmed to lower capital letters and remove spaces.

Each puzzle has a maximum number of 3 points, with the exception of the warm-up puzzle, which will be reset to 0 points prior to Day 1.

Each Day (three puzzles) consists of 50 answer attempts. The Meta Puzzle will have 10 answer attempts. Once all 50 or 10 answer attempts are used up, no more guesses will be allowed for that particular set of puzzles. Unused answer attempts may not be transferred to a different Day. A correct answer does not contribute to the final number of answer attempts, but will require at least one answer attempt remaining before you can enter it. Please send me a message concerning any legitimate reasons for additional answer attempts.

Every time a hint is released for a particular puzzle, the maximum number of points for that puzzle will go down by a point. After both hints are released for a puzzle, before the deadline, each puzzle will be worth 1 point.


Ranking and Prizes


Teams are ranked by their total score up to 30 points, in decreasing order on the Team List.

Teams of equal score are ranked by the total number of puzzles solved.

Teams of both equal score and the total number of puzzles solved will then be ranked by the timestamp of their last solve, with the earliest being the highest.

There will be prizes awarded to the top three teams. Prizes are customizable and likely will depend on where the team members reside and how easy it is for me to ship/travel to them. Possible prizes include escape room tickets, Starbucks cards, Star Wars collectibles, kitchen gadgets, bedding, wine, etc. In addition to physical/e-prizes, there will be 10, 5, and 3 Tokens awarded to each player in the top three teams, respectively.

Rest of the teams: 10 Turtlepoints per point obtained to each team member.



Further questions? Visit our FAQ or ask away in our 24-7 chat box below.