FAQs

What is a puzzlehunt? How do I solve these puzzles?

If you’ve never heard of puzzlehunts before, here’s a very brief summary: in a typical puzzle, you receive some information and have to extract an answer out of it, which is almost always an English word or phrase. Puzzles can come in many different forms; the only real commonality is that you usually receive no direct instructions, so it’s up to you to figure out how to make sense of the information you’re given. You can read a longer introduction to puzzlehunts here.

If you are new to puzzles and are interested in seeing some examples, or if you’re looking for some practice, we recommend looking at previous Galactic Puzzle Hunts or puzzles from other online hunts such as Teammate Hunt, Puzzle Potluck, or REDDOThunt.

Do I need to have a 10-person team?

You certainly don’t need to, and we believe the hunt will be fun for teams of all sizes. However, there will be a sizeable number of puzzles, so we recommend having closer to 10 people if you want to be more competitive.

How many puzzles will there be?

Around 40.

What exactly happens when the hunt ends?

When the hunt ends on , the scoreboard will be frozen and solutions for all the puzzles will be released, and a wrap-up will be available several days later. However, if you have not finished and still want to experience the whole hunt, you’ll still be able to register new teams, submit answers on the website, and progress through the hunt until . The only difference is that you won’t be able to use hints after the hunt ends.

After , you can still do the puzzles and check your answers spoiler-free.

Is there a tip jar?

If you’d like to support the Galactic Puzzle Hunt, you can donate here.

I think there’s a mistake in this puzzle!

Please describe the error in an email to contact@galacticpuzzlehunt.com and we’ll try to correct it.

Can I write code that interacts with the Galactic Puzzle Hunt puzzles / server?

This will not be necessary to complete any aspect of the puzzlehunt. However, if you want to do this, please limit any automated requests to at most 1/second for our server’s sake. We may disqualify teams that egregiously violate this request.

I’m working on an interactive puzzle and I think it broke. What should I do?

Some interactive parts of the hunt store information in your browser. If we have a bug and the data becomes corrupted or out of sync, the puzzle may behave oddly or stop working. You can click this button to reset it: Clear local storage

Note: This will affect all puzzles in the hunt that store data this way, and may erase your local work on those puzzles, so be sure you have it recorded somewhere. It won’t affect any state shared with your team or your overall progress in the hunt. If your problem isn’t caused by bad local data, then unfortunately clicking the button won’t help and you should contact us. (If you do, depending on the symptoms, we might ask you if you’ve tried clearing, or give you instructions to send us a copy of your data while in the broken state.)

How can I learn about future Galactic Puzzle Hunts?

Join our mailing list!

I’m stuck on a puzzle. What should I do?

Here are some general puzzle tips that might be useful:

  • Thoroughly check the work that you’ve already done. Fixing a small mistake or incorrect assumption can greatly help with getting unstuck.
  • Get fresh eyes on the puzzle, or conversely, take a break and look at something else.
  • Consider what information you haven’t used yet.
  • It can be useful to put everything you have into your favorite search engine.
  • Have you tried…

Remember that after hints are released, you can also use them to get a nudge in the right direction.

Who’s running this hunt?

We are ✈✈✈ Galactic Trendsetters ✈✈✈. We won the 2020 MIT Mystery Hunt and were busy last year writing the 2021 Mystery Hunt, but now we're back with another Galactic Puzzle Hunt!

Are there any prizes?

No.

Is there a physical component to the hunt? Will I ever need to be in a particular location to solve a puzzle?

No.

Is there a registration deadline?

No.

I have a question that’s not on this list!

Contact us at contact@galacticpuzzlehunt.com and we’ll do our best to answer it.