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Do you enjoy solving puzzles? How about books by Brandon Sanderson? How about puzzles that are all based on books by Brandon Sanderson?

If you enjoy escape rooms, reading books about people solving riddles and challenges (such as the 39 Clues), games that require you to think logically or outside the box, problem solving, or ARGs and similar puzzleshunts, then you'll love the Sanderson Puzzlehunt. We have designed a number of riddles and puzzles for teams to solve that require both puzzling skills and Sanderson knowledge. These teams will compete against each other to solve all the puzzles, climb the leaderboard and win the rounds.

If you want to participate in this event, sign up below!

In the spoiler I'll go into more detail about what we're planning.

Spoiler
  • What do you mean, a puzzle?

A puzzle is anything with hidden information, like a crossword, a grid of sudoku, or even (Adonalsium forbid) a math puzzle.

  • So you've made a bunch of crosswords and math puzzles?

Quite the opposite - there will be no math puzzles and crosswords (unless we see overwhelming demand for them. Let us know!) These are puzzles of an altogether different variety. They could be a series of images, descriptions of certain Sanderson scenes, quotes from characters, audio clips, coded messages, or anything that hides information. In a crossword, the aim is to completely fill out the grid. In a puzzlehunt, the solution is a word or phrase that you need to uncover. Lateral thinking is just as important as logical thinking, and you may need to research Cosmere material to help in your solving.

Another important note - there are no or few instructions. Working out what to do is part of the puzzle.

  • That sounds difficult.

Don't worry!

 1) The early puzzles have been designed to be accessible to people with little puzzle-solving ability.
 2) You're not alone - you're working with a team! One person might not recognize that the photos all describe major Stormlight Archive events, but four people will be able to work it out.
 3) There will be a hints system - you can use a hint to ask a question to help with your solving. This is supposed to be fun, so if you're stuck we'll do our best to get you moving and keep you in the competition.
 4) The puzzles all have clues about how to solve them within the title and flavortext (the story introduction before the puzzle).

  • So how do I solve the puzzle?

We can't give you any specifics... but:
 1) Read the title and flavortext again. They include... well, clues to solve it.
 2) You don't need to know every step of the process to get started in solving it. If there are a bunch of crossword clues, work out the answers. If there are some photos of people, identify who those people are. Once you have more information, the way forward will probably become apparent.
 3) If you're stuck, ask for help. The hint system is there for a reason, and if a puzzle is too hard for everyone, we'll try and make it easier. The competition is more fun if everyone's solving quickly, instead of being stuck.

 - So when will the hunt start?
Once we've got enough people interested. We're looking at getting at least ten people before we start so that there's enough teams - something closer to twenty would be amazing and would help the competition. Either way, the hunt will begin towards the end of the month.

TL;DR If you like puzzles, crosswords, escape rooms, mysteries, fictional puzzlehunts, consider yourself a Sanderson Scholar, are good at either logical or lateral thinking, want to have some fun with a team of people, or are a human being, you should join the Sanderson Puzzlehunt!

Mods for this event are @MetaTerminal. Huge shoutouts to @MacThorstenson, who was the original creator of the idea and helped design but was unable to mod due to timing issues.

Links:

 

Edited by MetaTerminal
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@Furamirionind

It depends largely on the individual puzzle, and your team’s activity (since they’re designed to be solved collaboratively). They can take under half an hour if you’ve got multiple people who all work out what to do - they could also take several days if you get stuck or it’s particularly hard. Hopefully your team will be able to work without you and you’ll be able to contribute where you can.

On average, though, I’ve designed them so that a team of three working together could solve one in half an hour to an hour.

@Silva Sure thing. Again, teams, so as long as your other team members are active it should be fine. (I’ll try not to have anyone with workload issues on the same teams.)

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23 minutes ago, MostLikelyHuman said:

How is this going to be set up, could I ask a few friends (without 17s accounts) and have them as a team? If that's okay, and I can get a few people, I'll sign up.

@MostLikelyHuman Puzzles will be released in rounds to everyone, and completing them will gain your team points.

I’m fine with you working with people who don’t have accounts - however, if I could get the number of people you’re working with so I can judge team sizes that would be excellent. I’ll also provide a Google Doc that I recommend you work in, since that way I can monitor progress and adjust puzzle difficulty/handcraft hints if you need any.

That being said, the puzzles will require knowledge of Sanderson’s works, and that is more of a focus than fiendish design, so I recommend that each of them has read at least some or most of the Cosmere.

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I’ll cover the rules later, but: you’ll have a private team PM, through which you’ll submit all puzzle solutions and hint requests. The first to reach a certain condition (which you’ll know at a later date) will win the round. I’ll ask everyone to refrain from sharing or posting puzzle solutions or hints publically.

@Xavier Iriarte

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