MetaTerminal

Of course! Since Team 2 just got a player moved out, you’ll be joining that team. Also, new players, if you have no clue what’s going on, feel free to drop a line to either myself or experienced team members to ask for help to explain in more detail. This is a quite complex competition so you’re definitely not expected to understand everything. Excellent! Make sure to check into your Team PM, the majority of your interaction with the competition and puzzles will happen there.

All PMs have been sent. Everyone (with the exclusion of Snip, who will be added to their PM momentarily) should have received their Team PM. If you have signed up, and have not yet received a PM, let me know. Signups are still open, and will only close when the first round is released in just over 24 hours time. In addition, I have discovered that I will be unavailable to receive answers for several hours after the first round opens - hopefully that won’t present any logistical issues, but I’m just letting you know ahead of time that your first few answers may not be checked immediately.

That’s late enough that I don’t think it will be a problem (you might miss the last part of the final round) but if I get confirmation from your current teammates then I’ll move you to Team 3, if you’re okay with that.

My first thought was: Honestly I think that team can probably cope with three for a few days, unless they think otherwise. The other thing is that I tried to balance experienced players across the board (three per team) and I’m afraid that matchups like Exalted+Fura or Exalted+RShara will give that team undue advantage, and swapping you for a new player will mean the third team is down to two previous players. Snip will also be going inactive (not sure when) so by the week the second team will be down a player. My thinking now is that we could move Snip to your team so you have consistently four players, but that depends on how the second team feels about losing that experience. (I think they’ll be fine, but they are better judges. And obviously we should ask what @Snipexe thinks and when he’ll go inactive.)

Gotcha. Team 2.

First draft of new teams. People requested a shuffle and balance, so I have done a randomised shuffle and then tried to account for solving power. Tell me if you’re happy with balance, and your teammates. Team 1: @Ghanderflaffle @Babilarian Darkeyes @MistCLOAKed Mountains @xinoehp512 Team 2: @Furamirionind @Snipexe @Gancho Libre @RShara @AonEne Team 3: @NotarySojac @Exalted Dungeon Master @ebfritz @I am a stick!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh... right. (Sorry, Discord has been malfunctioning for me recently.) How about a Saturday Cali start (24 hours later)? I’m fairly certain you’re available then, and hopefully it’s early enough for @xinoehp512 and @Snipexe.

I’ll move the start time forward, then - let’s open sometime 3-5pm on Friday afternoon Cali time. That’s unfortunate. The majority has spoken, though - and you could probably rejoin in time to play the entirety of the second round. Given the earlier start, a draft for teams will go up today, everybody. If you want to sign up, do so soon!

I initially thought Sunday, but @xinoehp512 expressed wanting to start earlier or later. I’m happy to start anywhere between American Friday and American Sunday. Would earlier be better for you?

Of course! All teams will play through the first, more accessible round at the same time, regardless of skill. Once the second round is unlocked, teams will have certain options around how they want to approach it, and you can work out with your team whether you want to keep playing.

Of course! Signups are still open. Note to self: @Gancho Libre has signed up via a PM.

That’s fair. I’ll see what I can do.

Hooray for proper sleep cycles! If people are okay with some shuffling, then I’m happy to. It might be interesting to get different team matchups as well.

"That took longer," says the white-haired man, "than I expected. I'm terribly sorry." Welcome, one and all, to the third and fourth rounds of the Sanderson Puzzlehunt! Signups are now open to both new and returning players. For those unfamiliar for what this is, there is a description of it in the spoiler below: However, this is a special event! There will actually be two rounds of puzzles that will be released to teams in this round. The puzzles in the first round will be designed to be easier and generally more approachable so that newer players can whet their teeth. The second round shall only be available and solvable to the teams with the strongest of wills (coughs obliquely in Team 5's direction). There may also be other changes and surprises that I'm not telling you about! But you'll just have to play the game to discover them, won't you? Due to the size of these rounds, team sizes may be larger depending on membership - I will also try to put new players with experienced ones so that they can work alongside people who have been in the puzzle circus before. The Rules: How do I solve puzzles? The last two rounds (for looking at sample puzzles and solutions): (In other, somewhat unrelated news: Puzzle Potluck (a non-Sanderson puzzlehunt run by someone who isn't me) is on June 15 - you may want to organise for your team to join that, depending on your teammates' preferences.) This event looks to be larger than Earth and Scadrial put together. Therefore, while I would put the ballpark on the first round being completed in two to four days, I have no idea when the final round will be finished. I would be very surprised if someone finished in under a week. Maybe someone will prove me wrong. Regardless, the hunt will begin whenever enough people have signed up, the puzzles are prepared, when the phase of the moon is correct, Sagittarius is waxing, Mars is in fifth house, and most importantly when I feel like it. The hunt has begun. Signups are now closed. Leaderboard:

*commence thread necromancy* This is your announcement that a herd of the rare local species New Sanderson Puzzlehunt Round has been spotted in the area! As they were previously thought to be extinct, this is exciting news for any aspiring Puzzlehunt-ologists. Keep a peeled eye for them wandering through in the coming hours! I think that joke is about finished. This post is just to ping anyone who followed this thread or wanted to be notified of new rounds. If you want to sign up to the new round(s), please do so in the other thread when it arrives, not this one. Thank you for your interest. @Stark *conclude thread necromancy*

Is the one-guild rule from the Ghostbloods? (I don’t believe that we have any strict conflict-of-interest rules atm, beyond individual guilds allowing or disallowing membership.)

So the age is fine? I’m fine with stuff contradicting each other or timelines being revised if you are, but I’m not sure that you have realised that there is a substantial contradiction.

YES, THIS IS AN EXCELLENT IDEA *composes himself* Ahem. Excuse me. You know, I’m somewhat of a scholar myself. (See Alleyverse Wiki in my sig, my previous character Alum, etc.) So I would be very interested in joining a guild based around this. As per the Liebrarian guild - it’s not a guild that is active (I don’t believe it’s repped at all currently), and it was never really a guild of scholarship. A guild of scholars, certainly - so is Dark Alley! - but not one based around scholarship. Certainly not a neutral force in the Alleyverse, either. Nothing like this really exists at the moment, then. As for being ‘new’ and not in a guild - it should not preclude you from starting a guild, nor leading it, if there is sufficient interest for it to exist. I await with baited breath to see if this is the case.

And so the thread is resurrected. Welcome, new players. I recommend reading the initial post in this thread, which outlines the idea behind this game. Don’t read all of the rules. (You can, but I advise against it.) Just read the section on voting, Wandering Merchants, and Posting Guidelines. You should be able to catch up eventually. Unfortunately, multiple exams are glowering at me and sharpening their wicked blades from just around the temporal corner, so I have little time to govern rule passings! I welcome anyone to do so. It’s fairly easy - just track the changes in state. If you do it once a page then you should keep on top of it. :3. 14. To be or not to be, that is the question.

Yes, there are quite a few. Four, by my reckoning. Which means 18 years since Era 0 if I am correct. (I made a timeline for this, which you’ll have to hunt for in the PM, and that illustrates my point a little clearer.) But let’s summarise the length of the Eras: Era 1: three to three-and-a-half months. There is at most a month between the start of the Era and Calm given the events leading up to it, a month between Calm and Tension (at a stretch, but this is off of Septimus’ travel times assuming some relative difficulty), a stated month between Tension and Divided, and Divided leads directly into SDW. This means that, allowing for a few extra days here and there, Era 1 was 3.5 months long, or about a quarter of a year. (Surprisingly short, but what the hey.) Sixteen Year Peace: Self-explanatory. We are at 16.25 years. Era 2: One year. This is based on the positioning of Great Game (which was roughly halfway through, and explicitly five months after the one-month-in Ghostblood Ball), as well as Alum’s statement that Voidus had been in the barrier for seventeen years when he was released. (Quoting myself, so a little dodgy, but it seems about right and doesn’t contradict anything that I’m aware of.) We are at 17.25 years. Timejump: One year. We are at 18.25 years. Era 3: unless there has been another timejump that I am not aware of, it is safe to assume it has only been running for a few months in-universe - that pushes us up to 18.5 years. Add the six months in Era 0 that the Ghostbloods took to gain prominence (it was actually closer to four, but let’s be generous and assume they existed in secrecy for two months prior to going public), and we get 19 years for the length of time that the Ghostbloods have been around. It is entirely possible that there was a time jump during Era 0 or some other year that I am not aware of, or they date back to much earlier in secrecy, in which case the Ghostbloods would have been around for longer. But I would be surprised if that were the case.

To the rescue! We are in the 22nd year of the Alleyverse. The Ghostbloods were created halfway through the third year. That means that Ark (the character) can be at most 19 years of age, since that’s how old the Ghostbloods are. And it also appears that the Ghostbloods gained prominence over the course of about six months in-universe. Which is odd, but not impossible, considering that there was a clamor for membership and a considerable power vacuum at the time.

One month later... Scadrial Round Solutions I mean, it's only a month and a half late. What's the big deal? There is also a very important question that I shall raise at the end of this post (regarding the next round) that I want everyone interested in participating in to at least read and consider. Travelling Blues Inscriptions Family Trees Relativity Astronomy Makes the Man Wayneisms Gossipers Okay, it’s time to talk about something. There’s a question that’s on all of your minds, and I’m here to answer it. Namely: It’s been two months since the last signups went up. Where’s the new round? What have you been doing all this time? Quiet at the back! But, yes, imaginary person, you are correct. Turnaround on the next round has been slow. Or, should I say, two rounds. (To do list item one: set up cliffhanger. Status: complete. Item two: personal anecdote and side tangent. Proceeding...) So the first round took over a month to draft and finalise. The second went up twice as quickly - just under two weeks. So what’s the difference? The difference is time. I had almost unlimited free time for Scadrial - after meals, and family commitments, most of my time was on planning, writing, testing, throwing out, starting again, writing, cross-referencing... and it worked! I got a fairly successful round finished very quickly - before the dust had settled on the first round, I dare say. The problem with that method is it causes burnout. It was impossible for me to work on the third round for the rest of February - I was spent. By the time I picked the thing up again in March, workload had picked up again significantly. I’d say at least fifty hours of work in the past week has gone towards a local theatre production. More has gone to stuff I can’t share, or projects on the Shard, or personal stuff... (You can see the results of some more of my and other's work here.) I haven’t just been buried under this - I’ve spent some good time slacking off as well! - but other things have been on my mind. Okay, Meta, stop making excuses and get to the point. Settle, settle. I do have a point, which is: at some point in late February, I looked at my sketch of the next draft and said: “This looks sorta Earth-sized, but on a much longer release schedule. I don’t want to release something this small after such a long wait, and the people who wanted another Scadrial might be disappointed...” And then I had what I thought was a brilliant idea. What’s better than one puzzlehunt round? Two puzzlehunt rounds. (Yes, thank you, save questions to the end. We’re not trying to establish whether it was, in fact, brilliant. The point is that I thought it was.) So I drafted another round, shuffled some things, tweaked some others. The details came out like this: I would have a first round that was slightly easier, more Earth-sized, to get everyone into the swing of things... and then the second one would pull out all the stops. It would be the biggest round yet. It would have ambitious and cool puzzles. (In theory, at least.) So I tried to write that one as well alongside it... and then, of course, I missed the March deadline. Good news! The first round is almost ready to go. (Puzzles are drafted, just some fine-tuning.) Associated bad news: the second round isn’t. It’s about halfway. And then with the ugly news: in almost exactly one month, I shall be sitting some very important exams. (Latin exams, precisely. Respice, quaeso, aliquando...) And studying and puzzle solving does not mesh well together. In fact, one week from now I will need to be studying solely for those Important Non-Puzzle Commitments, and I won’t have time to dedicate to anything else. Therefore, right now we have a dilemma. I can release what I have now: a single round (a finished one), after a longer-than-expected wait. But it won’t be very long, or very difficult. Underwhelming could be the right word. And the second round will have to be reworked as a result, and will take a little longer than if we wait, since I’ll have to rethink some of the things that might or might not be in it. Conversely, I can wait a month, finish the second round (won’t take long after that) and release the two-round extravaganza as intended. Upside: my evil plans work out, and I can release the two rounds in their interlinked glory. Downside: no Sanderson Puzzle Hunt for over three months. Great for suspense, maybe. Not so good for consistency. So! Instead of making up my own mind, I’ve put it to a vote. Would you rather a little bit of puzzle-content now (but you have to wait longer for the second/fourth round), or wait for both of them together? Neither are perfect - I would prefer the second option, but even so the delay is hardly ideal. But as long as the people more important than me - the audience - are happy, then I'm happy. What do you say?

(I have no idea if this is in the right forum, but Kelek’s breath if I couldn’t find a better one. Not Sanderson-themed, but definitely applies to the Shard itself... Apologies to the mod who will inevitably have to move this post.) There was an international competition, called the Galactic Puzzle Hunt, that ran at about mid-March. We represented the Shard in it! Out of the 717 teams that competed, and the nearly three thousand participants, our team of nine Sharders came in the top 100! Ninety-third, to be exact. You can see the leaderboard here. For those who know the Sanderson Puzzle Hunts, this will be a familiar conceit - there are 42 puzzles released to all teams to solve which have an English word or phrase as an answer. You solve them as quickly as possible over the ten day period. The first team to solve all the puzzles wins. (Though the teams that finish are very much in the minority. Finishing at all, in fact, is a tremendous achievement - the teams marked with aeroplane emojis on the leaderboard were the ones who finished. We got about two-thirds of the way through, and probably wouldn’t be able to get any further even with extra time.) The puzzles weren’t standard formats - they ranged from logic puzzles with a twist, to multiple video games, to those match math puzzles (but instead of basic arithmetic, there’s calculus and sigma notation). Anything and everything is fair game - puzzles about words inside other words, country flags, TV shows, movies... Sometimes standard internet puzzle territory, sometimes not. Often, you think a puzzle will be about one thing, but it’s actually about another. Difficulty ranges as well: early in the competition, puzzles are fairly straightforward. By the end, they are almost impenetrable. The initial plot of the Hunt was Antarctic Artifact. We were 'invited' to an archaeological dig - as the supposedly best archaeologists and enigmatologists in the business - and had to piece together the meaning of the remnants of an ancient stone tablet. We soon discovered that the stone tablet was, in fact, a part of a centuries-old alien 'cold war' (in Antarctica? see?) and that we were required to uncover more artifacts and decode the galactic language in order to work out why each of the alien races weren't getting along. The round consisted of two main parts: pre-Artifact assembly, where the puzzles were easier (the 'intro' round); and after we had pieced it together, where the puzzles became considerably more difficult. During the first two days, we had a quick pace, though we were quickly overtaken by many, much faster teams. (The first puzzle took us an hour to solve. The best team took only eleven minutes.) We hovered between 120th and 160th for the first few days, jumping ahead and falling behind as we battled with teams with more spread out time zones. Solving the first artifact caused puzzles to increase in difficulty amazingly quickly. As a result, our rate of solving (initially about four per day) dropped, first to about two per day, and then one as the competition went on. Thankfully, the other teams appeared to be having just as much trouble with the higher difficulties, allowing us to creep into the top 100 as we approached the final week. From there we hovered around the 100th position until the end of the competition. For a little while it looked like we were in danger of finishing outside the double-digit bracket, until a number of solves (brought home by some hard, late night work and utilization of hints) on the final day pushed us over the finish line. Our fantastic team was myself, @AonDii, @Snipexe, @Babilarian Darkeyes, @MistCLOAKed Mountains, @MiToRo94, @Exalted Dungeon Master, @RShara and @Devotary of Spontaneity. All of these people provided amazing work and activity, and we wouldn’t have gotten the place we did if even one of them did not take part. Special shoutouts to Exalted and MiToRo, who managed to solve puzzles singlehandedly (Line Plots and Twitch Plays GPH respectively). But I am glossing over so much skill and effort that went into this - as someone said, part of our strength is having a lot of different people with different skill sets. With even one person missing, it's doubtful that we would have done as well as we did. Puzzles we/I liked: Race for the Galaxy 50/50 Peaches (this might be Stockholm Syndrome talking) Puzzles that caused us/me the most anguish: Ministry of Word Searches Colors The Last Databender General stats: Placing: 93/717 Puzzles solved: 27/42 Fastest solve: 1hr2mins, Cross Lines Slowest solve: 169hr49mins, Cuspidation Number of Sanderson references made during solving: needs improvement Number of friends and family contacted to help with obscure topics: 2 Placing of the team named WIT: 50 (always a few steps ahead!) Number of times we got rickrolled: 2 (Apologies to anyone who is skilled at puzzles but got overlooked for the team - I tried to get everyone that I knew had ability, but I was conscious of team size limits (10 maximum) and it's entirely possible that I missed very talented people. Send me a ping and I'll be sure to keep you in the loop next time.) It is many months until the next large puzzle competition, so it's unlikely you shall hear from us again until near year's end. Yours cryptically, MetaTerminal, Team Captain