JHU CS Puzzle Hunt 2023
Rules
- There is a total of 6 Puzzles (one of which has two connected parts with independent solutions). Some puzzles will be available immediately, more will be revealed over time or as teams progress.
- The solution to each puzzle is an English word, phrase, or name. The checker is case-insensitive and ignores any whitespace.
- Each team should stick to one team name. Those are also case-insensitive and ignore white spaces, but the first submission for a team determines the spelling on the leaderboard.
- Do not collaborate with other teams. Please solve discretely so other teams can't overhear your solution.
- You are encouraged to use Google or whatever resources you have available to assist you in your puzzle hunt.
- Puzzle titles and flavour texts might contain clues. There is also a small number of hardcoded hints for certain wrong guesses. More hints will be provided after the first hour, at our discretion.
- This is a puzzle hunt, not a CTF event. Please do not DDOS or brute-force attack our nice little website. There are no additional hints or clues hidden on this website.
Puzzles
- Warm-up (1pt) | Solution
- Not This Time (3pts) | Solution
- Don't Just Sue Them (5pts) | Solution
- Not Your Average Traveling Salesman (7pts) | Solution
- Power Play (9pts) | Solution
- Drawful Miscommunication (15pts) | Solution
- a) Blue's Clueless Brainteaser (10pts) | Solution b) Peppa's Preposterous Puzzle (10pts) | Solution
Leaderboard
| Team Name |
Puzzle 0 |
Puzzle 1 |
Puzzle 2 |
Puzzle 3 |
Puzzle 4 |
Puzzle 5 |
Puzzle 6a |
Puzzle 6b |
Last Puzzle Solved |
Total Score |
| The Friends | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | Nov 09 0:15:16 | 45 |
| QOMF | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | Nov 09 0:16:07 | 38 |
| BAMS | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | Nov 09 0:11:58 | 24 |
| MOVi | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | Nov 08 23:50:27 | 22 |
| CCB | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | Nov 08 23:46:37 | 13 |
| Maloners | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | Nov 08 23:41:21 | 6 |
| BAM | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | Nov 09 0:12:01 | 3 |
Submit a Guess
The puzzle hunt has concluded and the final leaderboard is archived here. Thank you for playing.
Hints and Errata
- For puzzle 1, you can actually ask ChatGPT to solve the first clue for you. For the last one, it might help to just Google what you see.
- For puzzle 2, the number in parentheses is the length of the answer for that clue (2 words of a specific length each for one of them). Most hints refer to both real people and characters from the TV show Better Call Saul, but you might be able to solve this puzzle just by figuring out the 2nd and 5th clue (which do not require specific knowledge of the show). Make sure to carefully read the 2nd clue (the answer is not the state where the show is set).
- For puzzle 3, the clue should read "Sic semper tyrannis". The spelling error is NOT intentional. The clues have more in common than just referring to a specific group of people. Why do they all have 3 letters associated with them? Don't give up if the answer doesn't seem to make sense - it is spelled pretty weirdly. The final answer has 2 words, one with 6 and one with 8 letters. The puzzle's title is not very helpful - focus on the rest of the puzzle (especially the partial answer you get first).
- For puzzle 4, you do not need any specific knowledge (beyond basic Googling) about any of the movies as long as you can recognize them. The top right image shows the movie 'The Courage of Lassie'. Focus not on characters, but actors. All actors have something in common. All the answers related to last names. The names of the actors themselves are not the answer (and do match the length of the blank spaces).
- For puzzle 5, each word on a card is related to one of the images. One image is leftover (no point in brute forcing though). There is a rule, related to the words or the phonetics of each word on the cards, that connects them to the images. Start with card 1 and 2 if you are stuck. Especially for cards 3 and 4, focus on pronounciation rather than spelling.
- For puzzle 6, you should start solving part a) at least partially, then try to find the connection to part b) and solve that one first. There is no point in trying to solve them on their own. There is a reason why there is a Peppa and a Blue version of the crossword. It is more than just colors. Googling the two might help. It has to do with where the characters are from.
This puzzle hunt was created by Alex Sweeten and Nico Ritschel. Thanks to Neil Newman and Foggy Brume for puzzle inspirations. Proudly hosted on UBC servers in Pacific Time.