Rules and Tips

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Organization — About the Puzzles — Tips for Solving and for Collaborating.

Solving Fun created a custom online puzzle hunt for the company Virtual Chair, on the occasion of their first anniversary. The puzzle hunt is played on Friday, October 22nd, 2021 in the virtual venue space in Gather.town. The puzzles also remain accessible later for the participants.
This is a private event, the Puzzles page is password-protected and accessible only to the participants. Please ask me for permission before sharing a puzzle with someone not related to the company.

There are 3 puzzles in total. They are in puzzle-hunt style: they come with no, or minimal, instructions. The first step is to figure out what to do, and use the information or data to extract some meaning. They often require one intuitive leap in thinking (or aha-moment) to solve.
The goal is to find the answer to each puzzle. The answer is always an English word or an English phrase.
You may use the internet to search for information (some of the puzzles are impossible to solve without looking things up).
To check your answer, you must enter it in a specific field (in a Google Form) just below the corresponding puzzle (or in the Gather space for the event). The form will validate if and only if this is the correct answer. You should write each answer in lowercase, and without spaces.
Submitting your answer in the form also enters your team into the “leaderboard” for each puzzle.

(what to do if you are stuck)

If you are confident in your answer, but the form does not accept it, check that you typed it correctly (lowercase, without spaces), and that you indeed have the complete answer (in some puzzles there may be an indication of the word length(s) of the answer).
Re-read the title and the introductory text carefully. They may contain clues.
Consider what information you haven’t used yet.
Thoroughly check the work that you’ve already done.
Google things you don’t know. Google things you know.
Take a break, look at another puzzle, ask a friend.
Look up a specific hint in the Hints page, or by email.

(when solving as a team during a videoconference)

In Zoom, one team member can share their screen with the puzzle on it, so that everyone can annotate the screen. In Gather, you can use an integrated whiteboard with the puzzle as background image, so that everyone can annotate at the same time.
Use a shared folder (e.g. in Google Drive) and share notes in documents or worksheets among your team.