Wrap-Up

And so concludes the 4th (and final) REDDOThunt!

_へ__(‾◡◝ )>

We were glad to have more than 319 teams spending the weekend with us. We hope you had as much fun solving the puzzles as we did watching your progress!

How did you find the hunt? Let us know your thoughts here.

You can also join us on our discord.

There were 2906 correct solves (plus another 8 for the runaround):

The full guesslog can be found here.

We answered 403 hints in 36 hours, with Janice single-handedly responding to nearly half of them!

Congratulations to The C@r@line Syzygy for being the first to solve the Final Puzzle in a blistering 4 hours and 29 minutes! Congrats also to the other 85 teams who solved it 🎉

The ~mystery prize~ is a copy of local escape game kit Quest for the Merlion Eye, by Nomis Piy. It was awarded to ☊ MISCELLANEOUS SYMBOL SINGAPORE CIRCLE LINE for being the first team to complete the Runaround. (They were also the second team to solve the Final Puzzle, just 2 minutes (!!!!!) behind The C@r@line Syzygy.)

Another 7 teams similarly braved Singapore’s hot and/or rainy weather to complete the Runaround:

• White Maria
• whereswaldo
• Duck Soup
• The Blob Wizards
• MiaoMiaoMiao
• Hee-ho
• Vehemence

We’d also like to hand out unofficial awards to teams which stood out during the hunt!

With travel tentatively resuming in many countries, a travel-themed Round 1 puzzle seemed apt. As is tradition for the REDDOThunt, solving Round 1 reveals the underlying puzzle theme -- this year, the popular 16th century Chinese novel Journey to the West.

We chose this theme not only because of the overarching travel idea, but also because we wanted to feature a theme from Chinese mythology -- something not common amongst puzzle hunts that originate from the United States or Australia. The novel also offers a cast of well-known characters around which we could base our Final Puzzle.

In constructing this year’s hunt, we took into account feedback from past editions.

Firstly, REDDOThunt has always been positioned as a “chill hunt” -- something of a filler between major hunts, and a gateway for new solvers to gain experience and build confidence for larger hunts. Participants of the 2020 hunt felt that the difficulty level had risen a fair bit; this year, we aimed for more accessible puzzles, while keeping a few challenging ones in the mix.

We also noted feedback that self-service hints (as in 2020) may not always address the needs of teams with varying stages of progress. We thus offered custom hints this year. We tried to stay timely, but we’ve always been a skeleton crew -- apologies if we kept you waiting! We also want to give special thanks to Oxford Karma Splicers and Pet The Catloe for some hint requests that made it all worthwhile (see below).

There was also a suggestion that punny Meta answers would be more satisfying. We thus made an effort to have such answers this year - we hope we amused you as much as we amused ourselves (whoops).

A note on scoring: While it’s now common for teams to be ranked by when they solved the final puzzle, we wanted to maintain our tradition (perhaps influenced by Australian hunts of old) of ranking by total points/puzzles solved. We’re glad that some (though not all, admittedly) survey respondents appreciated this approach.

For one thing, our hunt’s short timespan amplifies timezone differences; for another, we wanted to encourage continued puzzle-solving over a sprint to the finish (while still recognising the first finishers via the The 🔴 REDDOThunt Award and The 🔴 REDDOTrun Award).

This year’s hunt was made possible by our collaborators from Synod, who contributed two puzzles and provided invaluable test-solving support.

With the Runaround in REDDOThunt 2020 unfortunately being canned due to the pandemic, we were excited to be able to reintroduce this element in 2022.

Given this year’s Journey to the West theme, we simply had to select the iconic Haw Par Villa as the location for the Runaround, as it is a theme park filled with statues and dioramas depicting Chinese mythology, including a section dedicated to Journey to the West. We’re glad that 9 teams headed down to try it (with a shout-out to Ex Cursion of /r/PictureGame) despite the scorching weather in Singapore this past weekend - that certainly gave the teams an immersive experience of being in hell!

REDDOThunt began in 2017 as an entry-level hunt, aiming to be relatively approachable for teams -- particularly Singapore-based teams -- just starting on their puzzle hunt journey. Though it’s become less entry-level since, we’ve tried to stay accessible to new teams while still being interesting for experienced ones. Along the way, we’ve also aimed to include Asian themes that are less common in other hunts.

After four editions, REDDOThunt has come to an end, as the team is increasingly busy with real life commitments. In a way, our story concludes just like that of the protagonist in the Epilogue: at the close of this chapter, we thank you all for being part of this amazing journey, and for your support over the past 6 years.

We’re grateful for your participation, which has made the REDDOThunt a truly international one; and we hope the Singapore puzzle community continues to participate in local and overseas hunts, keeping the puzzle hunt spirit alive!

(from ​​Big Whoop)
A: do you think there's significance behind the left/right speaker thing in the recording?
B: i didn't hear it, wasn't using earphones
B: sounds possible
B: oh and the puzzle is called earphones!
B: 🤦‍♂️

(from 3muddycats)
“This kinda looks like the 5 stages of grief. WAIT, this IS the 5 stages of grief.” <proceeds to label it “knockoff 5 stages of grief>

Though Nutrimatic has become a crutch lifeline invaluable aid for many of us, we're glad that Substitute managed to introduce it to even more solvers -- such as PsychOut from Vehemence, who said: "I've got that Nutrimatic site bookmarked now!"

A member of Vehemence experiences what the setter of Gossipers also felt:
"I need to scrub my search history when this is all over." - LM (in reference to Gossipers)

(from BigRedDots)
During Fortune Cookie, before realizing what's going on:
- godzilla is scissors?
- if godzilla is scissors then so is t-rex...
- they all have hinges and sharp parts
- a chameleon's head is like a rock 🤔

V-sa Holders sums up the Final Puzzle:

This most bardlike Earphones hint request from Oxford Karma Splicers made our day:

To shift, or how to shift, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in this play of Shakespeare
To sling the letters of courageous Caesar,
By scene or act, in text transcribed from puzzles,
And by indexing mend them. To solve—to sleep,
No more; and hear a bleep, So may it end
The sound breaks and a thousand textual blocks
I thrash and stare through: Tis a termination
I found that we required. To sigh, to seek;
To seek! perchance to glean--ay, there's a code:
So shift by scene or act what sounds may come,
When we have shuffled past this verbal toil,
And give us laws—there's the request:
What makes normality of so long lines?
For who would dare to shift by scene or act,
The process's wrong, ...
The undiscovered answer from clues formed
this inquiry concerns, puzzles us still,
Ay, makes us gather here what skill we lack,
To supply to authors words we know not of.

As did this last-minute Fortune Cookies request from Pet The Catloe:

There once was a demon with cookies
Who lost to some REDDOT hunt rookies
We solved some of the clues
Couldn't put them to use
"Won't solve this in time" said the bookies