Level 51
the orchestra plays the prettiest themes
First of all, congratulations again to Team Galactic for winning the Smogon Puzzle Hunt 2019, and Dongmin Fan Club for being the first Smogon-registered team to complete it! In total, we had 93 teams competing this year, with 84 completing at least one puzzle, 71 solving at least one metapuzzle, and 41 teams completing the hunt. Thanks to everyone for your enthusiastic participation!
For those of you who missed the hunt and would like to work on the puzzles, the full set of puzzles and solutions can be found at https://spo.ink/sph19archive.
This wrapup post will discuss the hunt, the process behind it, and how we thought things turned out in the end, from a staff perspective, so (many) spoilers are incoming! If you haven't tried all the puzzles and still intend to—especially the metapuzzles—you may want to skip over this post before doing so.
PLOT AND FORMAT
There's many directions from which to approach a discussion of this hunt, but most decisions we made this year were framed by our goals for the hunt. Based on how last year's hunt turned out and some feedback we received, we had some aims for this year's hunt:
- Better portion out Pokémon-related puzzles—fewer regular puzzles that require Pokémon knowledge, but more integration of Pokémon in the theme and metas
- Better integrate the theme into the hunt's structure
- Have the difficulty curve peak higher, but generally feel smoother
- More substantial Round 1, so completing Round 1 feels like more of an accomplishment for more casual teams
- Wider variety of puzzles; specifically, fewer word-heavy puzzles, especially "here's a list of clues"-style puzzles
THEME AND STRUCTURE
Work on this year's hunt began fairly early on: soon after last year's hunt concluded, we spent some time thinking about hunt themes in general. We thought last year's hunt theme was rather weak in the sense that it barely affected the structure of the hunt, and was pretty much never mentioned outside of the preambles on the metapuzzle documents. This is, probably, a weakness of Discord-based hunts in general, which don't have the opportunity to use site design to advance the theme and story of the hunt, so we knew the theme had to play into the structure of the actual hunt in order to feel more visible.
In addition, we wanted the themes to play closer with the metapuzzles, which meant bringing the general theming away from Smogon-specific domains and more towards general Pokémon content, so it would feel a little more familiar to solvers who might not be super familiar with Smogon culture or competitive Pokémon in general. Pokémon Contests fit the bill almost perfectly: they're a mildly competitive facet of the Pokémon games which isn't really explored in-depth much by the average player, but are pretty much instantly recognizable by anyone who's played RSE/DPPt/ORAS before. The interlocking structure of conditions and the stepped Contest levels also played naturally into an interesting non-linear unlock structure.
By this point we were pretty much locked in on our theme, but what about our structure? At first, we thought the 20+1 puzzles afforded by the main contest structure would be sufficient space for a single-round hunt (21 vs last year's 24 puzzles), but it was difficult for us to reconcile what would presumably be a four-difficulty-level hunt with our aim of a smoother difficulty curve... and so, Round 1 was reborn out of necessity.
We originally planned to theme each puzzle within the same Round 2 category—for example, solvers may have happened to notice (much to their chagrin, in some cases) that the Beauty round comprised 4 crossword-based puzzles. Similarly, the Coolness round was meant to contain 4 hybrid-word-based puzzles (which sort of happened); the Cleverness was meant to contain round 4 research-heavy puzzles (a la Tweets About Jane); the Cuteness round was meant to contain 4 puzzles "presented interestingly" (e.g. the video of Let's Explore the World!, or the random-looking strings in String Theory) that had atypical solve paths; and the Toughness round was meant to contain 4 logic-heavy puzzles (A Regular Crossword, Regional Tours and arguably Totally Free Puzzle fit the bill; Did You Know? most certainly did not). Due to the way the timeline got tight near the end of the hunt-writing process and our slight lack of familiarity with some of the puzzle types, this ultimately didn't materialize, but we thought it would have been a cute idea, and we hope some teams had some fun with realizing the theme in the Beauty round.
META DEVELOPMENT
The original Round 2 meta relied on a pool of 20 feeder answers, one for each category-contest level, along with 4 "judge" feeders, intended to reveal the mechanic of the metapuzzle. There were a couple of reasons it didn't fly: it featured a mechanic essentially completely unrelated to Pokemon, and it wound up being unfortunately similar to the Maniacal Merchants meta from the 2017 MIT Mystery Hunt. Still, for completeness' sake, you can find a reproduction of it here.
Eventually, after shuffling through the Bulbapedia pages for Contests and Super Contests for altogether far too long, we stumbled across Spectacular Talents and almost immediately knew this was what would form the basis for our meta—interesting and exploitable word choices, innately related to Contest categories, and lots of data points to work with. The meta mechanic was developed from there, and after cutting out some rejected pun-answers, we were ready to build the meta!
One significant sticking point we foresaw, even after teams found the table of Spectacular Talents on Bulbapedia, was the idea of transforming the category of each one. In an effort to make this more obvious, I (that's me, Level 51) spent a few days tacking down a set of answers such that each puzzle-category contained talents from the other four categories. This didn't quite have the effect I had hoped for, as a few teams got lost in the (admittedly very promising-looking) fact that these now looked a lot like the 20 non-neutral natures in Pokémon. In fact, the metapuzzle was, at some point, going to use a table to try to make the transformation step even more obvious, but it's probably a good thing we didn't end up there, firmly behind the borders of Red Herringland.
crisis averted!
On the other hand, Round 1 was developed almost entirely in a Discord PM conversation between myself and lovemathboy.
how to ideate a meta in 1 easy step
PUZZLE WRITING
We developed this hunt, like last year's, through coordination via Google Sheets and a lot of pinned Discord messages. This year, we had 8 prospective writers instead of 3, so we split into 3 groups (2/3/3); the idea was that any given group could write a puzzle, and the puzzle could be sent to another group for testsolving; after tweaking the puzzle based on the testsolve feedback, it could be sent to the last remaining group for a second testsolve. (This system broke down later in the writing process as we began to rush for time, but if we had better managed our time, it would likely have been quite effective.)
Apart from this general structure, we left puzzle writers with total freedom on their timelines—besides occasionally bugging them and asking about the progress of their puzzles, they were left to write and testsolve puzzles at their own pace. In retrospect, of course, this was a poor idea; several puzzles which were reserved early on were never completed, leading to some fairly last-minute puzzle writing. This is something we can definitely learn from and improve on next year.
MOVING FORWARD
With the expanding numbers of solvers attempting our hunt, running it on Discord has proved to be significantly less viable this year than it was last year. We're strained in two ways: the infrastructure used to run this hunt, and the number of staff we have writing and running it. With some users suggesting that we advertise our hunt even more widely next year (say, on http://puzzlehuntcalendar.com), we're expecting an even larger turnout in years to come, which does lead to some logistical problems.
The infrastructure, as it stands, is something of an elaborate labyrinth of Google Sheets, Google Drive PDFs, and an omnipotent Discord bot. The system works, and some solvers have expressed their fondness for this format, but at the same time many have pointed out some very valid issues with cramming everything into a single Discord channel: !status, for example, got really spammy near the end of the hunt when the list of puzzles became very long, and having to do !puzzle to get a puzzle link also became somewhat troublesome. The main trouble was that the Discord channel had to house both discussion as well as bot commands, making the latter generally disruptive to cohesive teamsolving. A website would, of course, help to remedy these issues.
There's a few reasons running this hunt from a website would be more pleasant for the staff, too: primarily, we wouldn't keep getting pinged for dumb stuff, and the fact that we're not in the same server as (most of) the teams would lead to decreased pressure to respond to hints particularly quickly (we answered a majority of hints within 5 or so minutes, especially in the earlier part of the week). Given some of the events that transpired over the course of this hunt, we suspect that this may prove to be vital for our combined sanity.
This leads into the issue of staff numbers. This hunt, with 31 puzzles, was written by a total of 5-6 of us, of which 3 users authored or co-authored 3 or more puzzles (exact numbers: 8, 8, and 24). Simply put, the team running this hunt is small enough that to divert further resources to setting up a site instead of just running with a simple Discord setup may not be a viable solution at this current juncture. It's probably best to expand the team in some way, but of course, here the issues of group dynamics and so forth come into play.
Essentially, while it's great to receive validation that we're on the right track puzzle-wise, there's many questions to be answered about the "how" of keeping this hunt growing. There's no real correct answer on what the next step is as of now, and we're not even sure if SPH 2020 will be a thing, but we'll be sure to keep everyone posted! :)
STATS
We've put together a compilation of some stats for your viewing pleasure! Ever wondered how your solve times matched up against the best? Or who was the first to the buzzer in the hunt, or who had the quickest Round 2 meta solve? The answers may surprise you! A compilation of various statistics is available at https://spo.ink/sph19stats, containing these sheets:
- Overall: An overview of some stats about the hunt in general.
- Puzzles: Each puzzle's solve/guess stats, plus how they fared in the feedback form.
- Guesslog: The full guesslog for the puzzle; answers are stripped of all non-alphanumeric characters.
- Wrong guesses / puzzle: A list of the most common wrong guesses for each puzzle.
- Wrong guesses / overall: A list of all wrong guesses which were guessed by at least five different teams.
- Guess lengths: All teams which submitted at least one guess, sorted by the length of their single longest guess. See who wrote us essays via SPH Bot!
- First solves: The first three teams to solve each puzzle.
- Fastest solves: The three teams which solved each puzzle the fastest (least time from unlock to correct answer).
- Solve timings / puzzle & Solve timings / team: The amount of time each team took to solve each puzzle. "/ puzzle" sorts by puzzle; "/ team" sorts by team.
- Note that for teams which joined halfway through the hunt, the time for the first 4 puzzles is probably way inaccurate, since the "unlock time" for those puzzles is all the way back at hunt start.
- Accuracy: Each team's accuracy (correct answers divided by total guesses) across the hunt. Teams which completed the hunt are sorted together; teams which did not complete the hunt are divided into bands based on how many questions they answered.
- Big Board: A replica of the final state of the Big Board we used to track teams' progress.
- Additionally, we made a graph (300 KB) showing the progress of the 41 teams which finished the hunt! (It's rather large.) If you'd like a graph with different parameters or with your team specially highlighted, let me know and I'll see if I can make the graph for you :)!
The staff had a lot of fun during this hunt, mostly by reading really weird answer submissions. Here's a compilation of some of the more, uh, "unique" answer submissions we received, as well as some fun moments which teams sent to us via the feedback form!
Punctuality
On the bright side, SPH now has a new theme song:
Chain Letters
Small Brain was so taken by two particular consecutive entries in Chain Letters that they guessed LAGOON SEX, or some variant thereof, in 8 different puzzles:
- grill ready submitted the names of 32 punctuation symbols as guesses for this puzzle before eventually solving it (a while later, and in the intended way).
- Negative One Twelfth tried to get into the spirit of the hunt a little too early, including among their guesses CHARIZARD, EKANS, and RALTS.
- grill ready guessed OSMOSISJONES, which I thought was hilarious until I found out it was a real movie
- Small Brain guessed CLUBPENGUIN (which was, to be fair, an original inclusion in the puzzle)
- Dan City guessed 5610169272354, EFJPIBGBCED, and of course, SIXTYNINE
- grill ready guessed YOTHEORYTAX
- puzzle gang puzzle gang guessed 56101292112354
- puzzle gang puzzle gang guessed SWEARONTHESEA
- Small Brain guessed TESTICLES
- AoPS Squad guessed the names of 14 fish-like Pokemon, as well as, for some reason, FARFETCHD
- Bhad Bhiatches guessed DELETEYOURSELFYOUSTUPIDBOT
- [META] and Reborn's Most Trusted Citizens guessed EVLOS
- Mishi Society, Psyduck Confit, and Small Brain guessed YAWREHTOEHTEVLOS
- Mishi Society guessed TRUDIEMCGUINNESS, TRUDLEMCGOODNESS, and UNSIGNEDCENTRUMS
- AoPS Squad made 20 incorrect guesses including HUFFINGTONPOST, WASHINGTONPOST, MIDLIFECRISIS, and OROBANCHEMINOR.
- Dan City guessed (slightly worryingly) CHICKENAWAKENS. What do they know that we don't??
- Small Brainmade 36 guesses which were approximate variants of CALL IN WICKING, including CXXXLINWICKING, COLLINWICKING, and 11 guesses of the form CALLINWI[C/L/M/N/P/R/S/T/X/Y/Z]ING.
- (Other answers included JOHNWICK, FORTNITE, EPICVICTORYROYALE, and DONALDTRUMP.)
- AoPS Squad's guesses included BETSYROSS, BENJAMINFRANKLIN, and ROBERTKASDAN.
- guessed OSCARDOWNSTREAM
- Team Bright Powder guessed THEELDERSCROLLER, about a year too late.
- Team Quick Claw guessed DYNAMICCREATIVEOPTIMIZATION, which I'm not entirely sure applies to Pokeblocks?
- Small Brain submitted, one after the other, FEED THEM, THROW THEM, TOSS THEM, and SNORT THEM.
On the bright side, SPH now has a new theme song:
Chain Letters
- Everything Caught by r/PictureGame spent a few hours attempting to backsolve this puzzle, with 61 incorrect guesses including QUECHUANANDAYMARANSPELLINGSHIFT, QUADRATUREPHASESHIFTKEYING, and QTECTONIC.
- AoPS Squad guessed 265704106067361792
- Small Brain guessed PIKACHUUSESURF
- grill ready guessed SPORTSWISEPORN
- Pepsimen guessed BINDINGOFNEWTON
- A few teams guessed S or TILDE, but Team Galactic was precise enough to guess STILTEDABOUT90DEGREESCOUNTERCLOCKWISE.
- National 3rosion Service also did their best to be specific, guessing SIDEWAYSS.
- blazing idiots followed the SPH example by guessing SMOGONSPUZZLESHUNT.
- Looks like this puzzle brought out the mathy side of people!
- AoPS Squad guessed 69 (and, perhaps to their credit, 96)
- blazing idiots guessed 5
- [META] guessed 666
- Team Quick Claw guessed 576226788133437447RIGHTNOWHTTPSS2VNDBORGSF41124141JPG (please don't try to find the original image from this.)
- Continuing with the numbers theme,
- puzzle gang guessed 142, 161, 20, 3333, ONEHUNDREDANDFOURTYTWO, and ONEHUNDREDFOURTYTWO, and in doing so did a really good impression of me when I'm called on in math class.
- Scoop Troop guessed 545 and 925.
- Team Quick Claw made 7 gazelle-related guesses, including GAZELLEFAMILY and, soon after, GAZELLEFAMINE.
- We Don't Play Witcher Card Games (Anymore) guessed EVERYTIMEHESEESAFLAGHEDIESINSIDEAPPARENTLY
- AoPS Squad's guesses included 19 different books of the Bible.
- [META] guessed HEROICOLDTESTAMENT.
- Small Brain guessed LEVEL51WILLYOUMARRYME (no.) and ARBYSISMYRELIGION (this is why.)
- Team Quick Claw guessed 51SHADESOFSPHBOT and at least one other guess I can't reprint.
- Decrypting Deoxys guessed various iterations of IDEALGROUND, and eventually FLIPPINGANIDEALTABELONTOTHEGROUND.
- Bhad Bhiatches guessed ANOTHERGODDAMNCROSSWORD
- We Don't Play Witcher Card Games (Anymore) guessed PULMONARYEDEMA
- Small Brain guessed LETSEXPLOREEMINEMSROD (I'd rather not, thanks.)
- Cent guessed OLYMPICAUTISM and OLYMPICRACISM, overturning everything I thought was true about the Olympics
- Westlife guessed OFFICIALANTHEMOFTHESMOGONPUZZLEHUNTDISCORDSERVER
- Small Brain guessed ANIMECRISTEMAPOLISDIASAMINADIBESICOMPRESSEDDIABETICWATERMELON
- Team Quick Claw guessed EGGPLANTPARMESAN (nice try.)
- Dan City guessed IFTHEACTUALANSWERTOTHISPUZZLETURNSOUTTOBEREDHERRINGIHOPEYOUALLFEARFORYOURCONTINUEDPRESENCEINTHISMORTALCOIL
- Team atrocityhannah guessed STORMAREA51
- Team Quick Claw guessed YOURPRINCESSISINANOTHERCASTLE
- The_Underscore_Sean_Gardiner_Fanclub guessed WEBEATTHEGAMEGIVEUSPOINTS
- AoPS Squad guessed EDSHEERANEDSHEERANEDSHEERANEDSHEERANEDSHEERANEDSHEERANEDSHEERANEDSHEERANEDSHEERANEDSHEERANEDSHEERAN
- [META] guessed DROPTABLEANSWERS
- Small Brain guessed INTERNATIONALPORNSTAR
- Small Brain guessed IDONTSEEAFEEDBACKFORMSOIMJUSTGONNASAYTHATIMVERYDISAPPOINTEDINTHISPUZZLECHOICEIWANTEDTOLEAVECHEMISTRYBEHINDINHIGHSCHOOLALONGWITHMYMEMORIESOFAFAILEDLOVELIFEBUTNOYOUHADTOREIGNITETHESEPAINFULMEMORIESHOWCOULDYOU
- Everyone was surprisingly well-behaved on this puzzle! (Except Small Brain, as usual, but I don't feel comfortable reprinting their answer.)
- blazing idiots logged 64 incorrect guesses on this puzzle. (None of them were particularly funny, though.)
- de[light]fully [devil]ish guessed MISTRESSMIME
- Team Quick Claw guessed ROTODEXHASBEENGIVINGSOMEPRETTYSHITTYINTELLATELY
- puzzle gang puzzle gang guessed IAMELGINOWETMOLVO
- Nerd Herd guessed UNTITLEDBLACKONGREY
- Dan City guessed ISTHISAFUCKINGONIONHOWMANYLAYERSAREINTHISPUZZLE
- [META] guessed THISPUZZLEISNOTTOTALLYFREEWHATFAKEADVERTISING
- Small Brain guessed LOVEMATHBOYSMINECRAFTFARM
- Westlife guessed EXQUISITECADAVERISAGOODDESCRIPTIONFORMYBODYRIGHTNOW
- Dan City and Team Trespacito both guessed WHATAGAUCHOYOUARE
- AoPS Squad guessed EROTICVOLCANO
- [META] guessed WELLDOCUMENTEDBRIBES and ACTIONREPLAYABUSESMH (imagine their surprise when they finally solved the puzzle).
- AoPS Squad guessed NOTBEINGFUCKINGDENSE
- blazing idiots guessed INFINITYGAUNTLET
Small Brain was so taken by two particular consecutive entries in Chain Letters that they guessed LAGOON SEX, or some variant thereof, in 8 different puzzles:
- LAGOONSEX in Chain Letters
- LAGOONSEX, LAGOONSEXDESPACITOSNORTINGPOKEBLOCKS, and just in case, LAGOONSEXDESPACITOSNORTPOKEBLOCKS, in Standard Form
- SEXINTHELAGOONTOTHESOUNDOFDESPACITOINTHEBACKGROUND in Upgrades
- LAGOONSEXBYDESPACITO in Counterparts
- LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX in String Theory
- LAGOONSEXDESPACITO in Reaction Time
- REGULARLAGOONSEX in A Regular Crossword
- LAGOONSEXDESPACITO in Totally Free Puzzle
de[light]fully [devil]ish: "I used to be quite active in the Pokemon community (including Smogon!) in the Gen 3/4 era, so it was interesting for me to be doing a Smogon-related event a decade later. Makes me feel old in a way." [welcome back! - the staff.]
Showtime: Tasting
I got Horseas in the bacc:
Scramble for the Stars
(looks like this title may have certain associations attached to it.)
Dongmin Fan Club:
Team Galactic:
Triple Crossed
Team Galactic: "One of us put "SEVEN-POINT TURN" in Triple Crossed at first. When later asked about it he just said he didn't know how to drive."
Eternal Busters: "One of our (American) solvers accidentally misspelled colour without the "U" in Triple Crossed and couldn't figure out what "D or B le agent" meant."
Counterparts
Smogon Penguin Henthusiasts: "Shoutouts to my teammates during Counterparts, for mistaking parts of the "Stairway to Heaven" lyrics for "All Star," something made even better when I found that the puzzle still had Smash Mouth... just not the song everyone was expecting."
Team Quick Claw: "Some alternative song lyrics"
Did You Know?
AoPS Squad: "We believed Fun Fact 15 for an entire 15 minutes or so."
Totally Free Puzzle
Tiralmo:
Dongmin Fan Club:
AoPS Squad: "guessing erotic inferno, not knowing the meaning of the word erotic, thinking it was a close relative of the word exotic"
Showtime: Tampering
AoPS Squad: "concluding that the final metapuzzle was a reference to GPH 2018 and that Team Galactic was just a fake cheater team in league with the staff to make the final metapuzzle work"
Showtime: Tasting
I got Horseas in the bacc:
Scramble for the Stars
(looks like this title may have certain associations attached to it.)
Dongmin Fan Club:
Team Galactic:
Triple Crossed
Team Galactic: "One of us put "SEVEN-POINT TURN" in Triple Crossed at first. When later asked about it he just said he didn't know how to drive."
Eternal Busters: "One of our (American) solvers accidentally misspelled colour without the "U" in Triple Crossed and couldn't figure out what "D or B le agent" meant."
Counterparts
Smogon Penguin Henthusiasts: "Shoutouts to my teammates during Counterparts, for mistaking parts of the "Stairway to Heaven" lyrics for "All Star," something made even better when I found that the puzzle still had Smash Mouth... just not the song everyone was expecting."
Team Quick Claw: "Some alternative song lyrics"
Did You Know?
AoPS Squad: "We believed Fun Fact 15 for an entire 15 minutes or so."
Totally Free Puzzle
Tiralmo:
Dongmin Fan Club:
AoPS Squad: "guessing erotic inferno, not knowing the meaning of the word erotic, thinking it was a close relative of the word exotic"
Showtime: Tampering
AoPS Squad: "concluding that the final metapuzzle was a reference to GPH 2018 and that Team Galactic was just a fake cheater team in league with the staff to make the final metapuzzle work"
As always, we had some puzzle ideas that were cut from the final product! Here's one such puzzle, in case you'd like to give it a go: 1-X Hook, Line, and...
CREDITS
This event wouldn't have been possible without the hard work of our dedicated staff members! Thank you to everyone who helped make this project a success, through all the late-night puzzle writing, the early morning hinting, and the random anagramming. I'm grateful to have had this opportunity to work together and I hope everyone's as proud as I am of what we've created :)
Project Lead
Level 51
Project Co-Lead
talkingtree
Tech Lead
CheeseMuffin
Puzzle Design
Level 51, talkingtree, lovemathboy, Mistrals, ALT, danielbunchie, ggoh
Testsolving
Level 51, talkingtree, lovemathboy, Mistrals, ALT, danielbunchie, ggoh, holydust, Nia
Spriting
Level 51
Additional credits to Superjustinbros from The Spriter's Resource for the ripped Crystal tileset
Special Thanks
- Yoshiap for providing the original code which SPH Bot was built off
- talkingtree for the original original code which that code was built off
- Da Letter El for approving and helping to assist the event to completion
- The Dutch Plumberjack for coordinating the prizes
- P Squared and Smogon's social media team for their help with publicizing this event
- My brother for designing this amazing logo
- All our solvers; we couldn't have made this event a success without you!
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