The sequel to Para's Puzzle Competition is here!
Do you enjoy puzzle solving? Working out problems in a team? Being placed against opponents in a mindbending race to the finish? If so, come join us!
[Signups are currently CLOSED]
This post also holds the leaderboard, which will be kept up to date during the competition.
Hydria, Protastic101, Knif3rism, Lusty Platypus, Zeppy-lin, Raveille
PPCII will have 35 puzzles to solve!
So how is this possible? For the most part, the size and complexity of the puzzles are much less. Some may even take only a few minutes to complete, though some may take a few days.
The puzzles are split into 5 sectors: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Omega. Each sector holds a certain difficulty range. Sector Alpha contains fairly straightforward puzzles, whereas Sector Omega holds the trickiest of the collection. To begin with, every team has access to the first puzzle in each sector. When you solve one correctly, you gain access to the next puzzle. This continues until the team has solved all 7, signifying that they have cleared that sector. The first team to clear all 5 sectors wins the competition!
Because of this new difficulty curve, teams should be able to make a lot more progress. This is to avoid what happened in the previous competition, where a lot of teams were unable to fully complete any of the puzzles because all of them were an instant high difficulty. Only having access to (at most) 5 puzzles at a time will hopefully make teams less overwhelmed when the competition starts.
The kinds of puzzles you will face will also be different!
Before, all 8 puzzles came in the form of an image and teams had to derive a word from it using a whole range of techniques, from codebreaking to general knowledge sequences, from discrete mathematics to origami, and so on.
This time, the puzzles aren't just restricted to images, and use an even wider range of techniques to solve. There's even some interactive ones in there!
A. Players must form a team of 2 or 3 people. Larger teams will be asked to split, and solitary players must at least find a partner.
A. Signups are planned to stay open until the 1st of Feburary. This may change depending on the amount of people that sign up, but everyone will be given plenty of notice if there are changes.
A. 35 puzzles, 2 Weeks to solve. This time limit may be extended if progress is particularly slow.
A. Yes. There is no way to win this competition without using research at some point.
A. There is a Discord server for this competition in which each team also have their own private room and voice chat. You must use Discord to participate in this event. After signing up, I will invite the team to the server.
A. No captains this time. Team names are still a thing, but please make sure that your name does not contain something offensive or inappropriate. I can tell when teams try to circumvent this.
Should I still join?A. When it comes to this event, what's more important than ability is determination. If you're the kind of person to give up as soon as things get difficult, or when you get stuck, I'd advise you to sit out of this one. However, if you're the kind of person who doesn't give up, and who enjoys a challenge, this event is for you, regardless of puzzle-solving ability!
A. Hopefully not. The much smaller size will likely help avoid this, as well as the difficulty curve that everything is designed around. I put a lot of time into trying to make the puzzles approachable. The only issue that will likely arise is when there is an error, in which case I can easily fix it and send out new versions to the people with access to it.
- Make sure you and your team are willing to put in the effort that this event requires! Teams that end up doing nothing or quit right away are a waste of time and effort, especially when there's people that actually want to give this a go.
- If your team has two incredibly skilled puzzle-solvers, perhaps consider forming two teams in order to fuel the competition a little more. It will balance out the teams, and who doesn't like a little bit of friendly rivalry?
- Make sure that every member of your team has read this entire post. DO NOT sign up if this has not been done.
Team Name:
Team Member 1:
Team Member 2:
Team Member 3: (delete this if team only has 2 members)
I hope you enjoy all the new changes brought to the event, and:
Good Luck!
- Para
