The Cryptex Hunt is an annual online game where players find and solve hidden puzzles. This year's theme is
"Puzzles hidden in Puzzles".
Start Date: February 28, 2022 at 8:00pm ET.
This Cryptex Hunt is brought to you by these lovely people!
Justin Nevins is the creator of the first Cryptex® Security Box and has been making custom works of art like this full time since March 1, 2004. Escape rooms and puzzle hunts have become his new obsessions. Check out his products at cryptex.org.
Errol Elumir creates puzzles and does other things.
Darren Miller and his wife, Melissa, have been hooked on escape rooms ever since they discovered them in May 2015. Now he designs and shares his puzzles online and you can find them at his site.
Dan Egnor is a longtime puzzle hunt and escape room enthusiast and occasional designer. He lives in Oakland, California with his partner and four cats. He is honored to work with the crew of the 2022 Cryptex Hunt and hopes you have a good time playing.
Sarah Willson is a writer, editor, and designer of digital curios, and also a player of them. She has been writing puzzles since 1989 (not that they were any good back then). She also reviews escape games for Room Escape Artist.
Shannon McDowell is a Canadian board game inventor and puzzle designer. She designs innovative board games and puzzle hunt challenges, and was a member of the design team for the Red Bull Escape Room World Championship.
Jakal is a puzzle enthusiast and creator as well as an owner at Kingdom Escape Games. They love anything to do with puzzles, especially if it happens to be an ARG.
Jenna Himawan is a software engineer, avid puzzle solver, and aspiring puzzle writer.
Tammy and Chris are longtime lovers of all things puzzle. Tammy is a Game Designer with Haiku Games.
Spencer has been referred to as the “bad boy” of puzzle design… one time… earlier in this sentence… that he wrote. glhf! 🙂
These amazing people helped us test the hunt and supported our players!
Wei-Hwa Huang was lead puzzle designer on the first ever puzzle hunt to have a cryptex as a reward, back in 2006. The Cryptexes in this hunt are much better, though!
Shuai Chen competes in escape rooms and puzzley things on Team Prospect and is founder and chief puzzle officer of Patchwork Adventures where she's been hosting virtual escape rooms since before it was cool.
Josh Ward is a novice puzzle setter and solver. He’s helped design and run the JoCo Cruise hunt and Puzzled Pint. If he can get through this hunt, you can too!
Tammy Mcleod loves all forms of puzzles. She competes with Team Prospect in various Escape Room championships, won the 2009 US Sudoku Championship, and holds a Guinness World Record for speed jigsaw puzzling.
Jason is an escape room enthusiast who has played almost 500 escape rooms. He competes with Team Prospect in various escape room competitions.
Manda Whitney is a Toronto-based writer and narrative designer. She has helped design narrative for three large-scale theatrical escape events and consulted on individual escape rooms. She also writes on narrative and gaming in her blog, mandawhitney.com.
Margaux is a photographer who is learning to design board games. Her imaginary best friends include Thursday Next and Emma Thompson. She solves puzzles in pen; no guts, no glory!
Vivien Ripoll is a mathematician and puzzle designer. With his project Solving Fun, he designs puzzles in Spanish, English and French. He loves creating custom puzzling activities (escape rooms, puzzle hunts...), in particular in education and academia.
Myra Ramdenbourg is a senior at Rice University and founder of an escape room club called Rice Escape. In her free time she likes to play and design escape rooms, and she hopes to one day open her own escape room.
Amanda Dupuy is a postdoctoral fellow studying clinical lab genetics. In her spare time she designs and paints nail art puzzles as Charmandacure.
C.J. Smith spends most of his time doing music, math, or puzzles. He enjoys beta testing as a way to help design puzzles and puzzle experiences without needing to do anything significant towards actually making the final product.
Trisha Huang loves all things games and puzzles. She is married to a world puzzle champion, and has two kids who also like puzzles. Her favorite thing to do is write stories and very easy puzzles for role playing games.
BELTHAZAR is a player of the Cryptex Hunt and was solving the games just like everyone else. However, when finished, they were immediately in the channels providing help to anyone who asked. I honestly don't know if they slept! Great job, Belthazar!
Designed by master craftsman Justin Nevins, a Cryptex® brand security box is a self-contained cylindrical lockbox secured by a mechanically changeable code. Used in escape rooms or collected by fans, a Cryptex® is a beautiful, functional, solidly constructed work of art.
See Cryptex.org for more info.
Every year, the Cryptex Hunt focuses on a theme and hides puzzles throughout that theme. For example, in one year, puzzles were hidden in a magazine. Last year, puzzles were hidden in an 8-bit graphic adventure game jam.
Although we have called the Cryptex Hunt a puzzle hunt in the past, the structure and expectations for a puzzle hunt are different from what the Cryptex Hunt is. There are a number of people who enjoy the format of the Cryptex Hunt, and a number of people who do not. Instead of trying to fit both expectations, we will default to the former.
GRAND PRIZE - Custom Nevins Line Cryptex® Security Box. Random draw from pool of all registered teams to complete the entire hunt by March 6, 1:00pm ET.
SECOND DRAW PRIZE - Standard 5 Code Ring Cryptex® Security Box. Winner's choice of colors. Random draw from pool of all registered teams to complete the entire hunt by March 31. The Grand Prize winner is not eligible.
The first puzzle for the Cryptex Hunt will release Feb 28, 2022, at 8:00pm ET.
One puzzle will be released per day at 8:00pm ET.
The final puzzles will be released on Saturday, March 5, 1:00pm ET. (Subject to change!)
Teams who finish all the puzzles by March 6, 1:00pm ET will be entered into a draw for the Grand Prize winner.
The Cryptex Hunt will remain online through the month of March for those who want to play at a more leisurely pace. Everyone who completes the whole hunt by March 31 midnight (ET) will be eligible to participate in the Draw Prize drawing.
No. You and your team are not eligible for another grand prize.
No, this hunt is free.
All time, effort, and costs have been donated in order to keep it free for the general public.
Ten and then the Meta puzzle. There will also be warmup puzzles to get you used to the format.
The Cryptex Hunt will target those who are new to puzzles; however, it will still be of a higher difficulty than an escape room and even take-home puzzle games.
If you are familiar with Puzzled Pint, the puzzles may be of similar difficulty.
Puzzles usually ramp up in regards to difficulty. The first half of the puzzles will be easier than the final puzzles.
The length of time it will take can range anywhere between 5 minutes to multiple hours.
The server requires each player to be on a team, however, each person in the team will have their own unique login.
The minimum size a team can be is one person. The maximum size a team can be is ten people.
When any member of the team enters an answer on the server, the whole team will advance. However, the answer will be obscured so team members can still play without worry of being spoiled on the answer.
The server requires you to join a team, however, that team can consist of only one player.
If you are new to puzzles, then this will be a challenging hunt. As noted under Puzzle Info, there are a variety of skills you will utilize and having a team which possess those skills will increase your solving chances.
If you are a veteran solver, then you will be able to solo this hunt, but it will take some work.
You do not NEED to join our Cryptex Hunt Discord, however it is highly recommended.
We will post important information on the Cryptex Hunt server, however, for real-time, up-to-date information, the Discord is your best bet.
Furthermore, any hints you need will be available via the Discord server. During the Cryptex hunt, the admins are not available because they will be running the hunt. However, the community goes out of their way to help people.
New to solving puzzles? Even though the Cryptex Hunt is not technically a puzzle hunt, these resources will help you get started.