The Cryptex Hunt is an annual online game where players find and solve hidden puzzles. This year's theme is
"Puzzles hidden in YouTube".
Start Date: May 01, 2023 at 8:00pm ET.
This Cryptex Hunt was conspired 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.
Sarah Willson is a writer, editor, and designer of digital curios, and also a player of them. She has been writing puzzles since the '90s (not that they were very good back then). She founded the puzzle design challenge EnigMarch and reviews escape games for Room Escape Artist.
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 Cryptex Hunt and hopes you have a good time playing.
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.
Spencer has been referred to as the “bad boy” of puzzle design… one time… earlier in this sentence… that he wrote. glhf! 🙂
Errol Elumir is a freak about puzzle design.
The Cryptex Hunt's puzzles were created by the following setters!
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 Cryptex Hunt and hopes you have a good time playing.
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.
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 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! 🙂
Ian is a teacher who loves all things puzzly. Learning to think is hard and puzzles remove expectations and the pressure to always get things right. Remember that the mistakes you make are your greatest lessons.
Jonathan is a student from The Netherlands and a part-time puzzle maniac. He designed The Cards of Confound a couple of years back, and still loves to spend every little bit of spare time discovering (and creating) new mysteries. :)
Joerg lives in Melbourne with his wife and daughter. He is a board gamer and puzzle enthusiast since his childhood and recently started to design his own puzzle hunts. Joerg is also volunteering his time working with gifted teenagers, who now and again get by tortured his puzzle hunts.
Bryan is a puzzle aficionado, loves board games, reading and designing puzzles for TTRPGs and kid’s puzzle hunts. As per his brother: "Old man in a young man's body".
Phill is one half of TtOAS, room escaping and puzzle hunting about the place, if the place is mainly the UK. With a long but varied puzzling history, he also playtests rooms and experiences for others, recently starting to create his own material.
Errol Elumir is a freak about puzzle design.
These amazing people helped either test the puzzles, or contributed to them and/or the community!
Amanda Dupuy is a postdoctoral fellow studying clinical lab genetics. In her spare time she designs and paints nail art puzzles as Charmandacure.
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!
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.
David Lewis, also known as Strype in our Slack chat, has been a stalwart foundation in making sure this hunt runs correctly. He has been with us since the very beginning and fixes all problems in our hour of need.
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.
I enjoy making puzzle hunts in my free time. For games I've developed, check out https://etothepiroot-1.itch.io!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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 2019, puzzles were hidden in a magazine. In 2021, puzzles were hidden in an 8-bit graphic adventure game jam. In 2022, puzzles were hidden in other puzzles.
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.
Because Errol keeps playing "7 Days to Die" and shirks responsibility.
However, so it doesn't sound like Errol is trying to take all the credit, he isn't as involved this year. All the things you enjoy of this hunt will be because of the other organizers and designers. All the bad things are because he shirks responsibility and plays "7 Days to Die".
GRAND PRIZE - Custom Nevins Line Cryptex® Security Box. Random draw from pool of all registered teams to complete the entire hunt by May 7, 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 May 31. The Grand Prize winner is not eligible.
The first puzzle for the Cryptex Hunt will release May 1, 2023, at 8:00pm ET.
One puzzle will be released per day at 8:00pm ET.
The final puzzles will be released on Saturday, May 6, 1:00pm ET. (Subject to change!)
Teams who finish all the puzzles by May 7, 1:00pm ET will be entered into a draw for the Grand Prize winner.
The Cryptex Hunt will remain online through the month of May for those who want to play at a more leisurely pace. Everyone who completes the whole hunt by May 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.
Around eleven and then the Meta puzzles. 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.