The 2021 Cryptex Hunt is an online puzzle hunt for beginners.
Start Date: Monday, March 01, 2021, International Cryptex® Day
End Date: March 31, 2021
Draw Prize: A Cryptex®
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 wrote 13 Rules for Escape Room Puzzle Design. Errol has a daily webcomic. co-hosts an escape room podcast, helps compile the Escape Room Enthusiast Survey, is on the board for the TERPECAs, and writes escape room articles.
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.
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.
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.
Sarah Willson is a writer, editor, and designer of digital curios, and also a player of them. She has been writing text adventures since 1989 (not that they were any good back then). She also reviews escape games for Room Escape Artist.
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.
Mike Collins spends his life thinking about puzzles, pedagogy, PCs and podcasts. He produces the Infinite Escape Room podcast and also runs the Pedagodzilla podcast. When not podcasting Mike enjoys PC and board gaming, cooking and making ‘stuff’.
Hi! My name is Nathan D'Silva, and I'm a first-year honours mathematics student at uWaterloo. I enjoy making puzzle hunts in my free time, so I've had a lot of fun developing for this hunt. For games I've developed, check out https://etothepiroot-1.itch.io!
Brent has loved puzzles and mazes for all his life and creates annual puzzle hunts for SaltCON, a yearly board game convention in Utah.
Dan Egnor is a longtime puzzle hunt and escape room enthusiast and occasional designer. He lives in Oakland, California with his partner and two cats. He is honored to work with the crew of the 2021 Cryptex Hunt and hopes you have a good time playing.
These amazing people helped us test the hunt and supported our players!
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.
Sarah is always ready for something cryptic and puzzling. When they are not playing escape rooms or other puzzle things, they are working, designing, and creating at Kingdom Escape Games in Key Largo, FL.
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 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.
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.
A puzzle hunt is a game where participants compete to solve a series of puzzles. The Cryptex Hunt is an online puzzle hunt that may feature Cryptexes® throughout the experience.
See puzzlehuntcalendar.com for other puzzle hunts.
No, it is absolutely FREE with no "in-app purchases" or anything. The hunt will be available at no charge.
We wanted to encourage as many people to play this hunt as possible and hopefully have a good time doing it! All time, effort, and costs have been donated in order to keep it free for the general public.
No. This year's hunt can and should be played on the browser. You will need access to the internet to validate your answers.
The Cryptex Hunt will start on March 1, 2021, at 8:00pm ET. It will be released over the week.
The final puzzles will be released on Saturday, March 6.
The first to finish all the puzzles with no hints will be the Grand Prize winner!
The puzzle 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.
That's a secret. However, the theme of this page should give you a hint.
The Cryptex Hunt will include many different types of puzzle designed exclusively for this event. Exploring and discovering the exact nature of these puzzles is part of the challenge for the players. All of the puzzles will resolve to a word or short passcode.
These puzzles are designed for this event - you won't be able to Google the solutions. However, you are welcome to use Google or other tools to help you as you work on them. Many Internet tools exist that may be useful for working puzzles.
In fact, as you may have noticed, the hunt will be targetting those who are new to puzzle hunts. It will attempt to be the most accessible yet. We'll see how that goes.
Twelve. More or less.
The puzzle hunt will be targeting those who are new to puzzle hunts, 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 will be of similar difficulty. The last few puzzle may be challenging, but not as challenging as Errol's other final puzzles.
The length of time it will take can range anywhere between 15 minutes to multiple hours.
The hunt itself will go for a week, so be prepared for the weekend, where a bulk of the puzzles will be released.
GRAND PRIZE - Nevins Line DETAILS Cryptex® Security Box. For the first registered account to complete the entire hunt without hints.
SECOND DRAW PRIZE - Standard 5 Code Ring Cryptex® Security Box. Winner's choice of colors. Random draw from pool of all registered accounts to complete the entire hunt by March 31st. The Grand Prize winner is not eligible.
Yes, there will be teams. 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.
Only one person needs to enter in an answer, and the whole team will advance.
Note: once an answer is entered, then the whole team can see the answer.
Not yet. That's Errol's fault. He is extremely sorry. He will get one out.
Not yet, but a winner was selected. More details will follow, and we are truly sorry for the delay.
We do too. Hah. Sorry. Please stay tuned as this will be updated periodically. If you desperately wish to know something, find us on the Cryptex Hunt Discord.