This puzzle has a bunch of arithmetical operations, and it isn't immediately clear what to do with them. However, it has clues which we can pretty straightforwardly solve. After solving a few clues, we notice that the numbers after the clues seem to be answer length (rather than something we can put in the equations; one of the equations would be 3 / (3 - 3), involving division by zero, if we put the numbers in the equations anyway). Clue answers are (a few of these may be ambiguous, but that should quickly be cleared up by the following step):
| Clue | Answer |
|---|---|
| You, according to a game title (4) | BABA |
| Undergrad degree type (2) | BA |
| Cooling system (2) | AC |
| Speed of light (1) | C |
| Singer Sheeran (2) | ED |
| Highest-ranking card (3) | ACE |
| Visage (4) | FACE |
| Small restaurant (4)) | CAFE |
| Hawaiian lava type (2) | AA |
| Taxi (3) | CAB |
| US org that evaluates meds (3) | FDA |
| Wonderful, for short (3) | FAB |
| Payment (3) | FEE |
| Sound scale unit abbreviation (2) | DB |
| Flow away (3) | EBB |
| Mi (1) | E |
| Gave sustenance to (3) | FED |
| No longer alive (4) | DEAD |
| Art movement after World War I (4) | DADA |
| Romantic partner (3) | BAE |
| Give up (4) | CEDE |
| Worst grade (1) | F |
| Send to a secondary recipient (2) | CC |
| Not good (3) | BAD |
Looking at the clue answers, we notice that they're entirely made of a few letters, specifically ABCDEF. (Even without all the clue answers, all these letters are in many of the answers so it's relatively easy to pin down this specific set of letters.) Thinking about some combination of this, the use of “base” in the flavortext, and the arithmetical operations, we realize that these are hexadecimal numbers. (This is confirmed by both divisions giving an integer result; BABA / BA will always be 101 in any base, whatever A and B are, but CAB / (FDA - FAB) is not an integer in other bases.) We can use this to evaluate the equations (either using a hexadecimal arithmetic tool or converting to decimal):
| Equation | Decimal result | Hexadecimal result |
|---|---|---|
| BABA / BA - AC | 85 | 55 |
| C × ED - ACE | 78 | 4E |
| (FACE - CAFE) / AA | 72 | 48 |
| CAB / (FDA - FAB) | 69 | 45 |
| FEE - DB - EBB | 88 | 58 |
| E × FED - DEAD | 73 | 49 |
| DADA - BAE - CEDE | 78 | 4E |
| F × CC - BAD | 71 | 47 |
Finally, we notice all these results are in a similar range of 69 to 88 in decimal, or 45 to 58 in hexadecimal. We can either use “characters” in the title and flavortext and “code” in flavortext, or notice that this range may be familiar, to realize that these are ASCII characters (often represented in hexadecimal). Converting, we get:
| Equation | Decimal result | Hexadecimal result | Charaacter |
|---|---|---|---|
| BABA / BA - AC | 85 | 55 | U |
| C × ED - ACE | 78 | 4E | N |
| (FACE - CAFE) / AA | 72 | 48 | H |
| CAB / (FDA - FAB) | 69 | 45 | E |
| FEE - DB - EBB | 88 | 58 | X |
| E × FED - DEAD | 73 | 49 | I |
| DADA - BAE - CEDE | 78 | 4E | N |
| F × CC - BAD | 71 | 47 | G |
This gives us the answer, UNHEXING.
Authors' Notes
Hexadecimal is a relatively rare puzzle topic, so it may be surprising that after Wah-spkeeping two years ago Huntinality has another intro round puzzle (also drafted by me) which involves hexadecimal (and ASCII). However, the answer UNHEXING seems to justify it. I'll try to not do another one for a while unless there's another good reason. (Surprisingly, one of the testsolvers of this puzzle said they had had a similar idea in their ideas doc which they had codenamed “defaced facade”. Unfortunately I couldn't work words that long in.)
Due to the meta, and this puzzle being the first unlock, we purposefully aimed for this puzzle to be easier than the other puzzles in the round. Remembering how some less-mathy teams had trouble with Wah-spkeeping, I tried to make this puzzle significantly easier.
Construction was not too bad. I just looked for equations that gave the numbers I needed from common words. I also tried to work in some multiplication and division.