This is the metapuzzle. Since the feeder puzzles don't have answers, this meta uses the feeder mechanics instead. This solution will, as a result, have spoilers for all feeder puzzles in this round. The twist is that each section takes data from the previous section and gives data to the next section (going clockwise, as indicated by arrows), making a loop where it's not clear how to break in (however, as this solution will describe, there are several decent break-ins). Each section also gives three letters.
Top Section
This section is an 8x8 grid of symbols from 🔲. Using the letter/symbol translation from 🔲, we get:
& | 4 | ^ | . | . | , | 4 | | |
8 | 2 | ^ | - | 9 | & | 4 | 4 |
1 | 4 | . | ^ | 4 | - | ^ | ^ |
4 | & | @ | 8 | ^ | 2 | | | - |
@ | + | - | ^ | @ | . | + | | |
4 | + | - | + | @ | - | ^ | 4 |
| | + | - | @ | 4 | ^ | * | 8 |
. | . | , | - | 2 | | | 4 | | |
R | E | T | A | A | K | E | D |
C | O | T | N | H | R | E | E |
L | E | A | T | E | N | T | T |
E | R | S | C | T | O | D | N |
S | I | N | T | S | A | I | D |
E | I | N | I | S | N | T | E |
D | I | N | S | E | T | U | C |
A | A | K | N | O | D | E | D |
From the left section, we got a loop on the vertices of an 8x8 grid. We can overlay this grid on the 8x8 grid to separate it into an outside and an inside:
R | E | A | D | ||||
C | O | N | |||||
T | E | N | |||||
T | |||||||
S | I | N | S | I | D | ||
E | I | N | S | T | |||
E | |||||||
A | D |
T | A | K | E | ||||
T | H | R | E | E | |||
L | E | A | T | T | |||
E | R | S | C | O | D | N | |
T | A | ||||||
I | N | E | |||||
D | I | N | S | T | U | C | |
A | K | N | O | D | E |
The letters outside the loop spell out READ CONTENTS INSIDE INSTEAD, which basically means to ignore them. The letters inside spell out TAKE THREE LEATTERS CODNTAINED IN STUCAK NODE, which is TAKE THREE LETTERS CONTAINED IN STUCK NODE with an extra ADA inside. (The word breaks in both of these messages have to be deduced from message content.) TAKE THREE LETTERS CONTAINED IN STUCK NODE is something for the next section (the right section), and ADA are the three letters we get from this section.
The top section can be broken into by noticing that there seem to be messages spelled out, and trying to separate them.
Right Section
Now, let's move to the right section. This section is three question marks (roughly white, blue, and black), and a dark blue oval. The oval may remind us of 🤫, and indeed this section corresponds to that puzzle. The three question marks make more sense with the TAKE THREE LETTERS CONTAINED IN STUCK NODE message from the top section; there is one node in 🤫 that is stuck in place (the rest can be moved around). This node is LIVESTOCK and the extracted letters are L (white circle), S (blue number), K (black circle), matching the question mark colors (also matching them in order). LSK are the three letters we get from this section.
The dark blue oval is darker blue than most of the nodes in 🤫, but one node (which connects to BODY PARTS, so most teams should have it unlocked even if it's not solved) is darker blue than the others and is the same color as the node in the meta. This node is 👀 which is used for the bottom section.
This is one of the easiest sections to break into. The letter extraction of LSK and emoji extraction of 👀 are independent. The letter extraction of LSK has a cluephrase from the top section, but you can also just notice the LIVESTOCK node is suspiciously stuck (often by revisiting the🤫 page and watching the web loading physics play out for all nodes but one), or notice that it's the only node with three letters extracted in white circle/blue number/black circle order. The emoji extraction of 👀 is not clued by anything but the color of its node/the color of the oval in the meta (and the similarity to the case of LSK of "here's a special node"), so though that makes it harder to get, it's also a good break-in.
Bottom Section
We now consider the bottom section. This section is "???___ ____" with "1 2 3 4 5 6" below it. It's unclear what this is at first, but the left section looks like ⚫ which means this must be 🌳.
The "???___ ____" seems like (and is) to extract the first three letters of something with enumeration (6 4); given how 🌳works, this is probably a Shadow the Hedgehog library sequence. The 👀 from the right section seems to be clueing something eyes-related. Looking, we find "Opened Eyes", which matches the enumeration, and gives us OPE as our three letters.
The "1 2 3 4 5 6" is then six things associated with the ending, which, thinking about how 🌳 worked, we realize are the six decisions made to get to the ending. In this case, they're Hero, Hero, Dark, Neutral, Dark, Hero. This is used for the left section.
This section is also a good break-in because there's only one Shadow the Hedgehog library sequence with enumeration (6 4), so looking through all of them will let you find this one.
Left Section
Finally, we consider the left section. This looks a lot like ⚫, except the circles are numbered 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6 (not 4) rather than being colored white or black. We might guess that circles with the same number have the same color, but even with that aha, we'll probably need to realize that circle colors are based on the 1 2 3 4 5 6 = Hero, Hero, Dark, Neutral, Dark, Hero from the bottom section. 1, 2, and 6 are Hero = light = white circles, and 3 and 5 are Dark = black circles (this equivalence is motivated slightly by the fact that in 🌳, the Dark path is dark and the Hero path is lighter). 4 isn't used because it's neutral.
With this circle coloring, even as a usual masyu, the masyu has only four solutions, and go rules make three of them impossible (gomoku rules are irrelevant; none of the options have a five-in-a-row). The solution is:
We use the inside/outside of this loop for the top section, but we haven't yet used the three green rectangles, each of which contains five intersections. We notice that in the solution, each of the intersections in each of these rectangles has a circle. We can read the circles as binary, with black = 1 and white = 0.
Rectangle number (top-down) | Circles | Bits | Letter |
---|---|---|---|
0 | ⚫⚪⚫⚪⚫ | 10101 | U |
1 | ⚪⚪⚫⚪⚫ | 00101 | E |
2 | ⚫⚪⚪⚫⚪ | 10010 | R |
So our three letters are UER. Without the previous part, breaking into this part is very hard.
Final Extraction
Now that we have all the letters, we can use the extraction diagram at the bottom of the puzzle. It shows four rows of three letters, with the three resulting columns all read down, in left-to-right order. We'd expect to write the rows in cycle order; it's not clear where to start, but it turns out that we start at the top.
Section | Letter 1 | Letter 2 | Letter 3 |
---|---|---|---|
Top | A | D | A |
Right | L | S | K |
Bottom | O | P | E |
Left | U | E | R |
Reading down the columns, we get A LOUDSPEAKER, this puzzle's answer.
Authors' Notes
Dan: I guess this is the best place to put notes about the round. One of our initial round ideas, largely based on the R.T.3 Search, was a round of puzzles without answers. Our attitude towards the meta was that we would plan it out when we had more puzzles, but with a cycle as a strong option. We fairly quickly got two puzzles in this round, with some other ideas not working out, and we later got a third (these three were everything but 🤫).
As the hunt approached, we realized that we still weren't sure exactly how the meta worked, and we didn't have enough puzzles in this round. We brainstormed connections between our existing puzzles, with the dark/light Shadow sequence/masyu connection being very fortuitous and the connection between puzzles with grids not being too hard to brainstorm. We figured out that we did need at least one pretty free slot, though, so we decided to make a flexible emoji web puzzle (🤫). After some other new puzzles in this round weren't working out, we decided to go with only four puzzles. We were indeed able to get 🤫 to connect to the other two puzzles it needed to connect to, and so the meta worked.
It's a bit disappointing that, since the input and output of the 🤫 part of the meta aren't connected, it's not really a true cycle. 🤫 is also unusual in that the meta component relies on not just puzzle mechanics, but hidden data in the puzzle itself. But both of these things probably make the meta more approachable and give more of a starting point, which is good.
The ⚫ component of the meta was originally intended to be harder, with dozens of solutions ignoring the go constraint. However, given that it's just part of the meta, when it accidentally turned out to have fewer solutions than intended, that turned out to probably be a good thing.
The 🔲 component of the meta was somewhat annoying to write, just because of the length and letter constraints on both phrases (they can only use letters used in 🔲, and their lengths have to sum to 64). Early versions of this part had some issues, from unclear phrases to it being unclear if STUACK was STUCK with an A or STACK with a U.
I noticed that I talked about three of the four components, but I don't have much to say about the 🌳 component. It's simple and hopefully plays the needed role. I guess it's fortuitous that there's a library sequence with OPE as a substring. Also, if you haven't solved 🌳, it's tempting, based on how 🤫works, to fit OPEN SESAME or OPENED LOCK into the blanks somehow, but funnily enough in a lot of ways of doing this you'll get OPE anyway. (You won't get the data needed for the ⚫ component circle coloring that way, though.)
Bryce: This puzzle was constructed well after the hunt and round themes were set, including finding a thematic answer that matched. We settled on one that happened to line up nicely with the Megaphone item from Terraria. An earlier version of the puzzle answer was ALLOWED SPEAKER (which then became A LOUDSPEAKER once we dropped from 7 to 6 feeders, and then stayed the same once we dropped from 6 to 4).
The loop structure that we went with had some interesting consequences during the hunt. For those who were affected by the bug in ⚫ and progressed without having a chance to discover the ruleset at first, this played out unfortunately for them and us. For those who decided that brute-forcing or auto-clicking 326 combinations of 🌳 was the best way to “solve” the puzzle and never figured out the puzzle mechanic, this played out unfortunately for them but not for us. Many had to go back and solve 🌳 as it was intended.