glyph 5 Help

Getting started

The first thing you’ll need to do is register and log in. You can use your Steam account to log in, or create a glyph account.

We suggest you form a team of around five people. When creating a team, make sure only one person from your group does so - once you're on a team you can't join another.

I’m stuck!

Don’t worry, it happens to us all! We can’t tell you the answers, but there are some general hints that might help.

Anything on the puzzle page could be or contain a clue: pay attention to the title and story text as well as the obvious content.

Type anything you think could be relevant into the answer box. Even if it’s not the right answer, it could unlock a hint if you’re along the right lines. Puzzles will also show hints over time without you guessing anything. There are no penalties for incorrect guesses apart from a short cooldown during which you can't guess again.

If you’re very stuck or if you think a puzzle is broken, contact the puzzle admins on Discord by using the !stuck discord bot command and one of us will get back to you. Make sure not to reveal any details of puzzles in public, no matter how trivial. We want to keep it fun and fair for everyone.

The admins are constantly monitoring teams’ progress and what they’re trying. We actively try to make sure nobody falls too far behind. If a particular puzzle seems to be unduly difficult or even has a mistake, we might add hints or extra answers.

Accessibility

By their nature, some puzzles are more difficult for some teams to complete - this might be for mundane reasons (e.g. your team is just really bad at spotting Braille...) or because all the people contributing have a disability which makes it hard or even impossible.

While the first thing you can do is to create a diverse team with a broad range of abilities, it might still be that your entire team is, for example, colourblind or deaf.

If you are struggling with a puzzle in this situation the admins will be able to help you past the puzzle one way or another. We will rely on your honesty for this as we don't have the ability to determine reliably anyone's claim to have a disability. This does therefore mean that you will not be able to win if you make use of this - consistent with our principle that diverse teams have the best chance at winning!

If you anticipate this happening you can chat to us in advance to get more information about how we might be able to help. We can also talk - in general terms only - about what kind of puzzles we write and whether you're likely to be affected.

Things to try

Here are some general tips that could be helpful for any puzzle:

Useful Free Software

Techniques

These next tricks are more specific; some puzzles might not use any, but they're always useful to bear in mind. The majority of puzzles will use an idea at least similar to one of them.

Example Puzzles

To give you some idea of how our puzzles work, why not solve some puzzles from one of our previous events if you haven't already. We have also compiled a list of example puzzles for you to take a look at.