This Puzzle Will Unlock In...
Answer: ROLLSFORINITIATIVE
Farid Khuri-Makdisi, Kevin Zhou (Kaz), Liam Thomas, Robert Trosten, Summit Wei

Answers for this puzzle:


Upon interacting with the bot, we are told that the puzzle will unlock in 1 year and 24 hours. Solving a subpuzzle cuts that time in half. So, solving all 15 subpuzzles would reduce the time down to about 15 minutes. Once the puzzle unlocks, we are sent to this page, which straight up says the answer to the puzzle.

There are 6 feeder answers, each associated with a number from 1 to 6 (they are listed in order above). Each subpuzzle has a pair of numbers that tell which feeder answers should be used to solve the puzzle. Since 6 choose 2 is 15, every single pair of feeders is used once. Here are solutions to the subpuzzles.


Subpuzzle 1 (by Kaz): KEEP GOING, DOCTOR STRANGE

The clues are descriptions of cards from Dominion, a board game. The first words of feeder answers are Dominion card names. Each of the blanks are numbers, that we can use to index into the second words to get RAG.


Subpuzzle 2 (by Kaz): KEEP GOING, SHAMBLES

Here is the filled-in grid. Reading along the extraction line, the answer is ASP.


Subpuzzle 3 (by Robert): KEEP GOING, HEAD EMPTY

Each sentence clues three different bigrams. We can use these bigrams as coordinates in the grid, by writing KEEPGOING along the top left, and HEADEMPTY along the bottom left. We must distinguish between the first and second E's when finding coordinates.

At the end, all the marked cells draw out a >_< face.


Subpuzzle 4 (by Kaz): KEEP GOING, THE GAME

GASLIGHT GATEKEEP GIRLBOSS!!!!!!!!!!

Starting with the letters GOINGTHE, we apply the transformations:
GOINGTHET (Add a "T" to the end)
GIGHT (Remove the even letters)
GASIGHT (Add "AS" after the 1st letter)
GASLIGHT (Add "L" after the 3rd letter)

Starting with the letters GAMEKEEP:
GATEKEEP (Replace the 3rd letter with "T")

Starting with the letters TWIRLABYSS:
TWIRLABOSS (Replace the letter "Y" with "O")
TWIRLBOSS (Remove the 6th letter)
GIRLBOSS (Delete the first two letters, and put "G" at the start)

Reading off the ? letters (marked in bold), the answer is TASTY.


Subpuzzle 5 (by Liam): KEEP GOING, YURT

We might get the wise idea to submit "YURT" into the answer checker (or the bot's answer checker). The response is:

Cryptically, you need to go back in that answer!

Indeed, putting the letters "OG" (which is "go" backwards) into YURT makes YOGURT.


Subpuzzle 6 (by Kaz): DOCTOR STRANGE, SHAMBLES

There are two groups of clues. The second group of words are all 3 letters, and appear inside a word in the first group. Additionally, the words in the second group can be associated with a power of 2 (and those numbers are in ascending order). Taking the log (base 2) of those numbers and indexing into the answers from the first group, we get CUES.

Clue from group 1Answer for group 1Clue from group 2Numberlog (base 2) of numberIndexed letter
(6 7)DOCTOR STANGENumber system used in bagua83C
Forceful basketball shot (4 4)SLAM DUNKx86 instruction set646U
Jinxes or curses (5)HEXESCommonly used number system164E
(8)SHAMBLESHash used by Bitcoin2568S

Subpuzzle 7 (by Kaz): DOCTOR STRANGE, HEAD EMPTY

Filling in the feeder answers, the cryptic clue becomes

DOCTOR STRANGE with HEAD of EMPTY is solider

We anagram STRANGE with E (the initial letter of EMPTY) to get SERGEANT, which is a soldier.


Subpuzzle 8 (by Kaz): DOCTOR STRANGE, THE GAME

We solve the crossword and Kurotto on the cursed hyperbolic grid. The feeder answers can help us fill in the first three crossword clues.

Taking the unshaded, unnumbered cells, the answer is SCAM.


Subpuzzle 9 (by Farid): DOCTOR STRANGE, YURT

Each of the first clues are from movies featuring time loops. Each of the second clues are human-built structures. Taking the first letters, we get DYED GRAY.

ClueAnswerFirst letter
Dormammu, I've come to bargain.DOCTOR STRANGED
You've come to obtain a mongolian tent!YURTY
Mimics, I've come to blast you.EDGE OF TOMORROWE
You've come to obtain a college housing facility!DORMD
Rita, I've come to Punxsutawney.GROUNDHOG DAYG
You've come to obtain a cattle farm establishment!RANCHR
Torus Corporation, I've come to defeat you.ARQA
You've come to obtain a fancy cruising vessel!YACHTY

Subpuzzle 10 (by Kaz): SHAMBLES, HEAD EMPTY

We fill in the middle row of the Boggle board so that the words SHAMBLES, HEAD, and EMPTY can be found.

LDHS
BEAT
SMPY

The middle row spells out BEAT.


Subpuzzle 11 (by Kaz): SHAMBLES, THE GAME

First, we solve the clues. All letters except the last can be found within the feeder answers. The last letter is a cardinal direction (N, E, W, or S).

ClueAnswer
Humiliation (5)SHAME
Response to a sneeze (first word only) (5)BLESS
It's between "if" and "else" (4)THEN
A state of matter (3)GAS
Word on a bathroom sign (3)MEN

Then, starting at the B in the table and tracing letters using the cardinal directions, we get BANANA.

TCSIN
SERUS
ALBAS
BMONK
ERETE

Subpuzzle 12 (by Kaz): SHAMBLES, YURT

Filling in the feeder answers, the cryptic clue becomes

Sourly YURT in SHAMBLES is a letter ender (5 5)

SHAMBLES is the anagram indicator here. Anagramming SOURLYYURT, we get YOURS TRULY, which is often the end of a handwritten letter.


Subpuzzle 13 (by Kaz): HEAD EMPTY, THE GAME

Filling in the blanks with our feeder answers, our task is to solve the following equations (where each letter is a distinct digit from 1 to 9):

H + E + Y = 9
H + E + A + D = 12
E + M + P + T + Y = 27
T + H + E = 6
G + A + M + E = 24

One way to begin solving this is to note T, H, E must be 1, 2, and 3 in some order. Then the minimum possible value of H + E + A + D is when H, E are 1, 2 (in some order) and A, D are 4, 5 (in some order). The solution is as follows:

H = 1
E = 2
T = 3
D = 4
A = 5
Y = 6
P = 7
G = 8
M = 9

Then we plug in these numbers to each of the words in "DATE A MATT ADAM MY TYPE YET GAY", and convert the numbers into letters with A1-Z26 to get NETWORKS.


Subpuzzle 14 (by Kaz): HEAD EMPTY, YURT

We substitute hd, Empty, and "yurt" for the missing data. Here is the program:

fun f [] = []
   | f (x::xs) =
     let
       val y = f xs
     in
       y @ [List.hd xs] handle Empty => y
     end

val answer = (f (String.explode "yurt")) @ [#"e"];

The program reverses a string and replaces the last letter with "e". Thus the answer is TRUE.

Note that if we don't capitalize Empty, the code still works because empty acts as a variable, and can match any exception.

It is obligatory for me to shill functional programming everywhere. Polly is the best polymorphic parrot <3


Subpuzzle 15 (by Kaz): THE GAME, YURT

If we use a search engine on "THE GAME YURT", we get this. Each player is holding a rope, and the players around the circle alternate between pushing and pulling the rope. From this we can deduce which direction each person is pushing/pulling the rope. Applying semaphore on the pairs of directions (given by the red letters), the answer is YES.


Author's Notes

This cursed idea came from a particularly meme-heavy conversation during a weekly meeting. The original idea was that teams would be asked to send us an exorbitant amount of money, which would decrease until 0 after solving puzzles-- but this was deemed unethical.

The six members who were present wrote a word or phrase on a sheet of paper, and then we collected them together and decided those would be our feeder answers. We leave it as an exercise for people to guess who came up with which feeder answer.

Thanks Summit for programming the bot!