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Why did I always get kudos from COMMENT_ME_JAPANESE_TITS? Why did I never get kudos from Carl Gauss? What's a girl got to do to attract a studly mathematician to her principia-mathematica-omegaverse fanfic? I'd proved the number 4 at least twenty times! But no, Gauss and his cute flowery signature were nowhere to be seen! Just me, the Hell Hounds, and the stalwart tit-requester. Typical.

(https://secretfanspace.dreamwidth.org/3100.html?thread=5411356#cmt5411356)

Welcome back! Chat fandom, creative things, odd stuff you've seen around the net, funny stuff, books, films, anything! Meme trundles on!

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From: (Anonymous)

==> GO TO THE CARGO SHELVES
...luckily, dying just resets us to the moment we put on those mysterious timeium watches. Choices we've unlocked become buttons, and we can pick and choose which paths to take in each timeline. Here, we go down to the Cargo Shelves, where we're greeted with - you guessed it! - more puzzles. There's also a safe, but we don't know the combination and we're told not to try guessing.

After clearing out a few more puzzles, we find the source of the problem - a hull breach! We also find the easiest metapuzzle in the world - it's just a list of subpuzzle answers matched with numbers. If we interpret the numbers as indices into the given answers, we get the metapuzzle answer TINKER.

Huh. It couldn't be that easy, right...?

From: (Anonymous)

==> TINKER
We got sucked into the endless vacuum of space. Guess fixing the hull breach wasn't in the cards!

From: (Anonymous)

==> SUIT UP
On the other hand, the cards ... are in the answers?

Each of the subpuzzle answers can be matched to a card suit; for example, SAILOR MOON is associated with HEARTS and MANCHESTER UNITED is one (of many) CLUBS. Conveniently, Lucy threw all four card suits at us in a very specific order. If we use the numbers of matching cards as indices into the subpuzzle answers, we get the metapuzzle answer SUIT UP.

Inspired, we put on our spacesuits and head out to patch the breach from outside - except we're immediately thrown into cryptics bootcamp. Each puzzle is a set of four cryptics, all using the same type of cryptics wordplay (i.e. initial letters, charades). Not too bad! Unfortunately, someone then got the bright idea of inventing new cryptic clue types (answers/explanations in spoilers).

> Begin north, new group of ferrets (7)
START (begin) up (NORTH) → NEW BUSINESS (group of ferrets)
> Relative of Fibonacci’s favorite aunt at school gather together (6)
F (favorite[1]) + A (aunt[1]) + T (at[2]) + H (school[3]) + E (gather[5]) + R (together[8]) → FATHER (relative)

Then, they start combining all of these different tricks into one cursed package.

> Ariel has many of these Thai-Indian whales and a bobsled without a lightbulb (12)
TH (thai) + IN (indian) + GAM (group of whales) + A BOBSLED - LED (lightbulb) → THINGAMABOBS (ariel has many of these)

If you're going 'what the fuck' at these now, just know that I'm sharing the ones that actually made enough sense to me to write an explanation for them. I offloaded the hard ones onto our Cryptics Guy, and even he had to resort to the time-honored cryptics tradition of guessing random synonyms that fit the enumeration.

If we manage to complete all the cryptics, we get hit by an asteroid for our trouble! We die, but at least we manage to get a beautiful view of our spaceship's relative position in space before we drift out of consciousness. Wonder what that might be useful for.

From: (Anonymous)

==> TAR OUT
Let's go back to Lucy's cards. Before drifting off into the infinite void, Matt and Emma pointed out that there might be a more arcane solution to this problem.

https://i.imgur.com/RsTQZne.png
Each standard card suit also boasts a visual design that references a tarot card suit. If we recategorize the subpuzzle answers by tarot suits - for example, SAILOR MOON uses WANDS and MANCHESTER UNITED wins CUPS - and apply the same extraction, we get the metapuzzle answer TAR OUT. With a little TAR, we can seal the hull breach and buy us some time.

Unfortunately, we're still stuck in the cargo hold. There's a workbench where we can try to build something to help us out, but we've got limited supplies and only enough space for six components.

Each of the puzzles in the Workbench round has two answers; the answer you choose also affects which puzzle gets unlocked next. The final metapuzzle is themed after the electromagnetic spectrum (it's called BUILT TO SPEC!) and requires you to select a combination of puzzles that has the letters ROYGBIV in that order. There's two right answers, of course!

From: (Anonymous)

==> BUILD JERRY-RIGGED SAW
If we assembled the right components, we can jerry-rig a saw and cut through the door to reach Captain Houston's office. He's not there, of course, but his ID card's on his desk, his cat is under the desk (and pettable for an achievement), and he's left out a bunch of notes. There's a crossword puzzle, a mixtape, and a transcript of a game of Innovation that he was playing - but with who?

https://2025.teammatehunt.com/solutions/captains-office (language details, spoilers!)

Aliens, apparently. Each puzzle contains sections of signed language that we have to decode from context. If we complete enough puzzles, we absorb enough information to solve the password reset questions on his computer, unlocking the communications device and a small message from our alien sponsors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJCcqqPh5hs
> (roughly translated) Are you alive? You were not responding. Send us location numbers. We will come to your location. We will take small life fragments. You will give small life fragments. (combination for safe)

Perfect! We can send the aliens a distress signal and they'll rescue us. Of course, we'll have to send that message in their language, and since it's a signed language, we have to act it out. You can check out some of the creative solutions people submitted here, ranging from the traditional (acting it out with their limbs) to the creative (noodles and pipe cleaners).

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLj5MLcURdgEKv2TtKj8EJeqkuqHg7WXTN

Once we do that, the aliens hear our message and come to get us, and right before they dock ... our ship blows up? Wait, that can't be right, can it?

From: (Anonymous)

==> BUILD LADDERS IN CHUTE
If we assembled the right components, we can build a ladder to get back to the Control Panel. Lucy's already made her grand escape, and without her, the three relatively easy puzzles we saw on our first visit have been upgraded to more painful variants, quite literally. The NYT Spelling Bee puzzle, for example, now requires us to find PAINGRAMS instead of PANGRAMS.

https://i.imgur.com/AJUsdxh.png
We're given another sliding triangle puzzle (now with added portals) for our next choice, but the Cockpit is only accessible if we have a crew member's ID card. There's one of those in the Captain's Office, but we can't go back ... or can we?

From: (Anonymous)

==> VISIT THE GREENHOUSE
Welcome to the Greenhouse! This round has one of my favorite puzzle hunt conventions - the obligatory scavenger hunt. After doing all sorts of dumb logic puzzles (and spoiling ourselves on Tears of the Kingdom in the process), we finally get to sit back, relax, and force puzzle hunt staff to read our dumb submissions for tasks like 'Show me how to center a div' and 'Send me proof you touched grass.' Some of the best submissions are featured in the wrap-up; I especially liked the ChatGPT response to centering a div.

As for the actual metapuzzle - well, the problem here is that we're running out of air. To solve that, we simply need to reinvent life. Our communications with the aliens gave us the combination to the safe in the Cargo Shelves, and if we unlock it, we receive a set of denatured proteins. If we combine the proteins with the subpuzzle answers and print them out, we can literally fold the proteins back into shape to reveal the metapuzzle answer OXYGENETICS.

That allows us to generate as much oxygen as we need! We get a few moments to celebrate ... and then our ship blows up? What the fuck. This ship sucks and I want a refund.

From: (Anonymous)

==> VISIT THE COCKPIT
Like Houston, Lucy also left some notes scattered around the Greenhouse. One of them contains a drawing of the ship's Air Filtration System, which just so happens to look exactly like the crossword puzzle in the Captain's Office. If we use the marks on her drawing to extract an answer from the crossword puzzle, we're told to IN VENT - we can visit the Captain's Office, pick up his ID card, and then crawl into the vents to get back to the Control Panel. Now we can visit the Cockpit, which'll let us fly the spaceship!

Unfortunately, none of us passed pilot school and space is full of hazards we have to navigate around. We unlock three sets of themed puzzles, where each set contains four (simpler) 7x7 puzzles and two (harder) 13x13 puzzles that combine the mechanics introduced in the first four puzzles. These sets are, in order: the world's most cursed Nonogram, the world's most cursed Minesweeper, and the world's most cursed NYT Strands. Consider this:

- Nonogram, but you can only place Tetris pieces, but also you have to place Akari lights
- Minesweeper, but the numbers are colored based on how hard they're lying to you, and also there are no numbers, there are just Minecraft craftable items
- Strands, but the theme is chess and all paths have to be valid chess moves for the type of piece the word references

Each of these puzzle sets represents an axis in 3D space, and each of these puzzles represents a specific slice of the 13x13 cube that we have to map for hazards. The puzzles tell us what to avoid; for example, in Minesweeper we can't hit mines and in Chess Strands we can't hit royals and rooks.

Finally, we just have to navigate our ship safely from our current location (which we can deduce from landmarks in Cryptics Hell) to the planet Marsh Haven at (1, 3, 13). Just as we're about to reach our final destination, our ship ... blows up? Man, they just don't make spaceships like they used to these days.