As announced back in March, the epic.HUNT is back for this event.

For those of you who haven't taken part in this sort of puzzle before, the idea for this event comes from a concept used at Dreamhack (the DH Game), and various other worldwide puzzle-hunt type games. This particular hunt takes you through a series of purely digital and event-based clues to lead you to the right answer for each question.

This game is a test of your initiative, knowledge, lateral thinking, puzzle solving, code-breaking and some creative image/sound processing skill.

The game can be played solo or as a team (up to 8 people), if you choose to join or create a team you will be locked to it for the remainder of the event. If you win while in a team the leader will be in charge of the prize.

The hunt is continuous, but you can stop for a rest at any time, though if you do, there's nothing to stop the other players overtaking your position. Questions will be released in the following phases:

• Thursday 21:30 - Teaser Round
• Friday 12:00 - Round One
• Saturday 14:00 - Round Two (Final)

Signup details will be released on Thursday evening at the event.

Here are some rules and tips to guide you through, shamelessly borrowed from a number of similar puzzle-hunts:

Rules

• You will never need to hack or brute force software to obtain answers.
• Anyone who is found to be sabotaging clues such as modifying, removing or changing them will be disqualified from the hunt. You can misdirect people verbally if you wish, but not by tampering with clues.
• Please do not discuss any of the clues or solutions in the IRC channel (Quakenet #epic.HUNT), even if you have finished as other people may be trying to complete it.
• Please do not "hammer" the question page with answers or use any sort of software to attempt dictionary or brute force attacks. The hunt admins can see realtime submissions of your answers and may suspend you from the hunt. Anyone who is suspected of cheating will be disqualified, participants may be required to explain their answer path at any time. 
• If the admins see lots of people stuck at the same question, additional clues will be released to help.

Hints & Tips

• If what you have to do is not immediately clear, look for hidden data. Often clues will be embedded in web pages, AV file metadata etc.
• Try processing words and phrases in different ways, look for patterns of letters or possible common cryptography techniques to decode the information you have in front of you.
• If you have lots of words, try putting them into other Office software such as Excel to manipulate them.
• If you have movie, audio or image files, you would find software to process these files useful. For example, try playing movies and audio in reverse or at different speeds to help.
• Don't always look for the clues you do have, it could be the clues you don't have that make the difference.
• Sometimes you will need to ask people for the clues, but they'll only give you the answer if you ask for the right information.
• Try re-encoding number based systems into difference base sequences. If you're given binary for example, look at any patterns that may emerge if you convert it to hex etc.
• There will be red herrings, we just put these in for the fun of it.
• If the word itself isn't the correct answer, try manipulating it. Is it an anagram? What about the equivalent scrabble score for that word? Could it be an acronym for a longer phrase?
• If the clue is an email address or phone number, try saying "Hi" to see what you get back.
• We will not require you to part with any money to progress with a puzzle. If you think you have to buy any software or items to proceed, double check your logic, or check to see if it is available for free!
• Smartphones can help but aren't compulsory.
• It is supposed to be difficult, otherwise it would just be a quiz!

The following clues are taken from the Dreamhack Game, some may apply, some may not!

• Google it!
• Convert it to HEX
• Convert it to Binary
• Convert it to Decimal
• Braille
• Morse code
• Alphabetize
• Rearrange the letters
• Look at the task in a mirror
• Say it out loud
• Make it into 3D
• Fold it
• Connect the dots
• Overlay it on a map of something
• Look at letter frequencies
• Determine if it's a shiffer of some kind
• Shift from letters to numbers
• See if text relates to song lyrics or poems
• Look at a computer keyboard to match up patterns
• Graph numbers or letter frequencies
• Change base of numbers
• Treat numbers as phone numbers, IP address, dates, atomic weights, coordinates, radio stations, ASCII, ISBN
• Prime factor numbers