SUMS Puzzle Hunt

SUMS Puzzle Hunt (SUMS) was an annual puzzle hunt run by the Sydney University Mathematics Society. It was started in 2009 and ran every year besides 2017 until 2018. It forms one of the three Australian hunts that defined the online hunt tradition in the early 2010's.

The format in each SUMS Puzzle Hunt has remained fairly consistent - the hunt consists of five acts, which are released once per day, with each act containing four puzzles. The puzzles are accompanied by about a page of flavortext that generally only plays a role in the metapuzzle, which is released concurrently with the fifth act. Canned Hints are released in a timed format, with three hints available for each puzzle. The first hint releases 24 hours after the puzzle is open to all teams, with every subsequent hint 24 hours after the previous. This coincides with a reduction of points. Puzzles are initially worth 5 points each, decaying down to a minimum of 2 points after all three hints have been released. The metapuzzle is not factored into a team's ranking placement.

Since there are 20 regular puzzles, the maximum score a team can achieve is 100. Teams are ranked in order of number of points, with ties broken by the last regular puzzle solve time. Prizes of $300, $200, and $100 are awarded to the top three Australian teams (defined to be a team containing at least one Australian member). Additionally, the first Australian team to solve the meta gets a special prize, and a randomly selected Australian team also gets a prize.

The hunt writing team is additionally loosely affiliated with the team Team_Underscore.