Hunts by Edric

Edric runs multiple annual hunts. Edric’s Treasure Hunts are annual online puzzle hunts, and are shorter, strictly linear hunts and have traditionally taken place the first weekend of April. Edric's Puzzle Hunts and Edric's Truzzle Hunts are longer, more complicated hunts and have traditionally taken place in early July.

Treasure Hunts

Edric's Treasure Hunts
Running Team	Edric Haleen
First hunt	2018
Most recent hunt	July 16, 2023
Number of hunts	11
Location	Online
Links
Link	Link

At the launch of a Treasure Hunt, solvers are given an initial puzzle which, once solved, directs them to the next puzzle. After solving the full chain of puzzles in turn, solvers reach a final page which congratulates them for finishing the hunt. The first Treasure Hunt went live in 2018, and there was a Treasure Hunt every year from 2018-2022. (In 2022, the Treasure Hunt went by the name of "The Worldwide Man-Hunt.")

The first four Treasure Hunts were actually all written in the year 2018. Edric then made one of them public each April until all had been released. And this likely would have been the end of the Treasure Hunts (as Edric had switched to writing longer Puzzle or Truzzle hunts starting in 2020), except for the fact that his 2021 Truzzle Hunt suggested a bit of a "spin-off." So Edric wrote "The Worldwide Man-Hunt" for April of 2022, with its plot exploring some of the ramifications of aspects of the earlier hunt.

No such impetus existed for April of 2023, so Edric devoted his time to writing the 2023 DUAL Puzzle Hunt instead of creating another Treasure Hunt. Indeed, it is likely that there will be no further Treasure Hunts in this series unless another similar compelling tie-in or opportunity presents itself in the future.

Puzzle Hunts

Puzzle Hunts are patterned after the old Australians hunts (especially the SUMS Puzzle Hunt) and feature batches of four puzzles uploaded daily across the span of a week. The hunt cumulates in a final metapuzzle which incorporates the solutions to all 24 of the feeder puzzles in its mechanic. The first such Puzzle Hunt was run in 2020.

Truzzle Hunts

Truzzle Hunts feature puzzles which are all uploaded right at the beginning of the hunt, but with the majority of the puzzles gated behind an unlock structure and initially inaccessible to solvers. Solving initial puzzles gives solvers access to subsequent puzzles until eventually the entire scope of the hunt is revealed. The hunt cumulates in a final metapuzzle which incorporates the solutions to all the feeder puzzles in its mechanic. The first such Truzzle Hunt was run in 2021.

Historical Predecessor

Edric's first treasure hunt was created in 1994 for the people on the floor of his residence hall at Michigan State University. The hunt consisted of five puzzles/clues which, when solved and put together, would reveal the location of a medallion hidden somewhere on campus. (A current map of campus was also provided.) The prize was never claimed; the bench in Spartan Stadium under which the medallion was hidden has since been replaced; and one of the five clues was later rendered unsolvable when MSU removed a particular traffic circle to make room for the FRIB accelerator facilities.

List of Hunts

	Type	Launch Date	Link	Number of Puzzles	Notes
2018	Treasure	2018-04-06	Edric's Treasure Hunt 2018	5
2019	Treasure	2019-04-05	Edric's Treasure Hunt 2019	6
2020	Treasure	2020-04-03	Edric's Treasure Hunt 2020	6
2020	Puzzle	2020-07-12	Edric's Puzzle Hunt 2020	25+meta (7+meta)	This hunt featured a "faux-meta" puzzle halfway through the hunt, the solving of which unlocked the puzzles for Day Four instead of representing the end of the hunt. It also featured a "sidecar-hunt" (branded as "The HappyJon Special") which ran parallel to, but separate from, the main hunt.
2021	Treasure	2021-04-02	Edric's Treasure Hunt 2021	5	This hunt was actually presented on a single .pdf, rather than as a chain of puzzles.
2021	Truzzle	2021-07-09	Edric's Truzzle Hunt 2021	30 + 2 metas	This hunt was "set" within a circular prison, whose concentric circular rings and pattern of doors-leading-to-pairs-of-new-doors defined the unlock structure for the hunt.
2022	Treasure	2022-04-01	Edric's Treasure Hunt 2022	5	This hunt was branded the "2022 Worldwide Man-Hunt,"and was presented as a sort of "spin-off" from the 2021 Truzzle Hunt, ostensibly following the trail of the mysterious figure who set the "Who Wrote This?" puzzle in the earlier hunt. (No knowledge of the earlier hunt is necessary to solve this hunt.)
2022	Truzzle	2022-07-02	Edric's Truzzle Hunt 2022	24 + 2 metas	This hunt was "set" upon a Rubik's Cube. Solving the puzzles at the edge of each face would "portal" the solver to another face of the cube which contained still more puzzles.
2022	Puzzle	2022-07-11	Edric's Puzzle Hunt 2022	24 + 2 metas	This hunt was patterned after an Australian hunt, but the rounds of puzzles were released in reverse chronological order. The meta puzzle was released first -- two hours before the puzzles for Day 6 were released -- and then (as it went on to explain on the website), "Each day, the puzzles [were] released two hours earlier than they were the day after."
2023	DUAL Puzzle	2023-07-16	The 2023 DUAL Puzzle Hunt	24 easy + 2 metas 24 hard + 2 metas	This hunt was actually two hunts running simultaneously -- an "easy-half" hunt that was formally presented on the main web page and a "hard-half" hunt which ran "in the background." Solving an easy-half puzzle allowed the solver to access the corresponding hard-half puzzle, so the puzzles for the hard-half followed the same release schedule as the puzzles for the easy-half. The easy-half puzzles were specifically tailored for young kids to be able to solve, so families were encouraged to participate. Veteran solvers were able to dispatch the easy-half puzzles very handily and move quickly on to the more substantial hard-half puzzles.
2024	Ptruzzle	2024-07-16	The 2024 Ptruzzle Hunt	???	"Ptruzzle" is Edric's portmanteau of "puzzle" and "truzzle" (the latter of which was its own portmanteau of "treasure" and "puzzle"), and this moniker implies that the 2024 hunt will start out in the style of Edric's Puzzle Hunts (based on the old Australian hunts), but then pivot at a certain point to adopt the style of Edric's Truzzle Hunts.