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Galactic Puzzle Hunt - TV Tropes

  • ️Mon Sep 30 2024

The Galactic Puzzle Hunt is an online puzzlehunt series ran by ✈✈✈ Galactic Trendsetters ✈✈✈, a team who competed in the MIT Mystery Hunt. It got its start in 2017 after the team finished that year's MIT Mystery Hunt quicker than expected. Since then, it has become a fairly established online puzzlehunting series.

There are a total of seven iterations of the puzzlehunt series.

  • Puzzleball Championships (2017)
  • The Great Galactic Bakeoff (2018)
  • The Galactic Artifact (2019)
  • 20/20 Vision ("2020")
  • The Exam (2022)
  • GalactiCardCaptors (2023)
  • Stargazing (2024)

Beware, the tropes list below spoils the solution to some past puzzles. If you want to solve them on your own, you may want to avoid reading the list.

The Galactic Puzzle Hunt contains examples of:

  • All Just a Dream: Based on the final metameta answer to the "2020" hunt, teams found that they woke up in 2021, the year the "2020" hunt actually took place, rather than 2020. The wrap-up explicitly referred to the scenario as such.
  • Ascended Fanboy: The puzzle "Free Puzzle" from the 2024 hunt directly involves solvers submitting a puzzle, and many submissions later became puzzles from that very hunt. As the solvers are part of the storyline, this also doubles as a Promoted Fanboy .
  • Binocular Shot: The Binoculars round from the "2020" hunt has a design reminiscent of the double circular frame, and all puzzles have an alternate left and right version.
  • Cheaters Never Prosper: While all puzzlehunts have rules that bar cheating, the 2018 hunt incorporates a cheater in the storyline, where the Cookie Monster illegitimately baked the most cookies. The rest of the plot involves teams trying to stop the culprit and send his cookie count to zero.
  • Collectible Card Game: Unlike most other puzzlehunts, the 2023 hunt heavily uses these mechanics via the GalactiCardCaptors, where teams use card summons to defeat enemies and befriend legendaries.
  • Conlang: The 2019 hunt introduced the Puflantu conlang, where solvers need to translate words in order to make progress on metapuzzles.
  • Continuity Nod: Some puzzles reference and/or reuse mechanics from past puzzles and story elements of its series.
  • Design-It-Yourself Equipment: A recurring theme in the hunt series is the "Make Your Own" puzzles, which includes fillonimos, crossword puzzles, math quizzes, and star battles. However, these puzzles need to be designed a certain way in order to get information. This even extends in "Free Puzzle" from the 2024 hunt, where some teams can submit their puzzle and, when approved, have it solved by other teams.
  • Dropped Glasses: The plot of the "2020" hunt revolves around this very trope. The first round even has a blurred and clear mechanic where it takes one hour for the eyesight to adjust to have more hints on the respective puzzles, and the rest of the round involves looking at various sight tools in search of the missing eyeglasses.
  • Entry Point: While it was unwitting, viewers following the Galactic Trendsetters during the 2017 MIT Puzzle Hunt bore witness to the Galactic Puzzle Hunt started when the abovementioned team finished the MIT's challenges way earlier than expected.
  • First-Episode Twist: As with the MIT Mystery Hunt, some years of the Galactic Puzzlehunt seems to set up for a particular theme but diverges, often right after solving the first metapuzzle.
    • The Galactic Artifact in 2019 started off as an expedition in Antarctica but later involved trying to work diplomacy with alien species to prevent conflict from further escalating.
    • The Exam in 2022 started off as a standardized test akin to the SAT but later sent solvers into a time loop and later to the Galactic Apocalypse Prevention (GAP) Program, the supposed "2021" hunt.
    • GalactiCardCaptors in 2023 was originally presented as GalactiCosmiCave. The structure also heavily diverges from past iterations and even puzzlehunt structures.
  • Four-Seasons Level: The "Hibernating and Flying South" from the "2021" hunt is structured after the seasons, where the time teams submit answers to the GAP Test determine what season they land.. As such, puzzle content spreads out across the four seasons, with some seasons having blank entries for that puzzle. This structure reflects a mechanic from another four seasons level .
  • Fourth-Wall Mail Slot: The 2024 wrap-up had a segment where the Celestials themselves answered questions sent by teams via the feedback form.
  • Grid Puzzle: Many puzzles riff on traditional grid logic puzzles (many published by Nikoli) like Sudoku and Nonogram, but introduce new twists that solvers need to deduce on the fly. This even includes that do not look like grid logic puzzles at first, like "Miss Yu" and "Moonick", both from the 2023 hunt.
  • "Groundhog Day" Loop: At first glance, the 2022 hunt seems small with only 9 puzzles. Upon solving the metapuzzle, solvers are sent back to the beginning with the answers reset. Breaking free of the time loop requires finding alternate answers.
  • Loot Boxes: Randomized rewards have been implemented on three different occasions, albeit without requiring teams to pay money.
  • Metapuzzle: Much like the MIT Mystery Hunt, the hunts are often divided into multiple rounds, each with its own metapuzzle where the individual puzzles provide clues or information about the meta's answer. Some metapuzzles even use more elements from the feeders than just the answers.
  • No Title: When looking at the archive, the "2021" hunt is listed as ???. This is because the "2021" hunt is actually part of the 2022 hunt.
  • Scrabble Babble: The final metapuzzle "The Galactic Conference" from the 2019 hunt involves the four Galactic Empires playing a game of Scrabble in the conlang Puflantu, and the words played need to be translated.
  • Sequence Breaking: As with most puzzlehunts, solvers may figure out the solution to feeders and even metapuzzles without figuring out all of the pieces. This is intentionally invoked in "The Meta Puzzle" from the 2019 hunt.
  • Speedrun Reward: Though all hunts are a race to the finish, the 2023 hunt also has a speedrun-like mode where teams try to do each of the card battles as fast as possible, with the fastest times ranked. One of the top runs even got a YouTube video.
  • Team-Based Tournament: The hunt is designed for teams, often from 6-10 participants.
  • Theme Tune: The song "Rock Lobster" by B-52s is known as the recurring theme of Galactic Trendsetters. A character based on it appears in the 2024 hunt, complete with the song playable. Additionally, all wrap-up playlists (as of 2023) contain the song at least once, and this fact has been used in "Galactic History Exam".
  • Timed Mission: Though all hunts have a time limit (usually a week), all puzzles from "World's End Concert" have a four minute time limit. Teams do get unlimited retries though, but a good number of puzzles have interactive components that only get accessible in that four minutes.
  • Un-Installment: Due to Galactic Trendsetters having a Title by Year and skipping one year due to hosting MIT Mystery Hunt instead, the skipped year(s) get treated as such twice.
    • The "2020" hunt actually took place in 2021. This is to reflect the 20/20 Vision titling, and the epilogue calls into fact that the "2020" hunt may not have even existed at all.
    • The "2021" hunt is actually part of the 2022 hunt. The plot line even talked about how the Galactic Apocalypse Program failed to get any participants, to the point that they tried to reach out to hunters during a standardized test.
  • Wish Upon a Shooting Star: The 2024 hunt heavily invokes the trope in the unlock system and plot system, where teams try to restore the sky after the stars disappeared.
  • Wrap-Up Song: Each year's wrap-up has a themed playlist in which the songs reflect the hunt experience. These playlists are used in "Galactic History Exam".