I’m writing this at midnight EST between Saturday August 30th and Sunday August 31st. Normally when I write about a puzzle hunt I wait until some time has passed after the hunt so I can write with a less emotionally charged brain and I have some time to see the full picture of what’s going on. However, I want to talk about my thoughts and feelings, and there is no better time to do that than while you’re thinking and feeling them. Galactic 2025 is the first hunt where I think that I would have a better time if I just gave up.
(Obviously, spoilers for Galactic 2025 further down.)
Progress
First, where exactly are we when I am writing this? Let’s run through each of the 6 rounds and mention where we are:
- Pan’s Laboratory - We have solved this round, although we’ve left three puzzles unsolved.
- Abandoned Site - We have solved every regular puzzle in this round, either forwards or backwards, built the grid required for the meta, but still haven’t managed to get the answer.
- (A)isle of Crosswords - We have solved every regular puzzle in this round, we know how the meta works, but we can’t solve it.
- The Crater - We have solved 1 puzzle (Dream Team) and have 2 puzzles unlocked (Convergence and A Cryptic Has Arrived!). Presumably, there are 7 more puzzles in this round that we haven’t unlocked yet.
- The Atoll - We haven’t solved anything in this round, so it’s still in its initial state.
- The Desert Island - We have solved every regular puzzle in this round, but we have no clue on the meta.
That’s a basic snapshot of where we are. We currently have 3 unsolved metapuzzles that have all the answers available, and our remaining puzzles in open rounds are 💙💙💙🟢🍌🍌🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️. I’d go more into where we are with certain puzzles, but that’ll happen in the rest of this post.
Pan’s Laboratory
I want to start by saying how absolutely brilliant this round is. The meta is a brilliant idea and it informs the rest of the round in an inspired way. You get the feeling that most of these puzzles wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for this round, which is great! Now, did I get super excited by seeing a Blue Prince-themed puzzle and did I spend way too long trying to solve it until a teammate pointed out the 🌶️ on the puzzle page itself? Absolutely. But, you know, these things happen.
Also, until this point I would’ve said that generative AI has no place in a puzzle hunt. However, Picturini Puzzlelini has changed my opinion to “I guess it is okay if it’s referencing something heavily tied to generative AI in the real world.” I appreciated the note that generative AI wasn’t used for anything else.
Anyway, after this round I was riding high. This was a really cool round, and I couldn’t wait to see what the rest of this hunt was doing.
The Abandoned Site
I also like what this round is doing. Splitting your puzzles up into pieces and making the solvers recreate a 5x5 grid using the answers is a great idea that still screams “jigsaw puzzle” without doing it the same way as the previous round. In addition, some of the puzzles are using this split to great effect: Seven Puzzles wonderfully builds the split into the puzzle in a meaningful way and Symbolic Computation divides the content up into interesting chunks. Some of the puzzles just divide their content up into the appropriate number of pieces, and that’s also fine, but I will sing the praises of Seven Puzzles for how it leaned into the round.
However, this round is where the problems started. We forward solved 6 of the 8 puzzles in this round. We needed hints for 4 of them – Polygons, Seven Puzzles, Symbolic Computation, and Four Square. This is only the second round. This is a bad sign. Part of the problem was that this was a bottleneck – the rest of our open puzzles were in a round that was already solved, we weren’t confident in our ability to backsolve them, and even if we did, it was no guarantee that it was going to open puzzles in The Abandoned Site. Grid Logic said it was 🍌, but we were not particularly interested in trying to solve an Einstein logic puzzle with half the statements, especially one that shows up in a puzzle hunt. We had an incredibly small radius, and the last thing we want to do is to get stalled out.
And look, I’ll justify our hint on Polygons every single time. However, Seven Puzzles needed better cluing on about half of the subpuzzles, Symbolic Computation absolutely needed some flavor text, and Four Square could’ve used absolutely anything as a clue to get started. Once we were able to get started, they were all super fun puzzles. But starting every one of those puzzles felt like pulling teeth. Fortunately we opened a new round, so that would help things!
(A)isle of Crosswords
This round made me so frustrated that at one point I had to stop puzzling for a day. I apologize to the writers and everyone at Galactic, but I would’ve had more fun this hunt had these puzzles not existed.
I have a lot of experience teaching people how to puzzle hunt. I used to lead teams of high schoolers through puzzle hunts – this often involved me solving puzzles in my head then trying to help high schoolers make those same deductions. This worked out very well and everyone generally had a lot of fun. However, there was one puzzle type that every time caused problems and involved significantly more handholding than any other puzzle – cryptics. Every hunt has the cryptic writer that says “Oh, I can make this puzzle involving cryptic clues easier for beginners who never have seen cryptics before”, and every time they are wrong. Cryptics are always harder than you think they are, and there is a very wide gulf between the best cryptic solvers and the rest of the world.
Fortunately, for those of us who are not as good at cryptic solving, there are tons of ways to break into a cryptic when one shows up at a puzzle hunt. First, take a look at the variety section to check what abnormalities you know to be looking for. If no enumerations are given, you can still get a general idea of the length of each answer by taking a look at where it is in the grid. If you can’t solve a clue, you can take a look at its crossings in the grid and see what you can divine from the letter pattern. When I solve a cryptic crossword, I fully solve from scratch maybe half of the clues, at best. The great thing about cryptics is all the checking. None of that was there. Every single handrail that a moderate cryptic solver could use was gone. Heck, even when you had assembled the grid for Debbie Downers, there are three entries with three unchecked letters in a row!
Many members of our team are not good at solving cryptics or had never seen them before. That’s okay. I know my job. Since I was moderately good at cryptics, my job was to grab anything that looked cryptic while they went and solved other puzzles. However, once Turtles was assembled, there was nothing for them to do but to sit and wait for me and the like one other cryptic solver to finish these puzzles.
We were hard stuck on these puzzles for 3 days. That’s not fun.
I’m not here to say that Galactic is a beginner hunt – I have a friend that I’m trying to get into puzzle hunts and I specifically didn’t invite them to this hunt because Galactic is not a beginner hunt. I’m also not here to say that cryptics always have to cater to beginners – puzzles are allowed to be hard. I am saying that the only way to make progress being “solve these two hard cryptic crosswords” is not a good idea.
With a lot of hinting and a lot of frustrated teammates, we got through those puzzles and opened a new round. We put the cryptics behind us, ready to solve other non-cryptic puzzles.
Foreshadowing is a literary device where…
The Crater
First of all, we open another round and get two puzzles. Look, I’m a fan of keeping puzzle radii small, but holy crap our puzzle radius this whole time has been microscopic. This round doesn’t even have the illusion of having a bigger radius because we don’t even get pieces to puzzles we don’t have yet. No chance at a [banana] or a [circle]. However, we take a look at Dream Team, and after a bit of messing around with the pieces it’s a super funny puzzle. One of my teammates has commented that he forgot what it was like to solve a puzzle that was jut fun. We enter in the answer, and a new puzzle unlocks.
A Cryptic Has Arrived!
Seriously Galactic? We were stuck for three days on two cryptics, then one unlock after getting through them we get another cryptic? At radius 2? C’mon!
I sit here with the tab for that puzzle still open. We very quickly figured out the Japanese Onomatopoeia trick, but progress has been slow. No one was able to identify the gif until we asked for a hint today. We have 33 clues figured out, but we still have not figured out any of the underlying structure of this puzzle. Every time I find out more about this puzzle, the less I like it. Today we got a second hint that included the response `Not all onomatopoeia used in the song are used in a clue, and vice versa. I can’t wrap my head around the structure of this puzzle at all, which is a rarity for me. I don’t want to solve this puzzle anymore.
I love a good metapuzzle. However, we’re just downright stuck on three metas.
- For Abandoned Site, we’ve constructed the grid. We’ve noticed that all the emoji that indicate a direction are pointing at a non-direction emoji (including the ⏬ emoji pointing at one two squares away), so we’re multiple ahas into this meta and we still cannot read off the answer. We have so many grids with so many attempts and absolutely nothing.
- For (A)isle of Crosswords, we know exactly how the meta works. Each of the answers needs to be treated as a ? crossword clue, and then the answers are filled into the grid based on whether the puzzle title says “Across” or “Down”. However, I don’t know that we’re going actually going to be able to do this.
- For The Desert Island, we have three numbers, but we have no clue what to do with them. We’ve tried a bunch of stuff, but we’re completely lost.
We haven’t solved a meta since the first round, and I’m not sure that we will be able to finish this hunt, even in the extended time. As I am laying here writing this, for the first time in a long time, I am in the position where I do not think we will finish a hunt.
The Atoll
As you may have gathered from me mentioning that we have solved puzzles in The Desert Island, we clicked the button that allowed us to open the remaining rounds. We have made very little progress on The Atoll. I mean, I know what I could be doing to solve Spooflantu. I have a strong idea for what the puzzle is about, and I know how I would try to progress if I wanted to, but I just don’t. Now when I look at puzzles from this hunt, I dread what is coming. I’ve lost the trust that I had that these puzzles are worth my time.
Look, if this was a puzzle hunt with a physical presence, like a BAPHL or MIT, then I would probably keep going hoping that it gets better. But I’m just in my house – I could easily be doing other things that don’t involve banging my head against a puzzle that is unsolvable without spending hints. This is the first time for me that quitting just feels like the better option.
Emotion vs. Reason
I’m not the most emotionally stable on the best of days, and I certainly am not on my best days right now. I’ve been fighting some major depression for a while, and it’s making this whole situation much wilder. I have this voice inside my head who constantly tells me that I can’t do things, and I’ve spent so much energy fighting against it. Of course that voice is ready to jump in and tell me that our team isn’t going to complete this hunt and that I should just give up. The way to fight this would be to appeal to reason. After all, my team is smart, I’m a reasonable solver, and I’ve solved many other puzzle hunts. There’s no reason why I can’t do this, right?
But my reason brain is looking at how many puzzles we’ve had to spend hints on. My reason brain is looking at the (A)isle of Crosswords meta that we are unlikely to get. My reason brain is looking at how much I have disliked a bunch of puzzles I have recently worked on and wonder if that will continue. It’s weird because my depression brain likes to hide as my reason brain and sabotage me so I have to be careful. But I think this is actually my reason brain. Maybe.
Like, there are definitely puzzle hunts that are too hard for me. Mark Halpin’s Labor Day Extravaganza happens this weekend, and I’m not attempting it. I’ve tried to do puzzles from it on my own, and I can usually accomplish like 1 or 2. My former solving situation for Labor Day is no longer an option, so I know that I will not be able to finish it. That’s okay. Not every hunt needs to revolve around me and my abilities. A hunt writer isn’t going to satisfy every person who solves their hunt, and sometimes the person who isn’t going to be satisfied is me.
So now I’m stuck trying to figure out if I’m self-sabotaging by quitting or if I’m making a realistic choice in order to maximize the amount of fun I’m having. As of writing, I still don’t know which.
Back to the Hunt Itself
I am not saying that Galactic is bad. First of all, as of time of writing this, 47 teams have completed the hunt, so it’s not like it’s so flawed that no one can complete it. Second of all, much like a lifeguard who is swimming in a pool, my field of vision is extremely limited and I can’t see everything that’s going on. There are puzzles that I haven’t unlocked yet, metas I haven’t solved, and an endgame I haven’t seen. I don’t have a full picture to make any judgment calls. Third of all, I had fun with a bunch of the puzzles. Galactic put this together for free, and I appreciate all of their hard work in doing so. I look forward to Galactic every year because they try weird stuff and see what works.
I am saying that Galactic appears to have some issues that could have made it better. The miniscule radius combined with the density of cryptics in the middle made progression hard if you’re not good at cryptics. But also, there seemed to be a problem with the puzzles from our limited point of view.
Imagine you go to a rock climbing competition with 30 ft. walls. This competition is known for its intricate patterns and weird handholds. You show up and find out that every rock wall is flat for the first 10 feet. Now for some people, this is totally fine. They can jump up, reach a handhold easily, and pull themselves up. You’re a bit shorter than them though. When you jump, you don’t come anywhere near. On some of the earlier walls, you’re able to do shenanigans with holes in the wall or by grabbing a chair. However, as the walls get tougher, the only way you’re able to consistently get up there is to have the person holding your rope pull you up a little bit. That competition isn’t going to be as fun as you were hoping.
For me, once we got past Pan’s Laboratory, it feels like we’ve been relying on the person holding our rope for that boost a lot of the time. It’s just not super fun.
3 Weeks Later
I tried. I really did. I sat down with the sheet and the puzzle page open, but I couldn’t bring myself to start solving anything. I just couldn’t believe that doing so was going to be fun anymore.
I’ve recently restarted therapy, and one of the things that my therapist has emphasized is that any one of the issues that I’m currently dealing with would be hard enough for most people, and I’m dealing with like five at once. I’m not operating anywhere near 100%, so I shouldn’t expect myself to be operating at 100%. It’s just hard to accept when I stare defeat in the face.
I don’t think Galactic was bad. There’s some really clever stuff in there, and I love the boundary pushing that Galactic does. I don’t think it was great either, for most of the reasons why I couldn’t pull myself to solve in the second week. It was okay, but in a world where I’m worried about my own survival from a government that wants to kill me, I’ll take even okay art as a distraction.