About

CryptFest, a day-long Treasure Hunt, was successfully conducted on 3 September, 2022, on IISER Kolkata campus premises. Overall, we saw participation of 12 teams with a total of 38 participants. Three teams made it to the very end, while only two correctly navigated the final twist!

Our winners

  1. Team Ko-mew-traitors (Trishita Patra, Dakshesh Vasan, Praful Rahangdale, Aditya Dutta): They correctly retrieved and guessed 2/5 Finale Chits, also holding the record for the fastest to find a chit (Wazzt) and also the ones to find the last remaining chit (Abisah).
  2. Team ^_________^ (Priyaraj Pal, Sai Kishore N): They also retrieved two Finale Chits but could only guess one (Lagrange). They were also a two person team so props to them for that!
  3. Team Dora the Explorers (Raakesh M, VishalRaam CS, Adireddi Srinivas, Liyana Shehaban Shajahan): They retrieved one Finale Chit but unfortunately couldn’t guess its author correctly. Nevertheless, their achievements are crucial enough to put them in our Top 3.

Our honourable mention goes to Team Biologist (Vaishali Mulchandani, Chirag Singhal, Souvik Karmakar, Anurag Banerjee). They were just a little late to retrieve two Finale Chits! However, they did provide us with the fastest solution to the Easter Egg Challenge - finding a secret hidden in an arbitrary clue.

Team Ko-mew-traitors.

Team ^_________^.

Team Dora the Explorers.

Poster designed by Sohom Gupta.

Rules and guidelines

  1. At 10 am, Sep 3 - a mail will be sent to all of the registered email addresses. This mail will contain an initial set of clues that will be crucial to progressing as well as decoding the final solution. Call this Clue#1.
  2. Based upon Clue#1 (which would be fairly simple), you can start pinpointing locations for the next clue. You do not have to roam around aimlessly and can get a very precise location the better you understand the clue. At your first location you shall get Clue#2. This would be the same for everyone.
  3. You have to take an image of Clue#2 as it is and send it to us first mandatorily. This is to ensure that you don’t tamper with the clues and other groups can access them too. If we find that someone has tampered with a clue we will unequivocally give the solution to all the other groups (except the tampering agents). Make sure to send us the image of the clue by email before you start decoding it.
  4. Solving Clue#2 will take you to Clue#3 and so on (don’t forget to send us images of every single clue). Caution: After a while, Clues will become more vague, and based upon your interpretation can lead you along different paths. Therefore, do not just stalk another group - they might have taken the longer route while you guys could’ve made it early if you did some work.
  5. Every single path, if solved correctly will lead to 1 of 5 different finale-chits, that would give you a short 1-3 line story. These stories would correspond to our five guests, Wazzt, Ramabas, Lagrange, Taya, Abisah. Not only do you have to bring back these finale-chits, you also have to correctly deduce which one of our guests wrote it (there will be hints in the clues for the same).
  6. Unlike Clues, finale-chits should not be shared with anyone (this will be mentioned clearly on them). No one is stopping groups from working together, but know that if multiple groups report back to us with the same answers simultaneously, at most one of the groups will be given credit based on our discretion. Therefore, be cautious before working together - and try not to share the Finale chit that you found with anyone except us.
  7. Around 4 pm, we will send a mail to all the registered email addresses again on where to meet for the final report. Everyone who wants to report should be at the location by 6 pm sharp. Latecomers won’t be entertained.

Tips and tricks

  1. Clues will be meddled in ciphers and riddles (mostly ciphers). No knowledge of core mathematics is required, but some knowledge of basic ciphers (Caesar, Substitution) and binary/Hex/Oct/Dec/ASCII representations would be expected.
  2. Participants are allowed to use any online or offline resources they want, except asking help from other people on campus (because then why form groups na?). Online cipher decoder applications are not recommended and are generally discouraged because they take the fun out of the event (but no one is stopping you ;>)
  3. A diverse group of people would be helpful to decipher the clues. We know people love unisex, uniMajor, unicommunity or uniIdentityCrisis teams. Diverse teams are recommended, but not mandatory.
  4. You may ask for hints/clues by mailing us in this mail handle. However, whether we actually give out any clues or not is entirely our discretion. Also remember that if we decide that it’s better to give out the clue, we will give the clue to everyone, not just the person who asked. Make sure to do some strategic planning before you ask for help.
  5. Carry copies/sheets of paper with you to copy down any clues you come across. Please do not tamper with clues or write on them or displace them. This is a fun event, let us all follow the rules.

Awards

  • Every finale-chit has Rs 100 allotted to it. If one group were to get a chit first and correctly guess its writer, they would win the 100 rupees. However, if nobody gets it or nobody is able to guess the correct name, the guest who wrote the chit will get the 100 rupees.
  • Similarly, for every finale-chit: if some group decodes it correctly, they get the award. If no group can, the guests get the award.
  • To make things challenging, once some group has found a finale-chit and wrongly deduced the name, no other group can try on that particular chit. The first people to bring back a finale chit are the only ones eligible to speak on it.