The Great Sporcle Puzzle Hunt

(Last Updated On: January 19, 2017)
Editors Note: This post was written by sproutcm, who currently sits atop the Sporcle Quizmaster leaderboard, and has now devised a very difficult challenge for even the most diligent Sporclers.
Channel your inner Sherlock to solve the puzzle.

Just over a year ago, I began a quest to create the first puzzle hunt made entirely out of Sporcle quizzes. It sat around unfinished for a very long time until Mother Nature decided to send a giant blizzard to Boston trapping me at home until I finished it.

The Great Sporcle Puzzle Hunt will be comprised of 15 individual puzzle quizzes: one in each of the 15 Sporcle categories. These will culminate in a two-part puzzle quiz, serving as the metapuzzle. One was released each day, for 16 days, so that everyone would have the chance to come to Sporcle, take the quizzes and solve the puzzle.

Read more below if you want more background and info on the puzzle hunt, or click here if you just want to dive right into the quizzes.

What is a puzzle hunt?

In most puzzle hunts, which include the MIT Mystery Hunt, Midnight Madness, and The Game, people are given a series or set of puzzles. The puzzles range from trivia games and logic puzzles to crosswords and wordplay. However, in addition to being a Sporcle quiz you can take, each Sporcle Puzzle Hunt quiz contains a puzzle that leads to a distinctive answer, usually a common word or phrase.

In many cases, each of the answers to these puzzles can be combined together into a larger puzzle, called a metapuzzle, that yields a final combined answer. In most cases, you would need most of the answers to solve this final puzzle, and the more answers you have, the easier it is to solve the overall puzzle. To give you some practice, I’ve created a sample set of puzzles that feature a metapuzzle to warm you up for this hunt.

Sporcle Puzzle Hunt: Sample

In this sample there are three smaller puzzles, each of which is a Sporcle quiz that also happens to yield an answer. Each of these answers together leads to a final answer. To help people ease into these hunts, this sample quiz has some hint features to help you along, but don’t expect hints in the final hunt.

Part of the goal of this hunt is to highlight all of the Sporcle features, which is why there will be a quiz in all 15 categories, as well as image, clickable, color, matching, and minefield quizzes. As you solve each of these 15 quizzes, keep track of your answers, because you’ll need those on day 16.

Because this is part of a puzzle hunt, getting to the end is meant to be a challenge, and the first people to complete all the parts should feel very proud of themselves. The puzzles have been set to not display the answers when the quiz ends; this is both for the added challenge and because then you cannot just quit the quiz and see all the answers. Also, for many people there will be lots of difficult things on the quizzes; it is up to the individual, but there is nothing wrong with looking up things you need to complete some of the quizzes. In some cases, you’ll enjoy them more if you don’t look them up, but there are no rules against that in this puzzle hunt. The only real rule will be please please please:

NO SPOILERS, ANSWERS, OR HINTS IN THE COMMENTS

While the hunt is on, there will be no hints, and people must accept that challenge to try and solve them. At some point later, I’ll open up my email for people who want and need hints to get them past where they are stuck. Email me at sproutcmsporcle@gmail.com if you want to talk about things. At first, when the puzzles are new, there won’t be any hints, but after all of them have been released, I will be willing to help poke and push people in the right direction. A while after the puzzles are released, there will be a Hinting Quiz that will automatically help you with the quizzes.

In honor of this first Puzzle Hunt at Sporcle, those who complete the full challenge will be rewarded with a special badge. In order to earn this badge, you have to get 100% on the final metapuzzle, which can only be done by those puzzle hunters who have met the challenge and solved each of the puzzles as well.

Here is the link to the 15 puzzles:

Sporcle Puzzle Hunt: Music Quiz

Sporcle Puzzle Hunt: Entertainment Quiz

Sporcle Puzzle Hunt: Holiday Quiz

Sporcle Puzzle Hunt: Just For Fun Quiz

Sporcle Puzzle Hunt: Language Quiz

Sporcle Puzzle Hunt: Science Quiz

Sporcle Puzzle Hunt: Television Quiz

Sporcle Puzzle Hunt: Movie Quiz

Sporcle Puzzle Hunt: History Quiz

Sporcle Puzzle Hunt: Miscellaneous Quiz

Sporcle Puzzle Hunt: Sports Quiz

Sporcle Puzzle Hunt: Literature Quiz

Sporcle Puzzle Hunt: Religion Quiz

Sporcle Puzzle Hunt: Gaming Quiz

Sporcle Puzzle Hunt: Geography Quiz

At any point in time, you should be able to find all of the quizzes that are a part of this puzzle hunt here because they have a special tag.

All the Released Sporcle Puzzle Hunt Quizzes

Now that the puzzle quizzes have all been released, the two-part meta puzzle quizzes are linked here below. The Meta quiz serves as BOTH the final meta puzzle and an answer checker for each of the original 15 puzzle quizzes. Then, after you solve the puzzle in the Meta quiz, completion of the Final Answer quiz will show that you have solved the whole thing!

Sporcle Puzzle Hunt: Meta Quiz

Sporcle Puzzle Hunt: Final Answer Quiz

Or if you just want to confirm a single answer this quiz will still work, too:

Answer Checker

Good luck and Happy Hunting!

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13 Comments

  1. This is just a pathetic attempt to get people to play sproutcm’s quizes. Of course you’re going to be the top “quizmaster” when you resort to desperate ploys like this.

    • Hey John,

      It was my idea to promote Sprout’s puzzle contest. It’s something that Sporcle hasn’t done before, and if another user were to come to me with a similar idea and quality of quizzes, I think we’d probably do it again.

      Sprout’s quizzes had been played over 30 million (!) times up to this point, the plays from this puzzle hunt are a drop in the bucket compared to that number.

  2. I’m still confused by this; I did the first quiz on bands, and when I finished, I thought something else was going to pop up. What am I supposed to do after I finish a quiz?

    • The puzzle is the solved quiz. For each quiz there is some sort of pattern within the answers as they appear at the end, and the pattern can be used to find a word or phrase that’s the answer to the puzzle.

      The easiest pattern – one sproutcm hasn’t used yet, and probably won’t – would be to simply read the first letters of the answers straight down.

      Try the Just For Fun one or the Science one out – those are two of the easier ones to figure out the final answer on, I think, and might give you an idea of what you’re doing on the others.

    • Michael, nothing else pops up when you finish the puzzle hunt quizzes. You’re just supposed to look at the finished quiz and try to determine how you can get a one-word answer out of what’s on the screen. It’s different for each quiz as to how you arrive at the answer, but it is derivable from whatever is showing on your screen at the end of the quiz. Look for patterns in the answers, is probably the best advice.

    • Yes they are, sproutcm mentioned this in the comments for the holiday puzzle: ‘Every one of the 15 Sporcle quizzes in the hunt should have a single word answer. Those 15 answers are all you’ll need to bring to the “Thunderdome” at the end.’

  3. So far I have 5/10. This is really fun and addicting, haha. I have 100% on all the quizes, just can’t for the life of me figure out all the words. I been staring at the ones I can’t get for hours now, hoping it will come to me. But, alas, they’re not, and I’m left here to bash my head off the desk in frustration.

    I hope to see more of these challenges in the future!

  4. Will the metapuzzle have an extra puzzle to it, or is it just enter all the answers to win?

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