CISRA Puzzle Competition 2008 - News

This is the archive of the 2008 Puzzle Competition. Please visit the current competition site for information about the latest Puzzle Competition.

5 May 2008
The 2008 Puzzle Competition is over! All the puzzles have been solved and the world has been saved.

Competition winners      Prize winners        
1    fried chicken1    fried chicken
2    The Steffen Marcus All-Stars    2    phwoar
3    devjoe3    TROGDOR

(See the team stats page
for the final scores and
rankings of all teams.)

Special mention goes to devjoe, as the only team to solve the final, baffling metapuzzle. We hope you had as much fun solving the puzzles as we did creating them. Please give us any feedback you have, positive or negative, so that we can improve future events!

Worked solutions for each puzzle can be found on the puzzle page, and the full answer log is also available. Credits for the 2008 Competition.

2 May 2008
Many of you have no doubt noticed that there is a mysterious "Metapuzzle" this year. There is no PDF file for this puzzle. Sufficient information to solve it is already available. It is not worth any points and in no way affects positions on the ranking table, but it does give your team a cool bonus.

29 April 2008
We have unfortunately had to disqualify four teams from the competition because of a breach of the rules. We would like to remind all participants that registering on more than one team and sharing information between teams are both violations of the competition rules. (Besides, registering additional teams in order to try lots of guesses for a puzzle is not likely to get you any closer to solving the puzzles.)

17 April 2008
We've done some sprucing up of our site graphics, including brand new medal designs for the 2008 competition. We've also clarified a couple of minor rules details: Specifically, that if an answer has variant spellings, we use the Australian spelling; and adding an explicit privacy statement that a low score in this competition will not prejudice your chance of gaining employment at CISRA.

27 March 2008
Once again the annual MUMS Puzzle Hunt is taking place a few weeks before our own Puzzle Week. It's a great chance to flex your solving muscles, so check it out. The MUMS folks release their puzzles in the week of 7 to 11 April.

27 March 2008
We have replaced the failing hard drive on our web server and the site looks to be running smoothly again. No data were lost during the replacement.

17 March 2008
We apologise for the site being down over the weekend. We had a main computer room outage which wasn't fully restored until Monday morning.

4 March 2008
Group 1 puzzles are now available for your solving pleasure on the puzzles page.

3 March 2008
Unfortunately, technical difficulties have caused a delay in the release of the Group 1 puzzles. We will release them at 12:00 noon Australia Eastern Daylight Saving Time (01:00 GMT), Tuesday 4 March. Our apologies for the delay.

3 March 2008
We have added an opt-in checkbox on the registration page for competition participants interested in employment at CISRA. If you check this box, you grant permission for CISRA to contact you regarding employment opportunities. The default option is the same as before - CISRA will not contact you for anything other than puzzle competition purposes. If you have already registered and would like to opt-in to the employment opportunities programme, please e-mail us.

12 December 2007
The 2008 competition's Puzzle Week will be held from Monday 28 April until Monday 5 May. The four Group 1 puzzles will be released here at the end of February, allowing you some time to form a team, and brush up your puzzle-solving skills. Group 1 puzzles can be solved for full points until the second day of Puzzle Week, when the first set of hints will be released.

6 December 2007
The inaugural 2007 CISRA Puzzle Competition was a great success. Congratulations to all entrants and to all who were involved behind the scenes.

5 December 2007
The 2008 puzzle competition will be happening some time in April. Prizes will include cameras for each first and second place team member, and a laser pointer/pen/stylus for each third place team member. Teams are restricted to a maximum of four people, and only Australian students are eligible for prizes.

The competition is open to everyone. Teams of Australian students are eligible for prizes of Canon digital cameras.
See the competition rules for full details.