It not our desire or intention to disqualify any puzzles, and as long as all teams make an effort to
participate as per the rules, it will not be necessary. However, if a puzzle obviously violates the rules,
we must disqualify it in the interests of fairness to the other teams. There are a number of violations
that would lead to a puzzle being disqualified:
1.) A puzzle will be disqualified if it could have been made in its entirety prior to learning the secret
ingredients (regardless of whether or not it in fact was). This would require that a secret ingredient be
either left out entirely or superficially pasted on with minimal effort after the puzzle was complete. As
general formulation of puzzle ideas ahead of time is encouraged, this rule violation must be flagrant for
disqualification to be enforced.
2.) A puzzle will be disqualified if the team does not submit both a paper-only puzzle and an “other”
puzzle. In this case the team may choose which puzzle to disqualify
3.) A puzzle will be disqualified if team only uses a single secret ingredient for both puzzles, and does
not use either of the other two ingredients at all (or only uses a second ingredient superficially, as
described in section 1). In this case the team may decide which puzzle to disqualify.
If a puzzle is disqualified, the creating team will not be disqualified from the event. The team will be
able to solve and earn points normally. However, the violating puzzle will not be included in the event,
and will therefore not be eligible for popularity or difficulty points. All other teams will also score points
as if they had solved that puzzle.
