The Octothorpean Order online puzzlehunt opens 2013-11-16 at 11am Pacific Time (2pm Eastern Time). If you want your team to be one of the first to finish, read on.

At that time, the @octothorpean Twitter account will announce the "answer" to this "puzzle".

Entering that answer here will unlock the rest of The Octothorpean Order.

# How many puzzles? How long will this take?

About a hundred puzzles plus a meta.

Several (~8) puzzles will be unlocked at the same time. A large team could probably crack the meta in a couple of hours. A 10-12-person team who wanted to keep solving puzzles that "feed" the meta though they've cracked the puzzle… three to eight hours. Yes, that's quite a range, sorry.

# What's the maximum team size?

There isn't one. If you gather 100 friends and finish in an hour, good for you.

# What do we need? How do we prepare?

A computer with an internet connection; if your team plans to solve N puzzles in parallel, you might want N machines. A printer helps. You probably want to register a team ahead of time. Solve the UI puzzle to learn the unintentional puzzles of the web site's UI.

# Is this for n00bs? I heard Octothorpean's for n00bs.

The first puzzles are for folks who haven't yet learned to recognize Morse code, Caesar shift ciphers, etc. Experienced teams will rush past those puzzles to those of a difficulty they'll recognize.

# Is this here thing a puzzle?

Not exactly. This has an "answer;" enter it to continue on to the proper puzzles. That answer has nothing to do with these instructions. It will be announced on the @octothorpean Twitter account November 16, 2013.