On opening the puzzle, solvers are directed to an extremely plain blog written in HTML. The posts are incomplete and out of order, both image and redirection links are broken, and the URLs for each page seem to be completely random.
After sorting by post number, solvers are able to retrieve two sets of information by reading the URLs (INDEX STEP SIZE INTO APPROPRIATE WORDS) and the first letter of each blog post (CAR MAKE PUNS) in order. This suggests that the number of broken image links corresponds to the enumeration of a brand-related car pun. This is further hinted at by the words "driver", "engine" and "dashboard" in the flavor text.
The next step is to index into the car brands by "step size" - this refers to the difference in post numbers between the current and next/previous link. As further confirmation for solvers, posts that have both next and previous links have identical step sizes in both directions. Indexing these numbers into the car make puns gives SOFTWARE BUG, a fitting summary of the blog's issues. However, on submitting this phrase, solvers are instructed to keep going. This suggests that we need to make one final car pun in SOFTWARE BUGATTI, which is the answer to the puzzle.
| Post Number | URL | Blog post | Link to next post (if it exists) | Link to previous post (if it exists) | Car Pun | Step Size | Extracted Letter |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ind | Can you believe it? the biggest puzzle event of the year is coming up soon. last year's puzzles were top-tier, and i hope this year's will be even better. all hyped up for the ... | 9 | - | MITSUBISHI MYSTERY HUNT | 8 | S |
| 2 | exs | Any help here would be appreciated. i've been trying for months to get tickets to this tony-winning musical. a huge fan of the man wrote the music, script and lyrics to the entire show - the one and only ... | 7 | - | LINCOLN-MANUEL MIRANDA | 5 | O |
| 3 | tep | Recently, i've been spending some time working with some friends in the theatre crowd. the character i'm playing is a duke (spoiler: he lives)! some might call this one a comedy, but there isn't a consensus. i hope you'll come watch our play: ... | 4 | 2 | MEASURE FORD MEASURE | 1 | F |
| 4 | siz | Monday was spent clearing out the basement, during which i came across a box of beanie babies which i used to spend hours playing with. unfortunately, i couldn't find garcia, my favorite ... | 5 | 3 | STUFFED TOYOTA | 1 | T |
| 5 | ein | After another long day of work, i spent all of today watching shows on tv. i wanted to tape one of them, but instead of pressing rec, i did something stupid: instead, i hit the ... | 11 | - | VOLKSWAGEN BUTTON | 6 | W |
| 6 | toa | Kind of bummed after rewatching the latest star wars trilogy. my favorite protagonist is still luke skywalker, unlike the morally ambiguous anti-hero of this series, ... | 10 | 2 | KYLO RENAULT | 4 | A |
| 7 | ppr | Earlier today, when i was at a barbecue, my shirt caught on fire! thankfully, i remembered what i learnt all the way back in elementary school that i should ... | - | 1 | STOP, DROP and ROLLS-ROYCE | 6 | R |
| 8 | opr | Planned to spend today reading a book about the cuban revolution. i enjoyed learning about one of the main forces behind it: ... | 11 | 5 | ERNESTO "CHEVROLET" GUEVARA | 3 | E |
| 9 | iat | Uk is where i've been this last week. despite what they say about london, i didn't see a single cloud in the sky. i also visited the giant clock tower affectionately known as ... | 10 | 8 | BIG BENTLEY | 1 | B |
| 10 | ewo | Not gonna lie, it was pretty cold out there today. even though it's only october, i felt like i was freezing the entire night. i wouldn't be surprised if the temperature was ... | - | 4 | SUBARU-ZERO | 6 | U |
| 11 | rds | So one of my coworkers got fired just today. he didn't realise he'd been caught stealing money from the company. i saw him walk into the meeting with hr like a ... | - | 4 | LAMBORGHINI TO THE SLAUGHTER | 7 | G |
This puzzle was inspired partially by constraints from the Three-In-A-Row metapuzzle. While looking through Nutrimatic for possible answer phrases, I found SOFTWARE and subsequently SOFTWARE BUG as possible answers. Given the relatively lax constraints of the metapuzzle, I knew I wanted to write a puzzle that would be practically impossible to backsolve. To justify my choice of SOFTWARE BUGATTI to the editors, I had to come up with a thematic way of combining car brands, programming, and memes - that's how this puzzle was born.
Apologies to everyone (over 99% of teams that solved this puzzle) who submitted SOFTWARE BUG and had their 100% guess rate ruined so early into the hunt.