Welcome to Dr. Bob's 5th annual Online Holiday Puzzle Hunt (OHPH 2016). Holiday related puzzles are provided for your enjoyment. While some puzzles have Christmas references - most focus on the entire holiday season. Solving one puzzle leads you to the next puzzle. This continues until all four puzzles have been solved.

This year, I am hosting the hunt through the ClueKeeper website. With this, you will experience smoother scoring, a better hint distribution system, and an improved answer submission process. What you will need:
When:
The hunt will go (went) live at noon on December 24th and can be played anytime thereafter. Those interested in scoring can rest assured that there is no penalty for waiting.

Cost:
The cheapest option on ClueKeeper (and the price point I selected) is $7.99. So, to play in the hunt this year, it will cost you $7.99. For those that really don’t like the idea of paying for this hunt, I am truly sorry. It has always been my intention to keep this free and have tips to me and donations to Elevate Tutoring to be completely optional. But, my time has become very thin the past few years and, among other reasons, this is an effort to save me some time. This also supports ClueKeeper - and, for those in the puzzling community, I hope you can respect this as well - ClueKeeper is awesome! I also made the hunt a bit longer than usual to hopefully help further justify the cost. Of the $7.99, I receive $2.46. If this is about what you would have tipped anyway – thank you. If you want this back, let me know. If you’d like to tip more, you will have an opportunity to do so - more on this below. I primarily do this as a gift to the community – so, if you really want the puzzles for free and you have no interest in receiving any hints or being scored in any way possible (or supporting ClueKeeper) – send me an email and I will send you the PDFs in February after all of the paying competitors have had a chance to participate. Finally, a secondary reason for doing this each year is to raise awareness for my non-profit: Elevate Tutoring. Thus, as always, you will also have the opportunity to make a donation.

So, if you are in a giving mood, you have the opportunity to show your appreciation by leaving a tip for Dr. Bob and/or making a donation to Elevate Tutoring, a non-profit company that Dr. Bob started to help underprivileged high school and college students in our community. You will be reminded of these when you complete the hunt.

Access:
Access is handled through ClueKeeper. To purchase the hunt, click here to go to the ClueKeeper website. If you are already there, click on "FIND HUNTS" and then on "Hosted Hunts." HH2016 should show up as one of the options. By purchasing the hunt, you will be given a hunt code that will allow you to download the hunt onto your app. When you are ready to start - you must provide a start code that will be listed here at noon PT on 12/24/2016. It will remain here thereafter. If you have only the ClueKeeper hunt code, you will not be able to play. If you have only the start code below, you will not be able to play. You need both.

If you have friends or family that would like to play as a separate team, please invite them to register separately. Thank you!

More ClueKeeper details:
1) If other players on your team have a ClueKeeper account, be sure to add them before entering the start code.
2) If you want to hear when hints arrive, turn notifications on.

Startcode:
The start code is: FAMILYFUN.

Note: This hunt had server issues at godaddy.com at the end of 2016. Due to that, event files were copied over to: http://elevatetutoring.org/drbobspuzzles/events/ohph2016/ - some of the elegant links between pages aren't updated and images outside of this directory aren't available - but all of the files needed to play the hunt are there. So, if you have issues, you can start here and then and append just the PDF file names as you receive them, you should be able to play in the hunt as desired.


Errors:
If you find any errors in the system or otherwise, please do not hesitate to let me know!

Contact:
Unlike previous years when I would ask for your email address upon registration, there is no way for me to collect contact information from the participants. So, if you are interested in hearing from me after the event or if you want to hear of any errata, etc. - please fill out this quick form. Thanks!

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