Solution: Our Vision

Answer: DISRUPT THE INTERNET

Many modern startups are focused on “decentralizing” something and our founders are no different. In this case, we aren’t talking about the letters at the center of each clue or feeder answer. Instead, each clue has some concept of a center. For example, Alex MACK played center for the 2016-17 Atlanta Falcons, a CHICKEN is found in the center of a turducken, and ALICE is found at the center of the iconic 3x3 grid in the opening credits of the Brady Bunch. Each of the “centers” can be removed from one of the feeder answers and the leftover letters, in order, form another word that can fit in the corresponding blanks. Reading the indicated letters in order reveals that the vision of this startup is to DISRUPT THE INTERNET.

Author’s Notes

We wanted the intro round to stand on its own for both theme and overall hunt structure. Therefore, we wanted the meta to be relatively easy so that teams didn’t get bottlenecked on a single puzzle before opening up the main round. The intro round is themed around our founders’ startup so “decentralization” seemed like a thematic focus for the meta given the recent prevalence of blockchain and crypto startups.

Finding “centers” and feeder answers whose leftover letters produced real words or phrases was difficult. I really wanted to use turducken and some sort of sports clue (basketball and football both have center positions). Sadly, DYNAMIC THICKENING was the best I could come up with for CHICKEN. The most surprising find was KAABA and NICK E TARABAY since KAABA is not the friendliest substring.