Larry Hosken: New: Thinking about Puzzle Hunt Answer Systems,
Unlock Codes  The goal of the Universal Longshots Scoring System
is: A team's score should consider hints and time spent on
puzzles; it should not consider the time between puzzles. You
can agree or diagree that this is a worthy goal. But for now,
suppose it's your goal.  In practice, this means that you need
to know how long the team took to finish. If you've got a fancy-
pants online answering system, you know when the team entered
the answer. But you might not know when the team started.  You
could have teams use the fancy-pants answering system to note
when they started on the puzzle. That's what Shinteki does.
Teams enter a "start code". Shinteki doesn't use the Universal
Longshots Scoring System, but if they did, there would be a
problem. Suppose a team messes up while entering their start
code but, in puzzling frenzy, didn't notice. They solve the
puzzle, go to enter the answer, and only then notice that they
never officially started the puzz