Godiva's Quest

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The Quest for Knowledge

Godiva's Quest is a traditional quest of wits, skill and determination. Questers have to solve a gauntlet of puzzles and challenges, both on line and around campus. It has been around for quite some time, and after dying off for short period of time it was revived by Drago, who pushed for better prizes. The common first place prize since then has been the third and final Chariot Race Judge position. The Quest

Rules[edit | edit source]

  • F!rosh cannot win. They are encouraged to participate.
  • There is only one winner. You can work as a team, but only one person can win.
  • No one already judging the Chariot Race can win.
  • No fisticuffs.
  • Hacking and cheating is not permitted.
  • Hints may be provided at the discretion of the QuestMaster.
  • Have fun!


History of the Quest[edit | edit source]

0T0[edit | edit source]

Scandal rocked the Quest this year when Tim Christie and Paul Graham snatched the last clue off some people and ran to Einstein's for the win, even though they hadn't done the work. Paul ended up with the win, but pissed off a bunch people in the process.

0T3[edit | edit source]

The puzzles in this Quest were all cryptographic in nature. In order to claim the prize however, the winner had to sing Bust a Move at Eglinton Station.

0T4[edit | edit source]

This Quest incorporated music trivia and word searches into puzzles. The winner had to perform The Tale of Mr. Morton by Schoolhouse Rock near the Union subway station. They brought some instruments down and played during the evening rush.

0T5[edit | edit source]

The Quest this year was styled after the 'Keeper of the Bridge of Death', from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It was 5 puzzles, including a euchre-based puzzle and a question about the air-speed velocity of a swallow. This was the last purely text-based quest.

0T6[edit | edit source]

Up to this point, the Quest was just a bunch of puzzles thrown together. This year the puzzles were all linked together with an overall story, taking participants to various buildings around campus in the story. The order the buildings were visited was the solution key to the final puzzle. This was the last year where participants would bribe the QuestMaster for hints to the puzzles. Some of the puzzles required participants to piece together further instructions from the text on landmarks, such as the 0T5 wall in the SF atrium which had the verses of Godiva's Hymn.

0T7[edit | edit source]

This year's Quest followed suit from the previous year's, using an overall story to link the puzzles together. However, with the graphics help of Henry Cheung (B&G co-chair with John McLeod that year, and the designer of the still-used godivaweek.skule.ca layout), each puzzle was stored as an image, and additional visual clues were embedded in the image. This Quest led participants around campus, and each puzzle solution was a piece of the final puzzle, which required participants to find a specific book in the SF library to win. 0T7 Quest

0T8[edit | edit source]

This Quest was unique in that no one knew who the QuestMasters were until the final puzzle. The Quest was run as an ARG, where participants got instructions from an unknown person, identified as 'Godgifu of Mercia'(Lady Godiva) a couple puzzles in. No one actually knew who was running the quest, which allowed the QuestMasters to intermingle with participants until the end reveal. This was the first Quest to use instant-feedback for correct answers, as well as IP logging to detect cheating, and puzzles built in Flash. It featured 14 online puzzles (more than double the amount of most years), and a run-around portion where participants got information on where and when the final puzzle was. Puzzles ranged from simple decryption to piecing together images on the plasma screen. At one point participants had to answer a public phone at a certain time, and were given instructions from a pre-recorded computer message. 0T8 Quest

0T9[edit | edit source]

Without a doubt, this was one of the nicest looking Quests ever made. It also made huge improvements to the back-end. Up until this point registration was dealt with by the QuestMaster. This Quest had automated user registration, generating aliases for each participant to be used when submitting answers. On top of that, you could see which users had solved what puzzles on their automatically updated scoreboard. There were 16 puzzles to be solved, using a wide variety of puzzle types. The first 9 puzzles could be solved in any order, however the 9th puzzle was easier after solving the first 8. Clues to help solve the 9th were emailed to the participants once they solved each of the puzzles leading up to the 9th. Upon solving each puzzle in the last batch of puzzles, participants were emailed a section of a lock combination. The final puzzle gave the location of the locker, and inside were instructions to phone the QuestMaster to claim victory. 0T9 Quest

1T0[edit | edit source]

This Quest returned to a linear model, and was similar to online challenges like the Tim Tang Test and notpr0n. Registration returned to the traditional method of filling out a form, and user progress was not tracked. Puzzles included hidden text in images, clever riddles, and a clue inside the Beast. 1T0 Quest

1T1[edit | edit source]

This Quest was run by Evangelos Staikos, who had already previously co-run the 0T8 Quest. The back-end reused 0T9 code allowing for automatic registration. The puzzles were built in Flash. There were 26 puzzles in total this year, the most of any quest to date by far. The puzzles were organized into 3 stages and included a clicking escape puzzle. There was no meta-puzzle and the winner had to solve all 26 puzzles to win. 1T1 Quest

1T2[edit | edit source]

The back-end reuses 1T1 code and much of the styling is reused. There are 23 puzzles in total arranged in 3 stages. Automatic emailing has been disabled (I couldn't get it to work), so batch emails will be sent to notify new stages being unlocked. Meta-puzzles are reintroduced in this quest. 1T2 Quest

1T3[edit | edit source]

The back-end reuses 1T1 code again. The Quest started on December 21, 2012, the alleged end of the world. Therefore, the theme this year is to find the Godiva's Ark, which has a similar function as the Noah's Ark (to prevent the world from ending, basically). The Godiva's Ark is hidden in one of the Engineering buildings and the first person that finds the Ark will be the winner. There are 3 stages, 21 puzzles in total. Will you find the Ark to save us all? 1T3 Quest

1T4[edit | edit source]

Once again using the lovely 1T1 backend and style, this year's Quest contains 21 puzzles arranged into three phases. Designed for the first time by a Chem, the puzzles are meant to move away from a computer and cryptology basis, and are based on problem-solving, logic, and maybe a little dumb luck. 1T4 Quest

1T5[edit | edit source]

This year's Quest contains three phases, each with six puzzles and one meta puzzle, followed by a final puzzle that questers will need to solve to win the Quest. The shadowy Godiva Industries appears to have taken over the Quest, and, unlike in past years, questers are encouraged to find hidden parts of the site in order to unravel the mystery behind the group. Though this year's Quest shares the styling of the past few years, sweeping changes have been made to the backend.

Upon solving each meta puzzle, questers obtained the credentials to the email account of a different Godiva Industries employee. They uncovered more and more of the Godiva Industries conspiracy by finding the company login page hidden within the site and using those credentials to infiltrate the employees' email inboxes. This culminated in the shocking revelation that Godiva Industries' president was none other than our beloved Rhonda Meek! The first person to confront Rhonda in her office with irrefutable proof of her involvement in Godiva Industries was rewarded with the title of Godiva's Quest 1T5 champion. 1T5 Quest

Past Winners and Masters[edit | edit source]

Year Winner(s) Quest Master(s)
1T5 1st) Colin Parker ECE 1T6 Andrew Nestico NΨ 1T5 + PEY
2nd) Olga Bondarev, Nicholas Chin,
Milan Maljkovic, and Kevin Rupasinghe
3rd) Tania Albarghouthi, Ozan Coşkun,
Fan Guo, Nikita Kachournikov, Eugene
Sha, Connor Smith, Ahmed Yusuf,
and Paul Zhou
#TeamF!rosh++
(1T7s)
1T4 1st) Andrew Nestico NΨ 1T5 Ryan Wills Chem 1T2 + PEY
2nd) Steven Berios, Emil Kerimov,
and Abhinav Ramakrishnan
3rd) Olga Bondarev and Colin Parker ECE 1T6
4th) Ozan Coşkun, Fan Guo, Jessica
Leung, Eugene Sha, Connor Smith,
Ahmed Yusuf, and Paul Zhou
#TeamF!rosh
(TrackOne 1T7)
1T3 0st) Evangelos Staikos* CS 0T7+5 Ang Cui NΨ 1T2+PEY
1st) Ryan Wills Chem 1T2 + PEY
2nd) Julian Romagnino ECE 1T5
3rd) Yaroslav Babich NΨ 1T5
1T2 1st) Alvin Ho* Elec 0T9+PEY Victor Zhang Comp 1T2+PEY
1st) Evangelos Staikos* CS 0T7+?
1st) Ian Swartz* Comp 0T8
2nd) Ang Cui NΨ 1T2+PEY
3rd) Vanessa DiBattista [Judge] Civ 1T1+1
1T1 1st) Ian Swartz* Comp 0T8 Evangelos Staikos CS 0T7+?
2nd) Alvin Ho* Elec 0T9+PEY
3rd) Victor Zhang Comp 1T2+PEY
1T0 1st) Evangelos Staikos* CS 0T7+? Kathy Grycko & Kevin P. Siu Civ 1T0 & NΨ 1T0+PEY
2nd) Alvin Ho Elec 0T9+PEY
0T9 1st) Evangelos Staikos* CS 0T7+? Tommy Liu NΨ 0T9
1st) Ian Swartz* Comp 0T8
2nd) Benjamin Schmidt ?
3rd) Alvin Ho [Judge] Elec 0T9+PEY
0T8 1st) Sanae Rosen* ? Evangelos Staikos & Ian Swartz CS 0T7+? & Comp 0T8
2nd) Tommy Liu NΨ 0T9
0T7 1st) Robert Nesci ? Igor Denisov NΨ 0T9
0T6 1st) Luke Wesley Mech 0T5+PEY Cameron Fraser & Evangelos Staikos NΨ 0T7 & CS 0T7+PEY
0T5 1st) Cameron Fraser NΨ 0T7 John McLeod NΨ 0T6+PEY
1st) Evangelos Staikos CS 0T7+?
0T4 1st) Andrew Overholt ? Don McAuslan ?
0T3 1st) Don McAuslan ? Andrew Overholt ?
0T2 ? ? ? ?
0T1 ? ? Christiaan Vandergrift(?) ?
0T0 1st) Paul Graham ? Rahim Addetia(?) ?
9T9 ? ? ? ?
9T8 ? ? ? ?
9T7 ? ? ? ?
9T6 1st) Edward Vunjovic ? ? ?

*Ineligible (?)Unconfirmed

Reference[edit | edit source]

quest.skule.ca