Ryan and Sarah invite you to a puzzle hunt inspired by The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
Our objective has been to "adapt" or "convert" a beloved Nintendo game into a puzzle hunt, in what you might call a "top-down" manner. The story and structure of this hunt have been lifted from the story and structure of Ocarina of Time.
This means that if you're a Legend of Zelda expert, you'll have a significant advantage—although it's not like you'll sail through based on that expertise alone! On the other hand, if you are a Legend of Zelda dilettante, you will have to look some stuff up.
We can't do a better job of explaining the concept than has been done here or here. Some puzzles Ryan made recently can be found here.
We started putting this hunt together A WHILE AGO, and we took our sweet time about it at first. When we found out they were remaking Ocarina of Time, we realized we had to finish our version as soon as possible, to avoid any confusion that might arise when the remake changes Ganondorf's name to "Gandondon" or something. Which brings us to our next point:
We don't have time to set up gph-site or anything like that. There is no progress tracking or automatic leaderboard or timed unlock system. You will have to keep track of a bunch of stuff on your end. You'll feel like it's 1998 again!
Ocarina of Time Fanfic but with Puzzles is divided into two main phases, each with its own leaderboard. The first phase (consisting of roughly 20 puzzles) is about the difficulty you'd expect from Puzzled Pint. The second phase (consisting of roughly 80 puzzles) is somewhat harder, comparable to Ryan's EnigMarch puzzles (we think). One tester said the whole thing is comparable in size and difficulty to a Puzzle Boat.
We recommend working in teams of two to five people, at least one of whom has some idea of what a Zelda is.
The hunt will begin at 8:00 PM Eastern time, 5:00 PM Pacific Time, on Friday, November 6th, 2026, at which point a link to the puzzles will appear RIGHT HERE.
You don't need to sign up ahead of time and in fact there technically is no way to sign up ahead of time. If you email fanficbutwithpuzzles@gmail.com to let us know you're interested, we'll send you a reminder a few days before the hunt starts and also let you know when the puzzles are live.
We'll be able to run the hunt actively and respond to hint requests ~24 hours a day until, um, say the 11th. The hunt will be officially over and solutions will become available at some point after that. Not sure.
Yeah but guess how many other weekends worked for us?
NONE