The daily hunt

How it works

1. A new code every morning

   Tuesday through Friday at 8:00 AM Central, a new code goes up. It's only there for that day. Miss a day and that piece is gone.

2. Find the spot

   Each day the code hides behind one small spot somewhere on our home page. It isn't a button, it doesn't look like a link, and it moves to a new place every day. Go slowly. Look closely at the parts you'd normally scroll right past, and click or tap anything that seems a little out of place.

3. Crack the code

   Each code is locked with a classic cipher that uses a key word. Tuesday's code comes with its key: the name of Saturday's place, which stays hidden everywhere else until the puzzle opens. After that, each day's key is the answer from the day before, so every day unlocks the next. Crack it and you'll have one plain word.

4. Put it together

   Three of the four words are a clue to one of Saturday's seed words. The fourth tells you which clue number it fills. Which day brings which piece changes every week, so you'll want all four.

Good to know

• Everyone gets the same codes at the same time.
• The hint words describe a seed word. They're never the seed word itself.
• On Saturday, that clue on the puzzle will be the four codes themselves, still locked. Everyone gets them when the puzzle opens, but if you hunted all week, you'll already have them cracked.
• Saturday's puzzle opens at 9:00 AM Central on the Puzzles page.
• Compare notes with other players on r/proofofsolve.