FAQ

1. Is this legit?

Yes, this contest is 100% real.

We started Cicada Detroit because we love puzzles and wanted to bring the joy of decoding ciphers, cryptography and hidden messages to Metro Detroit.

It’s been awesome interacting with this community and we can’t wait to award our winners for 2025.

We get this a lot and 99.9% of the time, you made an error decoding the puzzle or are inputting the URL incorrectly.

If you are extremely confident that something is broken, please send a detailed description of what is going on and a screenshot to [email protected]

If the decoded message isn’t already a URL, chances are likely it’s supposed to go after www.cicadadetroit.com/ 

For example, if the puzzle was “What is a baby cicada called?” the next puzzle would be found at https://www.cicadadetroit.com/nymph

We will notify all participants on the front page of our site once a winner has been determined and verified.

However, even if someone wins the 1st place prize, you can still compete for the secondary prize of $11,239, which will be divided among the players who complete all 42 puzzles by 12/31/25 at  11:59PM.

We introduced hints to help users who are stumped on a specific puzzle.

Early hints are free but the cost of hints increase as you get further into the game since you are competing for a cash prize and glory. Not all puzzles will have hints for sale.

No. It’s ok to need a little help now and then and those that choose to use the provided hints are still eligible to win.

The game is designed as a single-player experience. Sharing answers with others for the first 35 puzzles is against the contest rules and will result in disqualification. For the last 5 puzzles, please see FAQ sectionss “When do puzzles start taking place offline?” and “Can I play if I am not from the Detroit area?”.

More info is available in our Terms of Service to see all contest rules.

Offline or “in person” clues are reserved for the last 5 puzzles of the game. This allows players that need to participate locally to play up until the near end game and also allows the maintenance of offline clues to be kept up for the players that make it far enough.

As mentioned, the last 5 puzzles include offline puzzles. For the last 5 puzzles, we allow NON-PUBLIC collaboration. Meaning, if you need to collaborate with someone local to Metro Detroit, it is not a disqualifying offense. We ask that this collaboration happens in private and not in a publicly accessible way online as to not ruin the puzzles for other members.

We can’t promise to fix clues within a certain timeframe due to damage or vandalism but please report any issues (with pictures please, if possible) to us at [email protected] and we’ll work to get the puzzles fixed ASAP.

Please e-mail us with any issues, questions, comments, concerns, love letters, etc at [email protected]