Each station's accepted answer unlocks the next one. Text answers ignore case, extra spaces, punctuation, accents and hyphens — “It’s well-known!” and “its well known” are the same answer — and can optionally accept a numeric answer within a tolerance. They still have to be the answer, though: if you’ll take a full sentence, add it to the comma-separated list. Leave "Next station" on Auto for a straight linear chain, or point it anywhere for a branching path. Pick a puzzle type per station — plain text, a digit lock, or a Caesar cipher — charge points for revealing a hint, cap the number of guesses before a short lockout, and optionally award a letter toward a final combine-the-letters station.

Prints as its own full-page cover sheet — read it aloud or hand it out to set the scene before teams start scanning station codes.

This is the same link/QR code for every station — what changes is each student's own saved progress. Project it, or print a station-specific code below.

Live view of which station each team has reached — pair each device once over the same Wi-Fi (no server), then watch progress from your own screen instead of walking the room.

For physical rotations where several teams start at different stations at once: turns each station's own code into its own entry point, so a team that starts by scanning Station 4 begins the chain right there instead of being told to go find Station 1 first. Leave off if everyone starts together at Station 1.

Baked into the player link/QR code. Since there's no shared server clock, each device's countdown starts the moment that student first opens their own link, not a synced room-wide start — it counts down live, then shows “Time’s up!” without blocking their progress.

Test run walks the chain the way a student meets it — the same clues, the same answer matching, the same branching — without printing a page or opening the player link. It ends by naming any station the chain can never reach.

Each printed code is stamped for its own station, so scanning Station 3's code before solving Station 1 or 2 tells the player to go find those first. The answer key prints separately — keep it with you, not with the students.

The same puzzle chain as cut-apart station cards — no QR codes, no Chromebooks, no scanning. Print it, cut the cards apart, and hand out Station 1. When a team gets it right, check their answer against the teacher key at the end of the packet and hand them the card the key says comes next.

A hint prints upside-down under a dashed line on its card — readable, but reading it takes a deliberate flip, the paper stand-in for the on-screen "spend N points" click. A station that awards a letter prints a blank box on the card instead of the letter itself; the letter is only in the teacher key, so the card doesn't spoil the final meta-puzzle. Every station prints, reachable or not — run a test run first if you want to catch an orphaned station before you cut anything apart.