Dear contestants,
You won't believe how easy this one was. A few months ago, when I created the puzzle, I forgot about it and lost the solution, so I didn't know what to do, but still somehow I managed to decode the puzzle again.

SOLUTION. Let's rewrite the puzzle, noting that M is the 13th letter of the alphabet:

┏━┓
┃1┃
┃3┃ <== M=13
┣━╋━┳━┳━┳━┓
┃0┃0┃0┃1┃1┃
┃3┃8┃1┃5┃9┃
┣━╋━╋━╋━╋━┫
┃1┃1┃1┃1┃0┃
┃3┃9┃8┃6┃3┃
┣━╋━╋━╋━╋━┫
┃ ┃2┃1┃1┃0┃
┃ ┃0┃6┃4┃3┃
┗━┻━┻━┻━┻━┛

So the letter M can be found twice in this diagram.
If a number in each little 2-digit box represents a letter in the alphabet, then the second line (03 | 08 | 01 | 15 | 19) reads: CHAOS. C is the third letter (03), H is the 8th letter (08), A is the first (01), O is the 15th, S is the 19th.

Let's have a look at the description.

Hinting about this puzzle, I wrote: "it will create havoc, almost right from the beginning".
Yes, the first line of the puzzle is the letter M, whereas the second and the third line — they're not at the start (the start is the letter M on the first line), so: 'almost right from the beginning' — create havoc: CHAOS.

It was an error on my side to confuse the G (the 7th letter) and the H (the 8th letter in the alphabet). If you remember ^G and ^H (or ctrl-G and ctrl-H from olden days), you would write \007 for ctrl-G (ring the terminal bell) and \b for ctrl-H (backspace) if you were programming in C, but I digress. I wrote about a 'standing ovation': hinting at a vertical position of the numbers. Also, when I responded "Gee, after that mistake I think you've got a much better Hint than I do", I was hinting at a G ("Gee") and an H ("Hint" with a capital H).

The hint "5 × 3" indicated that there were 5 rows of 3 letters.

We can expand all little 2-digit boxes, they all represent a letter in the alphabet.
So now we have this:

M
C H A O S <==
M S R P C
  T P N C

I wrote: "I have got not any hints left to write."
Not left to right, but from top to bottom, that's the orientation of the numbers (in the small boxes).

Also note that the space in front of the last two lines with the numbers in the puzzle is intentional.

Vertically we can now read: MCM, HST, ARP, OPN, SCC . These are the five sciences that are (still) marked as 'Active' or 'Intermittent' at the time of this writing.

So after all it was not a coincidence that the letter M could be found twice in the first column.

Thank you all very much for participating!

Adri
Edit: ar→at

Welcome to the December quiz! It's gonna be a relatively short lasting one, since WCG seems to close down for approximately one month quite soon.

The quiz looks a bit the same as the former one, as it consists of 7 vertical words, though it is different of course. It's actually quite simple, this quiz, 'cause I'm gonna give you a list of the possible words that have to be put vertically in the diagram. They are all four-letter words (or actually, abbreviations of project names on WCG). For each of the 7 vertical words I'm going to give you one letter. The rest is for you to find out. There are only 7 vertical words (so it is a matter of narrowing down possibilities) and the final solution is a horizontal seven-letter word. (NB: For the fourth 4-letter word there are 2 possibilities.)
You can find a list of the possible words by executing "wcgstats -N" and selecting the first column (underneath the word 'short'), it will give you 31 short project names, like 'hdc' (a three-letter word), meaning Help Defeat Cancer.
You can also find a list of the possible words by going to https://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/api/v3/project and selecting the contents of all elements called "shortName".
The final solution is a mixed vowel broken bad. - A what? - OK, a hint is deserved, the vowel is the E.

┏━━━┓               ┏━━━┳━━━┓
┃   ┃               ┃ g ┃ z ┃
┣━━━╋━━━┓   ┏━━━┓   ┣━━━╋━━━┫
┃   ┃   ┃   ┃   ┃   ┃   ┃   ┃
┣━━━╋━━━┫   ┣━━━╋━━━╋━━━╋━━━┫
┃   ┃   ┃   ┃   ┃   ┃   ┃   ┃
┣━━━╋━━━╋━━━╋━━━╋━━━╋━━━╋━━━┫
┃ s ┃   ┃   ┃   ┃ r ┃   ┃   ┃ <== mixed vowel broken bad
┗━━━╋━━━╋━━━╋━━━╋━━━╋━━━┻━━━┛
    ┃ b ┃   ┃ h ┃   ┃
    ┗━━━╋━━━╋━━━╋━━━┫
        ┃ n ┃   ┃   ┃
        ┣━━━┫   ┗━━━┛
        ┃   ┃
        ┗━━━┛

Good luck!
Adri
PS Solution will be posted soon. Hopefully this week. (In case you missed it: this is not a weekend puzzle. )

Thanks, Al.

Do your resulting seven letters actually form a known word? If so, then you're done.
I will explain later what to do with that "mixed vowel broken bad".

Adri

PS As I understand from savas, saying "we are still waiting to hear back from UHN personnel who manage our DNS records to see when we can switch the website and forums over to the alternate site. If we do hear back, this will take place between now and December 6th, 2024", this could mean that the website in that case would still be alive for some time in December. Or do I misunderstand this?
In combination with this: after posting the puzzle, I was wondering if I should let this December quiz last for the whole month and post the solution in January 2025 ...

All right, a hint.

I am now pointing at the seven-letter word on the left:

┣━━━╋━━━╋━━━╋━━━╋━━━╋━━━╋━━━┫
┃ s ┃   ┃   ┃   ┃ r ┃   ┃   ┃
┗━━━╋━━━╋━━━╋━━━╋━━━╋━━━┻━━━┛

and the text "mixed vowel broken bad" on the right.

This is my hint:
On the left you have to rotate "roast (without tea) & ham" (this will give you the seven-letter word); on the right you also have rotating roast if you mix the vowel E and "broken bad" (this will give you something similar).

The hint may be a puzzle in itself (it is!) and may also guide as a helping hand to find the 'relationship' that lies hidden in there.

Adri

Hi all,
You still owe the solution to the puzzle that I posted earlier, i.e. one month ago.

The word that we were looking for in the diagram consisted of 7 letters; each letter was part of an abbreviated project name and each abbreviation consisted of four letters.
If I were to write them down horizontally it would produce:

sn2s
 fahb
   opn1
 faah
  arp1
gfam
zika

The underlined letters (e.g. 'g' in "gfam") were already given, so you could narrow down the individual abbreviations.

Back to the original puzzle. Here is the solution to the diagram:

┏━━━┓               ┏━━━┳━━━┓
┃ s ┃               ┃ g ┃ z ┃
┣━━━╋━━━┓   ┏━━━┓   ┣━━━╋━━━┫
┃ n ┃ f ┃   ┃ f ┃   ┃ f ┃ i ┃
┣━━━╋━━━┫   ┣━━━╋━━━╋━━━╋━━━┫
┃ 2 ┃ a ┃   ┃ a ┃ a ┃ a ┃ k ┃
┣━━━╋━━━╋━━━╋━━━╋━━━╋━━━╋━━━┫
┃ s ┃ h ┃ o ┃ a ┃ r ┃ m ┃ a ┃
┗━━━╋━━━╋━━━╋━━━╋━━━╋━━━┻━━━┛
    ┃ b ┃ p ┃ h ┃ p ┃
    ┗━━━╋━━━╋━━━╋━━━┫
        ┃ n ┃   ┃ 1 ┃
        ┣━━━┫   ┗━━━┛
        ┃ 1 ┃
        ┗━━━┛

So the main word that we were looking for was "shoarma".
You may also know the spelling "shawarma"; other spellings are showarma, shaurma, …

What did "mixed vowel broken bad" mean?
- The vowel was (hinted) an E; if you mix this with all the letters from "broken bad" you can form a new word: "doner kebab". That (doner kebab) is a similar dish.

Thank you very much for participating!
Adri