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I was wondering if it would be possible to make an internet-wide puzzle. What i mean by this is, for example, you would have clues in your puzzle and those clues would lead you to a website that contains even more clues. Eventually, those clues would lead you to finding the answer.

Any help would be appreciated.

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  • $\begingroup$ Here's a related question with an explanation on why externally-hosted puzzles are discouraged. Long story short, the puzzling SE mods have no control over the quality, stability, or security of any content that is hosted outside of SE. $\endgroup$
    – MikeQ
    Apr 13, 2018 at 20:46

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See a very related question, Is using a personal website to host content for a puzzle frowned upon? (spoilers: yes, it's frowned on) — puzzles really need to be self-contained, with very limited exceptions for adding content that cannot be expressed as text. This is because we want to build a repository of excellent puzzles and solutions here, not just the starting points of puzzles that live Out There Somewhere. If any part of the puzzle chain you propose were to go dead — a site goes offline, or a post goes stale and gets deleted by the content host, or a site reorganizes and the URL changes, or whatever — the puzzle is no longer complete. By insisting on keeping puzzles self-contained, this kind of problem is avoided.

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    $\begingroup$ imgur is an exception (and is used frequently in puzzles) $\endgroup$
    – user
    Apr 14, 2018 at 21:51
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    $\begingroup$ Specifically, the SE-specific imgur site, which is integrated and is thus treated as "on site". See also Where should binary files be stored? for more information on adding non-textual content to a puzzle. $\endgroup$
    – Rubio Mod
    Apr 14, 2018 at 21:56
  • $\begingroup$ what about extensions onto other SE sites? $\endgroup$
    – tox123
    Apr 16, 2018 at 0:21
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    $\begingroup$ @tox123 If you can arrange for content for a puzzle to be posted on other SE sites without being off-topic or otherwise inappropriate for those sites, so that it will actually remain there safe from deletion, then it's probably okay (but I still wouldn't particularly recommend it). Avoid sites that are early in Beta or otherwise far from graduating—such sites could conceivably go away, losing the content hosted there. And, of course, make sure mentions of post or user ids are very clearly and unambiguously references to the other site(s), or solvers will assume they are local references. $\endgroup$
    – Rubio Mod
    Apr 16, 2018 at 2:35

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