Our goal this year was to make the most difficult Flare-On challenge we’ve ever produced to celebrate a full decade of contests. At the time of this writing, there were 219 Flare-On finishers out of 4,767 registered users, which makes it the lowest finishing rate we’ve ever had. Truly, only the elite of the elite can claim to be a Flare-On 10 finisher. These lucky few will receive this pennant (design not final).

We would like to thank the challenge authors individually for their great puzzles and solutions.

1. X - Nick Harbour (@nickharbour)
2. ItsOnFire - Raymond Leong
3. Mypassion - Moritz Raabe (@m_r_tz)
4. Aimbot - Christopher Gardner (@t00manybananas)
5. Where_am_i - Genwei Jiang (@binjo)
6. FlareSays - Paul Tarter (@Hefrpidge)
7. Flake - Mike Hunhoff (@mehunhoff)
8. AmongRust - Chuong Dong (@cPeterr)
9. Mbransom - Jacob Thompson
10. Kupo - Dave Riley
11. Over_the_rainbow - Sam Kim
12. HVM - Dhanesh Kizhakkinan (@dhanesh_k)
13. Y0da - Mark Lechtik (@_marklech_)

This year’s Flare-On challenge welcomed 4,767 registered users, with 2,718 of them solving at least one challenge. The first challenge this year was a combination lock with only two digits, so it is curious that over 2,000 people were stumped by it. The difficulty curve was markedly different this year compared to previous years. Challenge #3 presented a noticeable spike in difficulty, and quickly culled the herd of participants. Surprisingly, few gave up during the middle series of challenges.

Last year the United States, Vietnam, and Singapore — respectively — were the top three countries with the most people who finished. This year Germany jumped to the top of the list, with Singapore and the United States coming next, respectively, and Vietnam finishing at number five behind Russia.

All the binaries from this year’s challenge are now posted on the Flare-On website. Here are the solutions written by each challenge author:

1. SOLUTION #1
2. SOLUTION #2
3. SOLUTION #3
4. SOLUTION #4
5. SOLUTION #5
6. SOLUTION #6
7. SOLUTION #7
8. SOLUTION #8
9. SOLUTION #9
10. SOLUTION #10
11. SOLUTION #11
12. SOLUTION #12
13. SOLUTION #13