Skyloft

[Masahiro Sakurai]

In The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Skyloft is a hub world located in the clouds above Hyrule, later inspiring a stage in Super Smash Bros. for Wii U. The floating islands that comprise Skyloft are home to The Knight Academy, where students learn academics, sword fighting, and flying on large birds called Loftwings. This challenge will require you to emulate all three of these skills, as you fly around Skyloft, negotiating enemies and putting your word skills to the test.

You'll navigate Skyloft via a series of images. Each image will contain embedded links to letter tiles, as well as links to further images to continue your search. However, the images will also contain links to enemies from The Legend of Zelda series, which you will want to avoid. for those unfamiliar with Zelda, rest assured that these enemies will all be clearly visually distinct from the letter tiles.

Once you've found letter tiles, you will use them to build words in your confessional's duel thread. Words will score points based on their length according to the following scheme:

3-4 letters: 1 point
5 letters: 2 points
6 letters: 3 points
7 letters: 5 points
8+ letters: 8 points

However, you will also lose 5 points for each different enemy image you post at any point during the challenge, so make sure you work carefully and don't post any image URLs you haven't checked. As for words, we will accept anything that can be found in the English dictionary here:

blog.collinsdictionary.com/scrabble/scrabble-word-finder

This dictionary follows Scrabble rules, meaning that proper nouns (Australia, London etc) and words containing punctuation like hyphens or apostrophes are invalid. In the case of regional spelling variations like "colour" and "color", many are accepted, but we recommend checking potential words for yourself if unsure.

Tiles that repeat letters will be recoloured so it is clear that they're different tiles to others with the same letter. For the colourblind, each tile of a certain colour will also have a different shape in the lower-right corner. In constructing and submitting words, each word must be posted on its own line, and each unique letter tile may only be used once.

While you may submit words across multiple posts, once a letter tile is used in a valid word (3+ letters, in the dictionary, on its own line), it can't be used in another. The entire challenge will have a time limit of 20 minutes, so time management in searching and building words will be essential. Anything posted after 20 minutes won't be counted towards your score. Beware of the risk this presents, especially if you plan on submitting everything in one post.

The player(s) with the highest score(s) will survive The Ring and, if applicable, select a tribe to return to. The loser will be eliminated from the game. In the event of a tie, the winner will be the player who reached the tied score in the fewest number of words, followed by the shortest time.