By Evan Broder and James Douberley
Answer: BACKUP PLAN

After solving the Deploy puzzles, solvers are presented with a 6×6 grid, along with 6 answers that are 6 letters long. The answers (in alphabetical), along with their puzzles’ titles, are as follows:

  • BOTNET (“Studies in Two-Factor Authentication”)
  • HIKE UP (“Zelma & Frank”)
  • NEBULA (“Ode to the Greeks”)
  • OCELOT (“L is for Library”)
  • PENPAL (“Executive Relationship Commandments”)
  • SOLERA (“A Pub Crawl”)

The word “elite” in the flavor text suggests leetspeak. This is confirmed by the first letters of each of the puzzles in the round—each of the first letters is typically replaced by a number in leetspeak. This provides both confirmation of order and a key for translating between letters and numbers:

LetterNumber
O0
L1
Z2
E3
A4
S5

This information suggests that the answers should be entered into the grid, sorted by the numeric equivalent of the first letter of the puzzle’s title:

NEBULA
OCELOT
HIKEUP
PENPAL
SOLERA
BOTNET

As suggested by the flavor text (“seeing their flashlights everywhere”), this is in fact an Akari puzzle with numbers translated back from leetspeak. Replacing the underlined letters with their leetspeak numbers and solving the Akari yields the following grid:

*1*
*3
**
**1
*3*
0*

Overlaying the lights on the grid and reading the lit cells in order yields the answer: BACKUP PLAN:

NEBULA
OCELOT
HIKEUP
PENPAL
SOLERA
BOTNET