When Planetarium was first released, readers were invited to join in the challenge to be the first to solve Planetarium. It's too late to take part in the competition now, of course, because it's over and Planetarium has been solved. We didn't want to use the word "Rules" because it wasn't that kind of competition. For more general information, see the Frequently Asked Questions.

Remember that you are welcome to register for Planetarium even if you can't or won't solve any of the puzzles.

• identify yourself
  To simply enjoy Planetarium, you don't have to provide any personal information. But to be considered for the competition, you must give a valid email address and your real name when you register. If you're a team entry, or a class or club, then nominate a human from amongst your number and use their name. If you qualify as the winner or a near-winner, then we will contact you via the email address you provided. If either name or email is missing, we will ignore your entry. Tough but fair.
• lifespan
  Your reader-name grants you access to the story in weekly instalments. You should try to build up your Table of Solutions as you go along, but remember that there are some puzzles that can't be completed until information in a later instalment is released. Normally, after thirteen weeks your reader-name gets deleted — but for the 9/9/99 competition we'll keep your access open — frozen — for as long as it takes for someone else to get the right solution (or 31st December, whichever comes sooner).
• logging in — expiry and timing
  If you don't log in for over 10 days, your reader-name will expire. Your commitment to Planetarium is that you will visit every week, you see. Also remember that access to new instalments is based on the date you registered, not the date you last logged in. So if you started on a Friday, then Friday (give or take a few hours) will be when new instalments are available to you.
• the twelfth week
  Be careful — this might not be quite what you expect. At the end of the twelfth week your Table of Solutions will be frozen, and we will consider its contents as your solution. That means that thirteen weeks after your initial registration — give or take a few hours — you must have your Table as complete as you can make it. That last week could be quite busy, so protect yourself by not leaving it too late before you visit for the final instalment. We freeze expired accounts roughly once a day which means you cannot and must not work out how many hours you have left (we could be early or late by about 12 hours either way depending on what time [and in what time zone] you originally registered) — get your Table ready in advance. This is part of the challenge — by then, after all, you've had 12 weeks so half a day either way shouldn't make any difference.
• but I've already got the right answer!
  Maybe you have or maybe you haven't. We don't look at your solutions until your Table freezes — that's the end of your twelfth week. You have to hope nobody else with a correct answer finishes before you do.
• only checked when frozen
  The competition ends, of course, as soon as we freeze somebody's Table and find a complete, correct solution inside. We don't check or detect if you have a correct solution at any other time. You might even be unlucky enough to have had a correct solution and then changed it... we will never know because we only look at the Tables when they are frozen. You get one moment when you have to be right, you see.
• complete solution
  What we're looking for is a complete correct solution. This means you'll have the right answer for every one of the Minor puzzles and the correct answer for the Major puzzle. You might need to have the best tiebreaker too.
• nearly-right solutions
  As soon as we detect a correct solution, we'll take a snapshot of everyone's Tables at that moment and credit up to fifty of the nearest answers. Some of these may even be correct solutions too — we use the tiebreaker to sort that out. So make sure your Table is as ready as it can be in case somebody else finishes just before you had your last flash of inspiration.
• no plurals, no negatives, no fractions
  There are some limits to the size and type of the solutions you can enter. Planetarium will warn you if any of your answers are too big, or contain invalid characters — but we strongly recommended you check the glossary definitions for keynumber and especially keyword.
• British spelling
  Planetarium is in British English throughout, but we have been careful not to penalize readers who speak American English. If in doubt, you should use British spelling when entering answers to the word puzzles, although we suggest you don't worry about this too much.
• ways to cheat
  Please don't even try. We can probably think of more ways to cheat than you can. The fact is it's almost certainly easier just to work out the correct answers than it is to work out a way to avoid working out the correct answers. So don't be silly — enjoy the puzzle or leave it alone.
• technical ways to cheat
  We concede that internet nerds may have a tiny advantage over less specialized humans because of the use of client-side image maps and one or two other features. But we're nerds ourselves here, so if you're not, please be assured that it's our opinion that the anyone who scrutinizes the underlying workings of Planetarium is not getting any significant advantage. There are no hints or clues hidden anywhere on the Beholder site outside of the story. Planetarium is a puzzle, not a trick.
• sorry, no arguments
  No correspondence can be entered into regarding the puzzles and their solutions. The model answer, together with explanations of the solutions, will be published on the Planetarium website when we find a winner, or at the end of 1999, whichever comes sooner.
• announcements
  Planetarium will not alter from week to week — the story doesn't change so you don't need to keep looking back to make sure nothing sneaky is happening in those previous instalments. We may, however, make use of the login page to notify you of any current news or announcements. You'll be shown this automatically whenever you log in.
• only one registration per well-behaved reader
  Please only register once for the competition. We will check to make sure that names and email addresses are unique. We may also be suspicious about any Tables that are filled-in in an unbelievable time or order. Our policy of disqualification is not to inform miscreants until their twelve weeks are up anyway — the least we can do is let them waste their time for three months if that's what they want to do. Naturally, we'll discount any entries we consider obscene or distasteful.
• tiebreaker
  There is a tiebreaker within Planetarium — you'll know it when you find it. This will be used in the (we think quite likely) event of more than one reader finishing with the complete, correct solution.
• good faith
  Planetarium is being run in good faith, and although alternative solutions may be arguable, the model answer is definitive for the purposes of the competition. Please respect the spirit of this project, and enjoy without obligation.