SOLUTION: SUGAR RUSHANSWER: SLAP DASH
Solvers are given eight rows of seemingly random words. Upon further examination, each row alternates between words such that two crossword-style clues can be formed; one clue has four words, while the other has five:
| 4-Word Clue | 4-Word Answer | 5-Word Clue | 5-Word Answer |
| ITALIAN RESTAURANT BLANK GARDEN | OLIVE | TYPE OF MILITARY SNEAK ATTACK | AMBUSH |
| CIRCULAR DESSERT AT THANKSGIVING | PUMPKIN PIE | JACKET TYPE THAT SOUNDS EXPLOSIVE | BOMBER |
| PUBLISHER OF LA NOIRE | ROCKSTAR | ADD ENERGY TO YOUR PHONE | CHARGE |
| CANDY BAR OR GALAXY | MILKY WAY | ATTORNEY WHO ISN'T A PROSECUTOR | DEFENSE |
| BASKIN ROBBINS RAINBOW BLANK | SHERBET | WOLVERINE SUPER POWER BLANK FACTOR | HEALING |
| MAIN COMPONENT OF GUACAMOLE | AVOCADO | CARD GAME SUBTITLED THE GATHERING | MAGIC |
| THE OPPOSITE OF HEADS | TAILS | ADJECTIVE FOR ATTACKS WITH ARROWS | RANGED |
| ANIME FULL METAL BLANK | ALCHEMIST | WORD AFTER TECH OR EMOTIONAL | SUPPORT |
Searching for the answer words reveals that the answers to the four-word clues are the names of cookies from the mobile game Cookie Run: Kingdom, while the answers to the five-word clues are the eight cookie types in that game. The cookie in each line does not match the cookie type in the same line, however; the next step is to identify the correct cookie types for each of the eight cookies. Following the cookie type matchups creates a cycle through all eight cookies and types, which can be written into the table at the bottom of the puzzle. The answers to the clues in the highlighted row go into the highlighted cells; named cookies go into the four-star column, and cookie types go into the five-star column, corresponding to the number of words in their clues. Each cookie type can then be entered to the right of the cookie of that type, with the cookie that was originally paired with that type name going into the next row. (For example, TAILS Cookie in the top-left cell is an Ambush-type cookie, so AMBUSH is entered to its right; then, since OLIVE's clue was intertwined with AMBUSH's, OLIVE is entered into the left cell of the second row, and so on. The full cycle is as follows:
| Cookie | Type |
| TAILS Cookie | AMBUSH |
| OLIVE Cookie | SUPPORT |
| ALCHEMIST Cookie | BOMBER |
| PUMPKIN PIE Cookie | MAGIC |
| AVOCADO Cookie | DEFENSE |
| MILKY WAY Cookie | CHARGE |
| ROCKSTAR Cookie | HEALING |
| SHERBET Cookie | RANGED |
Using the numbers in the bottom table to index into the cookie names produces this puzzle's answer, SLAP DASH.
This puzzle is the only thing keeping this hunt from having gone perfectly; it's the only one that had errata reported during the hunt. The second erratum was the kind I expected to run into (I had erroneously referred to Rockstar as the developer of L.A. Noire rather than the publisher, as the developer was Team Bondi), but the first was as the result of a hint request. A team was having trouble on extraction in a version where the second cell of the extraction table's right column was highlighted instead of the bottom cell. This was a result of a reckless carryover from the original iteration of this puzzle: originally, I had "pre-solved" the highlighted row and entered TAILS/RANGED into the first row of the table as given information, using highlighting to indicate where the intertwined clues would go. This is what that looked like:
I decided it was fair game to not provide a pre-solved line in the final version of this puzzle, forgetting that I would need to change the shading accordingly, and as a result the shaded cells implied the opposite cycle order. Having realized the error in addressing that hint request, I had to make the quick fix of shading the cell that solvers would need to actually put RANGED into, which was not ideal. This was unfortunately the only way during the hunt to fix it; the more "proper" way would be to keep the shading direction and change the intertwined clue arrangements, but this would completely give away all of the clues to any solvers who had seen the puzzle before and after the clue changes. Apologies for how awkward this quick fix ended up making the cycle mechanic; hopefully this puzzle was still fun aside from that oversight.