The solution to the puzzle is a sequence of five letters.
Let's say you're submitting an answer on November 5th, and you wanted to submit "XABDU" as your solution, you would write a comment: "11/5/25: XABDU".
Please do not try to brute-force this. Each user gets one guess per calendar day, I'm not going to check every single time stamp diligently so don't abuse this rule or I will block you from the market and be sad.
I will check the market once per day (don't worry if I forget or skip a day, I'm human) at a random-ish time. If the value of the market is below 50%, I will give a single hint, which I will compile in the description over time. If the value of the market is above 50% (inclusive), I will not give a hint.
I think this puzzle will be hard. The more time that passes without hints, the less likely you will be to solve it. I anticipate that you will need at least ten hints to solve it, possibly far more. You might need to collaborate. You have until the end of the year!
11/3 Hint 1: Portugal
11/4 Hint 2: harbor
11/5 no hint today
11/6 no hint today
11/7 no hint today
11/8 no hint today
11/9 no hint today
11/10 no hint today
11/11 no hint today
11/12 Hint 3: Nazareth
11/13 no hint today
11/14 no hint today
11/15 Hint 4: [VPP]
11/16 Hint 5: 9gag
11/17 no hint today
11/18 Hint 6: [O-MBRV]
11/19 no hint today
11/20 no hint today
11/21 Hint 7: herring
11/22 Hint 8: [L-MBRV]
11/23 Hint 9: Setúbal
11/24 no hint today
EVERYTHING BELOW THIS LINE IS AI SUMMARY GIBBERISH
Update 2025-11-03 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): The creator will not reply to every guess. If there is no reply to a guess, assume it is not correct.
Update 2025-11-03 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): Incorrect guesses will be acknowledged with a like from the creator (rather than a written reply). If there is no response to a guess, assume it is incorrect.
Update 2025-11-04 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): If no one guesses the correct solution by the market close date (midnight on 2025-12-31), the market will resolve NO.
Update 2025-11-04 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): If someone DDOS's the chat, the creator will block them from commenting (rather than resolving the market N/A or taking other action).
Update 2025-11-13 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): The market can resolve YES immediately upon a correct guess being seen by the creator, prior to the market close date.
Update 2025-11-13 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): The solution is NOT necessarily a word (it is a sequence of five letters that may not form a recognizable word).
Update 2025-11-16 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): The solution must consist of five letters from the English alphabet (the 26 standard letters A-Z). Non-English characters are not valid.
Update 2025-11-17 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): Guesses containing non-English alphabet characters (such as accented letters like Í, Ó, etc.) will be treated as their unaccented English equivalents (e.g., SÍTIO will be treated as SITIO).
1,000People are also trading
I punched some of the hints into a search engine and it told me that "Setúbal" is a city of ~100,000 people in Portugal, which is a direct relation between two separate hints. That could just be a coincidence, but putting those two hints together seems to point to the importance of Portugal and/or Setúbal in this puzzle.
Edit: Also I looked on a map and sure enough, Setúbal is right on the waterfront where a river/estuary meets the big water. This could also be related to another hint, "harbor".
However, don't get too excited about this specific city, it appears Setúbal is also the name of the entire peninsula between Lisbon and the city of Setúbal. Among other things.
It is very important to not over-fixate on any specific connection or conclusion. I just thought I would share some information I found.
I wonder if we are dealing with formatting. B could be Bold as in typeface, R could be right justified, V could be Vertical, in some sense, or even Verso, for the side of the page.