Variation on the Newbie Game RFP

I'm working on this game that's like a bootcamp for newbie puzzlehunters. Ideally, if a team finishes one or two, e.g., Shinteki-style puzzles, they'd get some kind of a notice "Wow, you're doing great at solving these Shinteki-style puzzles. Maybe you'd like to LEARN MORE ABOUT SHINTEKI so you can put those skills to work." But I should probably let these organizations know that I'm doing this. For one thing, I dunno if I can write a Shinteki-style puzzle. Especially when you replace "Shinteki" with "Ravenchase", "Mastermind", "Puzzled Pint",... I mean, I ain't even played most of those, don't have a feel for their style. So it would be nice if they gave me some ripoff-able puzzles.

Suppose you were at one of those organizations and got an email like the following. Would it sound appealing? Does it leave some important questions unanswered?

Hello excellent XXXX people!

I'm putting together an online puzzle trail to introduce newbies to the codes and conventions of puzzlehunts. It would be a good thing if, along the way, these newbies were nudged towards puzzlehunts to play in. E.g., it would be good if they were nudged towards XXXX. I have a couple of ideas of how that might happen I'd like to bounce off of you.

Y'all might provide a few puzzles (or adaptable-puzzle-template-ideas) to use. When players see one of these puzzles, somewhere on there they might see "Written by XXXX, purveyors of fine puzzlehunts" with a link to your web site.
In this game, players can earn "merit badges"/achievements. Maybe if they solve one or more particularly XXXX-ish puzzles, they could earn a "XXXX" badge; this might have a blurb about XXXX puzzlehunts. If teams "earn" this mention of XXX, would they be more likely to check it out? Maybe, I dunno.

Thoughts on these ideas? Different ideas? I'd love to hear 'em.

You can read a bit more about the puzzlehunt at a doc where I solicit more folks' pitching in: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HppzUgOejh46NypLQ-SUjuoWZA0xfTgjhEo8jfczm3U/edit ...that also has a link to the rough-so-far-but-shows-potential web app: http://www.octothorpean.org/ .

-Larry H.

What do you think?

(And then there are some puzzles that don't even have a style per se. This hunt should nudge folks towards playing DASH—if the participants are like the newbie folks who bumped into the 2-Tone Game online, a lot of them will live in cities that don't have established puzzlehunt communities, but might have a DASH. But if there's no such thing as a DASH-ish puzzle... when do we "trigger" the nudge? Maybe we point teams at DASH if they've solved 20 puzzles. Point them at the MIT mystery hunt if they've solved a couple of Metas, maybe. Or point them at BAPHL if they typo an answer in a way that implies a Boston accent.)