"The Silly Hat Brigade," Stopheles announces, reading your mind. "Doomed eternally to assemble hats which are, frankly, about as far from silly as you can get."

"We spent millions of dollars determining the most mundane possible headgear we could manufacture in this room," Blackwell says, waving a folder full of market research.

"Now this may not strike you as a heavy penalty, but I assure you these miserable souls feel like rats in a vise," declares Blancwell.

"Oh dear. He shouldn't be doing that," Stopheles sighs, pointing to one of the enslaved workers, who takes out a marker and draws a smiley face on one of the hats. An alarm goes off, and a pair of robotic arms begins to savagely beat the offender. While Stopheles and his cronies admire the carnage, another hunter motions for your attention and hands you a folded-up sheet of instructions. Apparently this is the hat the workers really want to be making.

Any time you are asked to flip the paper, you should turn it over around a vertical axis, so that the right edge of the paper becomes the left edge, and you are looking at the opposite side of the paper. (Think of turning a page in a book.)

Anything you write should be written one letter, digit, or small but intricate picture of a duck per square. All letters and digits should be read or written right-side-up with respect to the current orientation of the paper. Always use capital letters unless otherwise stated. Any references to rows or columns refer to the current orientation of the paper. Any words or numbers read or written in rows or columns should be written left-to-right or top-to-bottom respectively in consecutive squares, unless otherwise stated. Any folds should be made toward you.

1. Position the paper such that it has twelve rows and sixteen columns. Write the words "SILLY HAT" (with no space) in the fifth row and "BRIGADE" in the eighth row such that the eleventh column contains two copies of the same letter.

2. Add two letters such that a diagonal line contains a Roman numeral seen only on clocks.

3. Fold the top edge of the paper to meet the bottom edge of the sixth row. Add three letters to form the name of a mammal which sounds like a word for someone using a VCR, reading downward. Add the same letter twice to form the name of a Swedish pop band reading diagonally. Unfold the edge.

4. Add three letters that spell a synonym for "swindle" to form a five-letter breakfast food reading diagonally.

5. Rotate the paper 90 degrees counterclockwise. Add five letters to form a six-letter name which can be either a Czech composer or an alternative to QWERTY, reading downward.

6. Fold the lower-left corner so that the bottom edge of the paper meets the right edge of the tenth column. Add three letters to form the six-letter name of a fruit reading downward. Write the word "chapeau" in the seventh column in lowercase letters, without placing any letters in the top row, so that one row contains four of the same letter in various orientations (counting capital and lowercase). Unfold the corner.

7. Flip the paper. Rotate the paper 90 degrees clockwise. Add four letters that spell a synonym for "confess" to spell a word reading across which is the name of a bassist whose band reunited in 2007. One letter appears three times on the paper (counting capital and lowercase). Add the number three in the square above the square to the left of each of these squares. (For any letter that is on the top or left edge of the paper, add a small but intricate picture of a duck in the square to the right of that letter instead.)

8. Rotate the paper 180 degrees. Fold the upper-left corner so that the top edge of the paper meets the right edge of the ninth column. Add four letters (three vowels and a consonant) so that a synonym for "exudes" reads from lower-left to upper-right and a synonym for "menagerie" reads from upper-right to lower-left. Add a lowercase letter "f" five squares to the right of the center letter of the longer of the two synonyms mentioned above. Unfold the corner.

9. Add three letters so that there is a word reading downward which describes a specific time of day, and which would look the same if you rotated it 180 degrees. There are two two-letter symbols for chemical elements (ignoring capital versus lowercase) that read across. Make a note of the names of the elements, calling the one that comes first alphabetically Element A, and the other Element B.

10. Rotate the paper 90 degrees counterclockwise. Add four lowercase letters to form the singular form of a word that can reference any one of a septet of characters from an early Disney film, reading across. Add three lowercase letters (two vowels and a consonant) to form the name of Element A, reading downward. Add three capital letters that spell out a number to the right of the name of an imaginary land, forming the five-letter name of a chemical compound reading across.

11. Fold the bottom edge of the paper to meet the bottom edge of the fourteenth row. Fold the new bottom edge of the paper to meet the bottom edge of the eleventh row. Add two capital letters to form a component of the U.S. checks and balances system reading from lower-right to upper-left. Unfold both edges.

12. Flip the paper. Rotate the paper 90 degrees clockwise. Fold the top edge of the paper to meet the bottom edge of the seventh row. Add five letters to form the name of Element B reading downward. Add four letters to form the name of a film that featured the badly delivered line, "Give me back my son!" reading diagonally from upper-left to lower-right.

13. Rotate the paper 90 degrees counterclockwise. Using lowercase letters, add a four-letter synonym for "touch down" in the fourth row to form the first name of a character from a classic science fiction movie. Add two distinct lowercase letters to form a palindromic nickname for a male relative reading downward.

14. Rotate the paper 90 degrees counterclockwise. Fold the left edge of the paper to meet the right edge of the thirteenth column. Add three letters to the third row to form the first name of an MIT alumnus who had a "house puzzle" named after him in the 2002 Mystery Hunt. Add four of the first six letters of the alphabet to form a two-word six-letter phrase (with no space) meaning "to fade," reading downward. Unfold both edges.

15. Rotate the paper 90 degrees clockwise. Add six lowercase letters to form the name of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle reading across.

16. Fold the upper-left and upper-right corners of the paper so that the left and right edges of the paper meet the bottom edge of the fourth row. Add a state abbreviation (in lowercase letters) so one row contains two representations of the same animal, one of which is in French. Add three lowercase letters to the fourth column to form the name of a chemical element which is also a verb, reading downward. Call this element Element C. Unfold both corners.

17. Add three lowercase letters to form the name of a supermarket chain, reading diagonally from upper right to lower left, which would become an animal native to China if you switched its first and last letters. Add five lowercase letters to form the phrase "old hat" reading downward (with no space).

18. Flip the paper. Fold the right edge of the paper to meet the right edge of the eighth column. Add, using lowercase letters, a synonym for a palindrome you formed in an earlier step to form the four-letter name of a gem reading across. Add a lowercase letter to form the symbol (in all lowercase letters) for Element C reading downward, unless that symbol is already on the paper in a different orientation, in which case... eh, do it anyway. Unfold the edge.

19. Rotate the paper 90 degrees clockwise. There is one vowel on the paper (in any orientation) which does not touch any other letters (in any orientation) orthogonally. Remedy this by duplicating this vowel in each of the four orthogonally adjacent squares.

20. Flip the paper. Fold the left edge of the paper to meet the right edge of the fourteenth column. Earlier you added a number spelled out in capital letters; subtract one from this number, and add three capital letters to form the resulting number, running diagonally from lower-right to upper-left and ending next to a disoriented duck. Unfold the edge.

21. Rotate the paper 90 degrees clockwise. Fold the top edge of the paper to meet the bottom edge of the paper. Flip the paper. Fold the upper-left and upper-right corners of the paper so that the left and right edges of the paper meet the bottom edge of the sixth row. Fold the top layer of the bottom edge of the paper to meet the bottom edge of the fourth row. Flip the paper. Fold the the bottom edge of the paper to meet the bottom edge of the fourth row.

22. Put on the hat and do a little dance. Try not to hurt yourself.