The contest is made up of multiple categories. Each category is worth one point toward the total score; your team's score in a category is the fraction of the total points unlocked so far in that category.
The team that has 30% of the points in each of five categories has 1.5 points, whereas the team that has 80% of the points in only one category has 0.8 points. It is typically better to have a few points in many categories, than many points in a few categories.
When points are unlocked in a category, every other team's score in that category goes down until they too score that point. Unlike previous years, however, unlocking points is the only way to reduce another team's score.
There are two main ways to make points: puzzles and tokens. Your contest may have other ways to make points: these will either be automatic, or explained elsewhere.