annabunches.net/_posts/media/2012-01-23-mit-mystery-hunt-2012.html

---
excerpt_separator: <br/>
category: media
layout: post
title: MIT Mystery Hunt 2012
date: '2012-01-23T09:00:00.000-05:00'
author: Anna Wiggins
tags:
- MIT Mystery Hunt
- toki pona
- puzzlehunt
- Puzzles
- language
- meta puzzles
modified_time: '2013-10-22T11:19:51.902-04:00'
blogger_id: tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4209116010564764361.post-1596101106027957713
blogger_orig_url: http://www.stringofbits.net/2012/01/mit-mystery-hunt-2012.html
---

Every year, hundreds of people travel to MIT during the <a href="http://web.mit.edu/iap/">Independent Activities Period</a> for the <a href="http://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/">MIT Mystery Hunt</a>, a popular <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puzzlehunt">puzzlehunt</a>. This year was my second Hunt. This is a review, analysis, and/or postmortem of it. It contains some of the solutions, so if you want to go play with the puzzles yourself (as they are all posted online), be forewarned!<br/><br/><h3>How does this thing work, anyway?</h3><br/><br/>First, since most of the people who read this site probably aren't puzzlers, a brief description of the flow of the Hunt. Teams arrive and set up in pre-arranged headquarters (either a location near campus for teams that have them, or a classroom or two for any team that requests one). Everyone gets their stuff set up, then the hunt itself begins on Friday at noon with a kickoff presentation (traditionally in Lobby 7, which is functionally the 'main entrance' at MIT). Then teams return to their rooms and hit F5 repeatedly on the Hunt website (this year that was at borbonicusandbodley.com), waiting for the first round of puzzles to be released. Once they appear, the teams start trying to solve them.<br/><br/>Puzzles come in 'rounds', which are unlocked over time or via solving puzzles in the rounds you already have. Exactly how these work has varied somewhat from year to year. Each round also has a meta-puzzle (or simply 'meta'), which uses all of the answers from the round as the clues to some new (often quite difficult) puzzle.<br/><br/>Each year's hunt also has a theme: a nominal reason for the teams to be solving puzzles. This year's theme was related to the film The Producers, which led to a series of rounds based on ideas for terrible Broadway musicals (all of which were puns on existing musicals: A Circus Line, Okla-Holmes-a!, Into the Woodstock, Mayan Fair Lady, Phantom of the Operator, and Ogre of La Mancha). So, that was cute, and it made each round unlock produce a round of laughs and/or groans from the team.<br/><br/>If a team completes all of the rounds, they unlock the 'endgame', which usually involves some final puzzles and culminates in a runaround (a sort of scavenger hunt that involves actually running around MIT campus. <a>Here</a> is the beginning of one from last year). The runaround ends in the ultimate goal of the Hunt: finding a 'coin' (sometimes an actual coin, sometimes not). The team that finds the coin wins the Hunt.<br/><br/>There are also, at least in recent years, a number of 'events' during the hunt. Teams can send a couple members to these events, which are sometimes puzzle-oriented but can also be skill-based. The reward for the events are points that can be spent on puzzle answers. This is especially important strategic resource, and is mostly useful when you are working on a meta-puzzle and need more of the answers from its round to make sense of it.<br/><br/><h3>A review</h3><br/><br/>As a whole, the hunt was a lot of fun. I think last year's (video game-themed) hunt was a better hunt overall - the multiple runarounds were especially fun. But this year had a lot of interesting puzzles, and I certainly performed better than last year. I can claim two solid solves, which I'll discuss in detail later.<br/><br/>This year's approach to round unlocks was, I thought, quite good - each round had a set unlock time (a time at which every team was guaranteed to have it), and the more puzzles you solved the more points you accrued. Your point total was fed into a function that decreases the time until the next unlock happens. There were also multiple unlocks per round - each round came in two halves, and there were, I believe, two unlocks for each half (so, 4 unlock points per round).<br/><br/>This was very similar to last year's method, but more sensible - last year the unlocks were based solely on points, which accrued over time with a bonus given for solves. This made it a bit hard to get a quick estimate of how many solves your team had achieved. It fel
Import blogger data. 2016-04-11 22:01:00 +00:00			`---`
Add post excerpts to the main page. 2016-05-04 18:41:25 +00:00			`excerpt_separator: <br/>`
Explicitly add category information to all posts. 2016-04-12 04:13:30 +00:00			`category: media`
Import blogger data. 2016-04-11 22:01:00 +00:00			`layout: post`
			`title: MIT Mystery Hunt 2012`
			`date: '2012-01-23T09:00:00.000-05:00'`
			`author: Anna Wiggins`
			`tags:`
			`- MIT Mystery Hunt`
			`- toki pona`
			`- puzzlehunt`
			`- Puzzles`
			`- language`
			`- meta puzzles`
			`modified_time: '2013-10-22T11:19:51.902-04:00'`
			`blogger_id: tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4209116010564764361.post-1596101106027957713`
			`blogger_orig_url: http://www.stringofbits.net/2012/01/mit-mystery-hunt-2012.html`
			`---`

			Every year, hundreds of people travel to MIT during the <a href="http://web.mit.edu/iap/">Independent Activities Period</a> for the <a href="http://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/">MIT Mystery Hunt</a>, a popular <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puzzlehunt">puzzlehunt</a>. This year was my second Hunt. This is a review, analysis, and/or postmortem of it. It contains some of the solutions, so if you want to go play with the puzzles yourself (as they are all posted online), be forewarned!<br/><br/><h3>How does this thing work, anyway?</h3><br/><br/>First, since most of the people who read this site probably aren't puzzlers, a brief description of the flow of the Hunt. Teams arrive and set up in pre-arranged headquarters (either a location near campus for teams that have them, or a classroom or two for any team that requests one). Everyone gets their stuff set up, then the hunt itself begins on Friday at noon with a kickoff presentation (traditionally in Lobby 7, which is functionally the 'main entrance' at MIT). Then teams return to their rooms and hit F5 repeatedly on the Hunt website (this year that was at borbonicusandbodley.com), waiting for the first round of puzzles to be released. Once they appear, the teams start trying to solve them.<br/><br/>Puzzles come in 'rounds', which are unlocked over time or via solving puzzles in the rounds you already have. Exactly how these work has varied somewhat from year to year. Each round also has a meta-puzzle (or simply 'meta'), which uses all of the answers from the round as the clues to some new (often quite difficult) puzzle.<br/><br/>Each year's hunt also has a theme: a nominal reason for the teams to be solving puzzles. This year's theme was related to the film The Producers, which led to a series of rounds based on ideas for terrible Broadway musicals (all of which were puns on existing musicals: A Circus Line, Okla-Holmes-a!, Into the Woodstock, Mayan Fair Lady, Phantom of the Operator, and Ogre of La Mancha). So, that was cute, and it made each round unlock produce a round of laughs and/or groans from the team.<br/><br/>If a team completes all of the rounds, they unlock the 'endgame', which usually involves some final puzzles and culminates in a runaround (a sort of scavenger hunt that involves actually running around MIT campus. <a>Here</a> is the beginning of one from last year). The runaround ends in the ultimate goal of the Hunt: finding a 'coin' (sometimes an actual coin, sometimes not). The team that finds the coin wins the Hunt.<br/><br/>There are also, at least in recent years, a number of 'events' during the hunt. Teams can send a couple members to these events, which are sometimes puzzle-oriented but can also be skill-based. The reward for the events are points that can be spent on puzzle answers. This is especially important strategic resource, and is mostly useful when you are working on a meta-puzzle and need more of the answers from its round to make sense of it.<br/><br/><h3>A review</h3><br/><br/>As a whole, the hunt was a lot of fun. I think last year's (video game-themed) hunt was a better hunt overall - the multiple runarounds were especially fun. But this year had a lot of interesting puzzles, and I certainly performed better than last year. I can claim two solid solves, which I'll discuss in detail later.<br/><br/>This year's approach to round unlocks was, I thought, quite good - each round had a set unlock time (a time at which every team was guaranteed to have it), and the more puzzles you solved the more points you accrued. Your point total was fed into a function that decreases the time until the next unlock happens. There were also multiple unlocks per round - each round came in two halves, and there were, I believe, two unlocks for each half (so, 4 unlock points per round).<br/><br/>This was very similar to last year's method, but more sensible - last year the unlocks were based solely on points, which accrued over time with a bonus given for solves. This made it a bit hard to get a quick estimate of how many solves your team had achieved. It fel