MIT Mystery Hunt
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The MIT Mystery Hunt is an annual
puzzlehunt A puzzle hunt (sometimes рuzzlehunt) is a puzzle game where teams compete to solve a series of puzzles. A puzzle hunt can happen at a particular location, in multiple locations, or via the Internet. In a puzzle hunt, a puzzle is usually not acc ...
competition at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...
. It is one of the oldest and most complex puzzlehunts in the world and attracts roughly 120 teams and 3,000 contestants (with about 2,000 on campus) annually in teams of 5 to 150 people. It has inspired similar competitions at
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Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
,
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, University of South Carolina,
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and
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(Portugal) as well as in the
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,
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, Indianapolis and Columbus, Ohio metropolitan areas. Because the puzzle solutions often require knowledge of esoteric and eclectic topics, the hunt is sometimes used to exemplify popular stereotypes of MIT students. The hunt begins at noon on the Friday before
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, when the teams assemble to receive the first puzzles. It concludes with a puzzle-guided journey (a "runaround") to find a "coin" hidden on MIT's campus. Each puzzlehunt is created and organized by the winning team of the previous year, which can lead to substantial differences in the rules and structure. While early hunts involved a few dozen linear puzzles, recent hunts have increased in complexity, some involving as many as 160 distinct puzzles arranged in rounds, hidden rounds, and
metapuzzle A metapuzzle, also known as a meta-puzzle or meta, is a puzzle that uses the solutions to a set of puzzles to create or provide data for a final puzzle. Overview Game designer Cliff Johnson defines a meta-puzzle as "a collection of puzzles that, ...
s. Recent hunts have also revolved around themes introduced as a
skit Skit may refer to: * * A short segment in a performance, such as: ** Sketch comedy ** Hip hop skit ** Puppet skit ** Promo (professional wrestling) * Skit note, parody of a banknote See also * Skete A skete ( ) is a monastic communi ...
by organizers at the opening ceremony.


Structure

The objective of the hunt is to solve a set of puzzles in order to locate a coin hidden on the MIT campus. Participants can organize into teams of any size and are not required to be physically present. In recent years, team sizes have grown to around 200 solvers for the largest teams. The proportion of hunters who participate remotely has grown over time, as well. The hunt and its puzzles are organized and created by the team that won the event the previous year, ensuring that no hunt will be won (or run) consecutively by the same people; each year's writers are free to change any aspects of the internal structure of the Hunt. At noon on the Friday before
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the teams gather at MIT, where organizers present a skit revealing the hunt's theme and the initial round of puzzles, as well as announcing rules and other administrative matters. The teams can locate their headquarters anywhere and, over the course of the Hunt, check in with the organizers to verify the answers to individual puzzles. Some teams make extensive use of remote solvers—players who are located beyond the MIT campus. After the Hunt concludes, the organizers typically hold a wrap-up meeting at which the solutions to all the metapuzzles and the overall structure of the Hunt are revealed. Since 2009, hunts have been run for a fixed duration regardless of when the coin is first found, allowing more than one team to complete it (the record for most teams to complete a hunt is the 2017 Hunt: 17 teams completed it, the winners took only 18 hours). While the puzzles in early hunts were either linear (after solving one puzzle, a new puzzle would be revealed) or released en masse, since 1998 the puzzles have been released in rounds. Successive rounds can be released at predetermined times, based upon completing a requisite number of puzzles in a previous round, or based on another metric entirely. The distinguishing feature of the present-day Mystery Hunt is employing the solutions to all the puzzles in a round to solve a
metapuzzle A metapuzzle, also known as a meta-puzzle or meta, is a puzzle that uses the solutions to a set of puzzles to create or provide data for a final puzzle. Overview Game designer Cliff Johnson defines a meta-puzzle as "a collection of puzzles that, ...
, usually lacking any instructions. Once a team has solved all the metapuzzles, it may begin the "runaround" phase to find the hidden coin: the team follows a series of clues or puzzles that leads them from one location on the MIT campus to another until reaching the location where the coin is hidden. The entire hunt usually lasts approximately 48 hours, although the 2003 hunt required 63 hours, and the 2013 hunt took a record 75 hours. Although the hidden prize is always called "the coin", a variety of items have been used as the "coin", including a
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, a fragment of a
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, a
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, and a wooden cube. The mystery hunt employs a wide range of puzzles including
crossword A crossword is a word puzzle that usually takes the form of a square or a rectangular grid of white- and black-shaded squares. The goal is to fill the white squares with letters, forming words or phrases, by solving clues which lead to the answ ...
s,
cryptic crossword A cryptic crossword is a crossword puzzle in which each clue is a word puzzle. Cryptic crosswords are particularly popular in the United Kingdom, where they originated, Ireland, Israel, the Netherlands, and in several Commonwealth nations, includi ...
s,
logic puzzle A logic puzzle is a puzzle deriving from the mathematical field of deduction. History The logic puzzle was first produced by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who is better known under his pen name Lewis Carroll, the author of ''Alice's Adventures in W ...
s,
jigsaw puzzle A jigsaw puzzle is a tiling puzzle that requires the assembly of often irregularly shaped interlocking and mosaiced pieces, each of which typically has a portion of a picture. When assembled, the puzzle pieces produce a complete picture. In t ...
s, anagrams,
connect-the-dots Connect the dots (also known as connect-the-dots, dot to dot, or join the dots) is a form of puzzle containing a sequence of numbered dots. When a line is drawn connecting the dots the outline of an object is revealed. The puzzles frequently c ...
, ciphers,
riddle A riddle is a statement, question or phrase having a double or veiled meaning, put forth as a puzzle to be solved. Riddles are of two types: ''enigmas'', which are problems generally expressed in metaphorical or allegorical language that requ ...
s, paint by numbers,
sudoku Sudoku (; ja, 数独, sūdoku, digit-single; originally called Number Place) is a logic-based, combinatorial number-placement puzzle. In classic Sudoku, the objective is to fill a 9 × 9 grid with digits so that each column, each row ...
s, and
word search A word search, word find, word seek, word sleuth or mystery word puzzle is a word game that consists of the letters of words placed in a grid, which usually has a rectangular or square shape. The objective of this puzzle is to find and mark all ...
es. Solutions to these classic puzzles are further complicated by employing arcane or esoteric topics like quantum computing,
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s,
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Klingon The Klingons ( ; Klingon: ''tlhIngan'' ) are a fictional species in the science fiction franchise ''Star Trek''. Developed by screenwriter Gene L. Coon in 1967 for the original ''Star Trek'' (''TOS'') series, Klingons were swarthy humanoids c ...
,
Bach Johann Sebastian Bach (28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the ''Brandenburg Concertos''; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboard wor ...
cantatas,
coin A coin is a small, flat (usually depending on the country or value), round piece of metal or plastic used primarily as a medium of exchange or legal tender. They are standardized in weight, and produced in large quantities at a mint in order t ...
age of
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, and
Barbie Barbie is a fashion doll manufactured by American toy company Mattel, Inc. and launched on March 9, 1959. American businesswoman Ruth Handler is credited with the creation of the doll using a German doll called Bild Lilli as her inspiration. ...
dolls. Puzzles might also employ pictures, audio files, video games, physical objects, and/or locations within MIT or the Boston area. The hunt also assumes extensive familiarity with MIT's campus, culture, and lore.


History

The Mystery Hunt was started in 1981 by then-graduate student Brad Schaefer. The first Hunt consisted of 12 subclues on a single sheet of paper including a Vigenere cipher, a short runaround, and an integral. The answers to the subclues detailed the location of an Indian Head penny hidden on campus. The individuals who found the coin were allowed to take their pick of a $20
gift certificate A gift card also known as gift certificate in North America, or gift voucher or gift token in the UK is a prepaid stored-value money card, usually issued by a retailer or bank, to be used as an alternative to cash for purchases within a parti ...
to the school bookstore, a $50 donation to the charity of their choice, and a keg of beer. The hunt was organized for the next two years by Brad Schaefer and after he graduated, the winners were given the honor of writing the hunt the next year. Over the next several years the hunt became longer and more involved as the number of participants increased. The earliest recorded theme is Captain Red Herring's Mystery Island in 1992. The 1984 Hunt had 22 clues, and the 1987 Hunt had 19 clues and a final runaround. The Mystery Hunt has continued to grow, with the 2014 Hunt containing 115 puzzles, 10 metapuzzles, 5 events, a 24-puzzle mid-hunt runaround, and a 5-puzzle final runaround. Though metapuzzles have existed in some form for many Mystery Hunts, the structure regarding how the puzzles combine into metapuzzles and how puzzles are released varies. For example, in the 2006 Hunt, "antepuzzles" provided access to new rounds, whose answers were derived from pieces of information attached to the round puzzles, but otherwise irrelevant to them (for example, the colors in which the puzzle titles were printed); in the 2009 Hunt, apart from the shorter introductory rounds, each main round had a unique structure and way of releasing new puzzles. In some Hunts, such as 1999's and 2008's, solvers are not told which sets of puzzles must be combined to create metapuzzles; figuring out the correct groupings is part of the puzzle. While the hunt is hosted on MIT's campus, puzzles are generally delivered through a website that tracks team progress on puzzles that updates when puzzles are solved. Puzzles may also involve physical components to be solved on campus. In 2021 and 2022, the Mystery Hunt was held entirely remotely, due to the
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.


List of Hunts


See also

* The Game


References


External links


Official Mystery Hunt website
* Availabl
online.
*



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{{DEFAULTSORT:Mit Mystery Hunt Massachusetts Institute of Technology student life Puzzle hunts University folklore