Mystery Hunt 2013
Jan. 22nd, 2013 04:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidI got to join my team, Left as an Exercise for the Reader, for the first day of the Hunt.
I got to MIT in time to go to the launch, which this year wasn't in Lobby 7, but in a room in the gym. Each team was given a first aid packet (bandages and such; apparently MIT was more concerned about safety this year) as people filed in, appreciating the protestors in front of one of the two bleachers ("1% of the people control 85% of the puzzles," etc.) Acoustics were better than in Lobby 7, and there were two screens set up, which meant the launch was more accessible, for me, anyway. It turned out that last year's team mortgaged the coin to take a trip to Aruba or Bermuda or something, and the bank wasn't letting it go. So teams would need to figure out how to do a bank job, a heist to retrieve the coin and let the Mystery Hunt tradition continue.
There were some glitches on their servers, so the puzzles didn't go live until 2, giving people plenty of time to eat lunch and obsessively hit refresh. It also meant I got to chat with some team members I hadn't met before.
And then the puzzles were live, and everybody was looking for the right one for them. The first round was 6 puzzles and a meta. I got to work on one; I was surprised how quickly we got some solves, wondering whether they were easier or we were better. We got the first meta with 5 of 6 solved, and that finally unlocked more rounds, which were themed to the people who'd been the solutions to the first round, each one involving aspects of a heist. Originally I'd intended to go home a couple of hours after Shabbat started, but I ended up staying the evening.
The puzzle I worked on most was after Shabbat, with another person who was pencil-ennabled as we tried things for The Obligatory Wordsearch. It was a basic square wordsearch, with a bunch of phrases to find indicated by underscores (so we knew how many words and how many letters in each word, but nothing else). We looked and looked, and finally realized that some words weren't in a straight line. Then we started finding words that were longer. It still wasn't right, though, since these were phrases. I finally found Sierpinski in a step-shape, and that was the key: the first word was in the grid, and the shape of the word led to a two-word phrase, like Sierpinski triangle, suggestion box, grappling hook, and so on. It still wasn't so easy to find all the phrases, and at the end we found that there were some letters used twice. Once we'd taken all those letters, the ones left were "ACTRESS WEST," so we phoned in (ok, emailed in and waited for phone confirmation) MAE, which was right. It felt great to work on a puzzle from start to finish.
There was a puzzle with Boggle boards I worked on a little, as well as some others, but at some point I got brain dead, and decided to go home. I thought I might stop by later in the weekend; that didn't end up happening, despite the Hunt running approximately a day longer than usual. It was a lot of fun while I was there, though :-).
edited to add, 1/23 The list of puzzles and solutions has been posted.
I got to MIT in time to go to the launch, which this year wasn't in Lobby 7, but in a room in the gym. Each team was given a first aid packet (bandages and such; apparently MIT was more concerned about safety this year) as people filed in, appreciating the protestors in front of one of the two bleachers ("1% of the people control 85% of the puzzles," etc.) Acoustics were better than in Lobby 7, and there were two screens set up, which meant the launch was more accessible, for me, anyway. It turned out that last year's team mortgaged the coin to take a trip to Aruba or Bermuda or something, and the bank wasn't letting it go. So teams would need to figure out how to do a bank job, a heist to retrieve the coin and let the Mystery Hunt tradition continue.
There were some glitches on their servers, so the puzzles didn't go live until 2, giving people plenty of time to eat lunch and obsessively hit refresh. It also meant I got to chat with some team members I hadn't met before.
And then the puzzles were live, and everybody was looking for the right one for them. The first round was 6 puzzles and a meta. I got to work on one; I was surprised how quickly we got some solves, wondering whether they were easier or we were better. We got the first meta with 5 of 6 solved, and that finally unlocked more rounds, which were themed to the people who'd been the solutions to the first round, each one involving aspects of a heist. Originally I'd intended to go home a couple of hours after Shabbat started, but I ended up staying the evening.
The puzzle I worked on most was after Shabbat, with another person who was pencil-ennabled as we tried things for The Obligatory Wordsearch. It was a basic square wordsearch, with a bunch of phrases to find indicated by underscores (so we knew how many words and how many letters in each word, but nothing else). We looked and looked, and finally realized that some words weren't in a straight line. Then we started finding words that were longer. It still wasn't right, though, since these were phrases. I finally found Sierpinski in a step-shape, and that was the key: the first word was in the grid, and the shape of the word led to a two-word phrase, like Sierpinski triangle, suggestion box, grappling hook, and so on. It still wasn't so easy to find all the phrases, and at the end we found that there were some letters used twice. Once we'd taken all those letters, the ones left were "ACTRESS WEST," so we phoned in (ok, emailed in and waited for phone confirmation) MAE, which was right. It felt great to work on a puzzle from start to finish.
There was a puzzle with Boggle boards I worked on a little, as well as some others, but at some point I got brain dead, and decided to go home. I thought I might stop by later in the weekend; that didn't end up happening, despite the Hunt running approximately a day longer than usual. It was a lot of fun while I was there, though :-).
edited to add, 1/23 The list of puzzles and solutions has been posted.