MIT Mystery Hunt

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The MIT Mystery Hunt is a puzzlehunt competition held each January at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Hundreds of people in dozens of teams solve puzzles for over 48 hours straight to find an unusual coin hidden on campus and earn the right to run the Hunt the next year. Participants come from around the country and play remotely from around the world.

1 Structure
2 Types of puzzles
3 History
4 Memorable puzzles
5 Spinoffs
6 References
7 External links

[edit] Structure

The team running the Hunt can make any changes they desire, and the structure changes to some degree from year to year. However, the general form has been constant since at least the mid-nineties.

At noon on the Friday before Martin Luther King Day participants gather in the lobby of Building 7 at MIT. Recent Hunts have had around 20-25 teams participating, with each team containing as few as five and as many as one hundred puzzle solvers (larger teams usually send a small delegation to the opening festivities). Nowadays, the organizers present a short skit which reveals the theme of the hunt, such as Carmen Sandiego in 1999 or the Wizard of Oz in 2000. The theme is often a closely guarded secret before the Hunt begins, but some years it is revealed ahead of time such as in the Gödel, Escher, Bach hunt where it helped to have read the book beforehand. The teams are then told to find the coin in the context of the theme; for instance, in 1999 teams were told to find a rare coin that Carmen Sandiego had stolen. (A recent trend has been hidden themes such as The Matrix hunt of 2003 introduced itself as a corporate murder mystery and the Time Bandits hunt of 2004 introduced itself as a pirate adventure; teams had to discover the "real" theme as the hunt moved along.) Then the first round of puzzles is handed out (in recent years a URL has been provided in lieu of paper copies) and teams return to their headquarters around campus.

Early hunts were either linear (after solving one puzzle, a new puzzle would be revealed) or all the puzzles were available at once and nothing new was added through the course of the hunt. Since 1998, hunts have had a round structure, allowing puzzles to be released at different times. Each round can consist of somewhere between six and fifteen puzzles. The answer to each puzzle is usually a word or phrase. When a team thinks they know the answer to a puzzle, they call it in to Hunt headquarters, and the Hunt organizers confirm it. A Hunt is usually comprised of four to eight rounds. Each round can be released at a predetermined time or by some other metric or benchmark, but they are typically released early to teams that have finished all previous rounds.

The set of all answers in a round form a meta-puzzle. There are usually no instructions to the meta-puzzle; once a team has all the answers, they still need to figure out what to do with them. The answer to the meta-puzzle is usually another word or phrase. When a team correctly calls in the answer to the meta-puzzle they are finished with that round and frequently earn the right to see a new round of puzzles. In 2006, the hunt organizers introduced the concept of an "antepuzzle" as a different mechanism for controlling access to new rounds; in these, the answer is 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).

Some recent Hunts have had "hidden" rounds, or different ways of combining puzzles into metapuzzles—it's all up to the team writing the Hunt. When a team has finished all the rounds in the Hunt, they begin the final runaround. Usually several teams make it to the final runaround, which may take a few hours to complete. The first team to complete the runaround and find the coin wins the Hunt and starts planning for next year.

[edit] Types of puzzles

Any type of puzzle is fair game. There are crosswords, cryptic crosswords, logic puzzles, jigsaw puzzles, anagrams, connect-the-dots, ciphers, riddles, paint by numbers, and word searches, though classic kinds of puzzles are usually presented with a novel twist. There are puzzles that require the knowledge of quantum mechanics, stereoisomers, ancient Greek, Klingon, Bach preludes, coinage of Africa, and Barbie dolls. Some puzzles are pictures, others are audio files or physical objects. Many puzzles require sending people to find certain locations on the MIT campus or in the Boston area. There is usually a scavenger hunt and a puzzle that involves bringing food to the team running the Hunt (one privilege of winning). Other puzzles involve playing games such as four square or video games. Many of the puzzles require an in-depth knowledge of MIT's campus and culture.

Puzzles tend to have very little by way of instructions; determining what must be done is part of the challenge. On the other hand, the Duck Konundrum puzzle type (created for the Mystery Hunt in 2000) consists of nothing but extensive and detailed instructions.

[edit] History

The Mystery Hunt was started in 1980 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 to the school bookstore, a $50 donation to the charity of their choice, and a keg of beer.

The hunt was organized again by Brad Schaefer for the next two years. 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 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 2005 Hunt containing 114 puzzles, 12 meta-puzzles and a 6-puzzle final runaround. The winners were awarded a cash prize until at least 1987.

Eventually the Hunt became themed. The earliest recorded theme is Captain Red Herring's Mystery Island in 1992. By the mid-nineties the modern Hunt structure of rounds and meta-puzzles had been solidified.

[edit] Memorable puzzles

The 2000 hunt included the first Duck Konundrum [1], a complicated and ridiculous set of rules involving a group of people (and a duck) that had to be followed to discover the solution. There have been several sequels to the Duck Konundrum in the MIT Mystery Hunt, as well as one in the Microsoft Puzzle Hunt and another in the Maze of Games.
The 2003 hunt included a round of puzzles that all had visual answers: [2]
The 2005 hunt began with a puzzle that had to be solved cooperatively by all teams.