seekingferret (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
seekingferret) wrote2016-01-12 02:07 pm
seekingferret) wrote2016-01-12 02:07 pm
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I'll be heading up to Cambridge Thursday night for the MIT Mystery Hunt. My first Mystery Hunt was the 2006 SPIES Hunt, so this is the tenth anniversary of my first Hunt. I've missed a few in the middle, though, so I'm fairly certain this is my seventh Hunt attending in person, on my fourth team name. I've hunted with: Lake Effect Snow, Just for the Halibut, Engage Le Jeu Que Je Le Gagne, and now Dammit I'm Mad. (The former two were more or less the same team, just before and after a split that also generated the team Grand Unified Theory of Love, while the latter two are the same team, just the tradition that team Palindrome picks a new palindromic name every year)
Mystery Hunt is so variable and unique that it's hard to describe, but in the years I've attended it's always been one of the year's highlights. Roughly speaking, the idea is: a coin is hidden on MIT's campus. In order to find it, solvers must solve puzzles that provide clues to the location. It's rather more than that, though. Puzzles are typically organized into rounds: the answers to round puzzles become the clues to 'metapuzzles'. Sometimes the answers to metapuzzles become the clues to 'metametapuzzles', sometimes the structure becomes even more complicated than that, and ultimately solving enough puzzles will generally lead you to the 'runaround', a set of elaborate final puzzles, often featuring physical components, and revealing the location of the coin. The only year that my team got to do the final runaround, puzzles included a life-sized logic puzzle. One would propose a solution and then people would act as the pieces on the grid and move through the steps of the logic puzzle until the solution was reached. Puzzles throughout the Hunt are ingenious and devilish- final runaround puzzles are ingenious, devilish, and also really, really cool.
But even if you don't see the final runaround, even if you are like some of my teams have been and you struggle to finish in the middle of the pack, the Mystery Hunt is just an incredible intellectual adventure, one that tests so many different kinds of creativity and imagination and knowledge and puzzle solving ability. A Mystery Hunt puzzle can come in so many different shapes, and require knowledge of so many diverse kinds of knowledge, that the whole weekend is just thrill after thrill, if your brain is wired like mine is. And the best part is that you do the event in teams, so that you get to spend a whole weekend hanging out with a bunch of awesome people whose brains are also wired like mine is.
Or to put it another way, Thomas Snyder's explanation of this week:
This is that time of the year when sentences start HUNT! Hunt lose words that HUNT! HUNT! HUNT! they really HUNT! Hunt HUNT! Hunt to Hunt HUNT! Hunt Hunt to other people. Attention span Hunt Hunt HUNT! to about ten seconds as the finishing Hunt are put on the Hunt Hunt Hunt.
Mystery Hunt is so variable and unique that it's hard to describe, but in the years I've attended it's always been one of the year's highlights. Roughly speaking, the idea is: a coin is hidden on MIT's campus. In order to find it, solvers must solve puzzles that provide clues to the location. It's rather more than that, though. Puzzles are typically organized into rounds: the answers to round puzzles become the clues to 'metapuzzles'. Sometimes the answers to metapuzzles become the clues to 'metametapuzzles', sometimes the structure becomes even more complicated than that, and ultimately solving enough puzzles will generally lead you to the 'runaround', a set of elaborate final puzzles, often featuring physical components, and revealing the location of the coin. The only year that my team got to do the final runaround, puzzles included a life-sized logic puzzle. One would propose a solution and then people would act as the pieces on the grid and move through the steps of the logic puzzle until the solution was reached. Puzzles throughout the Hunt are ingenious and devilish- final runaround puzzles are ingenious, devilish, and also really, really cool.
But even if you don't see the final runaround, even if you are like some of my teams have been and you struggle to finish in the middle of the pack, the Mystery Hunt is just an incredible intellectual adventure, one that tests so many different kinds of creativity and imagination and knowledge and puzzle solving ability. A Mystery Hunt puzzle can come in so many different shapes, and require knowledge of so many diverse kinds of knowledge, that the whole weekend is just thrill after thrill, if your brain is wired like mine is. And the best part is that you do the event in teams, so that you get to spend a whole weekend hanging out with a bunch of awesome people whose brains are also wired like mine is.
Or to put it another way, Thomas Snyder's explanation of this week:
This is that time of the year when sentences start HUNT! Hunt lose words that HUNT! HUNT! HUNT! they really HUNT! Hunt HUNT! Hunt to Hunt HUNT! Hunt Hunt to other people. Attention span Hunt Hunt HUNT! to about ten seconds as the finishing Hunt are put on the Hunt Hunt Hunt.