It’s Mystery Hunt time! Today is the Wednesday before Mystery Hunt, so teams are making all sorts of preparations. You have to make sure someone is buying snacks and someone with access to a car is bringing them to your classrooms. You have to make sure your team infrastructure is working, whether it is as simple as a shared Google drive or as complicated as a custom-made webpage and database. Individual people are preparing for travel and making sure that they can get onto MIT’s campus. However, I will argue that there is one thing that you need to think about before and during your time on MIT’s campus – how is your team acting like a team and allowing everyone to participate?
The Mystery Hunt is :one of the most diverse hobbies I have. In my experience, it has a higher percentage of women than some of my other hobbies like Magic or RPGs. In addition, when I was running the 2022 Hunt, multiple teams introduced themselves to me as “the Queer team”, which should tell you about LGBTQ+ integration throughout the Hunt. However, we are not immune to the hidden biases and behaviors that are out there in the real world. We are still under an obligation to actively push against those – not just because it allows everyone to have more fun, but also because they will help your team work better as a team.
Is your team listening to women? It is a fact that men tend to talk more than women in meetings, and when a woman talks as much as a man, the man thinks that the women is talking more than them. Women’s ideas will often be overlooked in discussions, only for the idea to be lauded when coming out of the mouth of a man. As a trans woman, I have been on both sides of this. In fact, one of the reasons why I keep my voice more masculine than others is because I use my voice to act as a loudspeaker for women. I will backup what other women say in a meeting, and give them credit for it. I still have some White Man Energy and I’m not afraid to use it.
That being said, I have also been guilty of this. I can remember reflecting on the 2015 Hunt and realizing that I was talking over multiple women and that I wasn’t paying attention to them. In particular, there was one particular woman on the team, :Sue++, who was a really strong solver that I just wasn’t paying attention to. In 2016, I made conscious effort to listen to her more. I’d like to think that we did better because of that.
If you’re a guy, and you think your team is good at listening to women – check in with them. Make sure that it’s true. If they tell you it’s not, don’t argue or complain. Just get better.
Is your team listening to newer solvers? This will be my :16th MIT Mystery Hunt – it’s fair to say that I have a bit of experience, and there are many solvers who are in similar positions to me. You learn a lot from solving tons of puzzles, and you develop good instincts. However, that doesn’t mean that you’re always right. While certain people are going to have more insights about Mystery Hunt puzzles than others, anyone can have the needed insight about a certain puzzle. The more different kinds of brains that can look at a puzzle, the better.
This is another one of those things that I have been guilty of. I can pinpoint multiple puzzles where I disregarded people saying the correct thing to do because it didn’t make sense in the way I was interpreting the puzzle. Perhaps the most egregious is the 2019 Meta Holi/Patriot’s Day where I consistently dismissed the correct answer for :my theory on Japanese Subway lines. Since then, when I think someone is wrong, my response isn’t “I think that’s not right,” it’s “I think that’s unlikely, but you should try it.” It allows me to focus on what I think is right, but invites the other person to try it in case they’re right. However, be careful! This only works if you’re willing to actually listen to the idea and provide feedback, and also if you’re willing to listen when they prove your idea wrong.
For the record, this is one of the things I like about :Sorting By Every Column Until Morale Improves. There is a healthy skepticism of the “experienced solvers”, and the best way to get someone to try something is to tell them that it won’t work. Importantly – this isn’t just a couple people – it’s part of the team culture and encouraged in newer solvers.
How is everyone on your team updated on what is going on? There is something I like to call the “two-room problem”. If the team is too big to fit in just one room, then the team needs to split. This can lead to one room being the “main” room and the other being the “side” room. This is not a problem – it’s more convenient. However, if you’re spending more of your time in the side room solving, news can be slow to trickle over. It takes an active effort to make sure that everyone is informed when something cool happens. This is important because celebrating in those highs are what really brings a team together.
This is even more important nowadays as remote hunting becomes a fact of life. How do your remote hunters feel like a part of the team? How are they updated on news? How are they celebrating with you at those high points?
How is your team doing, race/culture wise? In traditional American fashion, I’m not going to say a ton about race. This is partially because I am not the best mouthpiece here, but also because a significant part of this is on the puzzle writers to be inclusive of other cultures. However, Mystery Hunting involves a certain amount of economic privilege, and in America that correlates with race and culture. And let’s be honest – Puzzle Hunting is :very white.
Wrapping it Up
Look, I know that this is a bummer to think about. I can’t wait to take my train tomorrow and be transported to an alternate world where all that matters are puzzles. However, no one solves a Mystery Hunt by themselves – you are part of a team. It is everyone’s responsibility to make sure that your team is as welcoming as it can be. If you’re not thinking about this stuff, I guarantee the people being hurt by it are.
-
Cute Mage
:X HoliPatriot
Multiple people suggested Olympic rings, but I kept pushing against it because there weren’t individual “places” on the rings as suggested by the instructions. This went on for a while until someone found the connections between answers. I was a spectator for the rest of the solve and had egg on my face for that one.
:X OneOfTheMost
I used to be able to confidently say “the most”, but this past year I have gotten involved with Blood on the Clocktower, which is super competitive for that title.
:X SBECUMI
Yes, that is our name this year. I love it.
:X SixteenthHunt
If my Hunt experience was a person, they would be visiting MIT to see if they want to apply there.
:X SuePlusPlus
I mean, she has to be good. She’s one better than Sue.
:X VeryWhite
I do have a lot more I can say here, but I am way less confident about it than the other topics that I have brought up in this post. I didn’t want to not mention race, but I want to acknowledge that I am way less sure about it and therefore I can’t really make a puzzle hunt specific checklist for it. I am interested in hearing what people who are affected by this think though.