A lot of puzzle hunts happened in the spring, and I keep trying to write full recaps for them. Then I remembered how much time I don’t have, so let’s do some shorter recaps instead and get this out.
Brown Puzzle Hunt
Before, during, and after this hunt, I kept trying to compare it to other puzzle hunts. It’s like a mini-MIT Mystery Hunt, except not really. It’s like a BAPHL-level hunt, except the puzzles are much harder and you’re not moving around. It’s like some harder online hunts, except this heavily uses Brown’s campus and there are definite advantages to being on campus. In the end, I stopped trying to compare it to other hunts. This puzzle hunt is its own niche, and I’m glad that they found it.
Yeah there were some difficulty issues, but honestly much less than I expected for an organization’s first hunt. The first meta was kinda tricky, but it was very much cleared up once we actually physically went to the statues in question. That final runaround, on the other hand, was an absolute bit of genius and made me even more glad that I had spent the time and money traveling to do it in person. I love it because it was a runaround that made you think about what was happening, and you had to figure out how to use the document that you had provided in a different way than it was saying. Was it the best puzzle for us to try to solve outside at 11PM? Maybe not. But it still was amazing.
- Puzzles to Check Out:
- The ABCs of Puzzle-Solving - a nice intro puzzle with a mechanic that honestly needs to be in more events.
- Ditto-less Imposters - a pokemon puzzle that was really quick to solve.
- The Lamp - a really fun metapuzzle.
- Who’s on the Decks? - an absolutely amazing final step that I can’t believe that we were asked to do and that I can’t believe worked.
- Word Processor - this is going on my short list of “puzzles to show to people who are being introduced to puzzle hunts.” It is very clever.
- Space Piracy - a black box puzzle that was really fun to dig into. I felt like we were getting appropriate ahas at very much appropriate times.
- Puzzles to Skip:
- Find Oren - I mean, besides the fact that you can’t do it now, it was kinda frustrating that there was nothing to solve here. I wanted to find Oren on campus, but it needed like one thing for us to hook onto to make it feel like solving a puzzle and not just randomly staring at people on campus. I know that this was the creative task puzzle to get around this, but I REALLY wanted to find Oren.
- A Search in the Basement - I tried really hard to do this puzzle. It’s just so finicky, and hard to figure out. I spent a couple hours on it after we got the pictures and ended up with nothing.
CMU Spring Puzzle Hunt
This was a very cute puzzle hunt. Like honestly, I’m tired of every puzzle hunt being a huge catastrophe that is saved in the nick of time by the clever work of the puzzlers. Sometimes you need a nice, cozy, talking stuffed prehistoric animal isekai as a treat. I’m very glad that CMU went this way. If you’re going to have the story be an excuse plot anyway, then might as well make people happy reading it.
The puzzles were a nice way to spend the afternoon with cool people from The MIT Mystery Hunt ✅. They weren’t super hard for us, but I wasn’t expecting anything too difficult. I’m pretty happy with our 5th place finish.
That being said, one thing that did stand out to me was the final meta. I love the way the hunt built up the connection from the past to the present with the puzzle titles, which I hadn’t noticed until this puzzle was unlocked. I was kinda meh about both the previous metapuzzles before this, but this one? Amazing.
- Puzzles to Check Out:
- Spinosaurus - this was a very cool intro puzzle, and I was very glad I figured out how to get the source code of the spinning part.
- Asteroid - this looked like someone looking at their course software and realizing that it could be used to make a puzzle. Despite having never seen this software before in my life, I was able to solve the puzzle. That’s usually a good sign that the puzzle was well written.
- Early Settlement - I can’t believe that this puzzle works.
- Civilization V - I am a sucker for minipuzzle puzzles, and this was fun to just bash out while the rest of the team was working on other puzzles.
- The Zoo - TRANS RIGHTS SHARK!
- Puzzles to Skip:
- Discovering Fire - This seemed… underconstrained and honestly not fun to do research on. I’m glad that one of my teammates got the meta answer without this puzzle, which then let us backsolve it.
- Spin Scooters - The puzzle was kinda finicky, and didn’t have a good answer. You don’t want that many repeated As in it, and it was a pain in the neck to interpret what direction the video was being shot. Also it seemed like everything was in a random order for no reason? Lastly, for a puzzle that could be very finicky, that answer is… not great.
Microsoft Puzzle Hunt
I love hearing stories from the Microsoft Puzzle Hunt, but since I’m not in the Pacific Northwest, I rarely get to do it. It sucks, but not every puzzle hunt has to cater to me, so that’s okay. I was very surprised when I found out that this year’s was open to everyone because it was completely virtual, so I cleared that weekend like a person comically sweeping a ton of mess off their desk to start planning.
Boy am I glad I did. This puzzle hunt was absolutely amazing. I’m sorry that it wasn’t in person and therefore the hunt runners didn’t get to do some of the plot interactions they wanted, but I’m glad that this puzzle hunt was available to the public at large. They were doing all sorts of weird things with the rounds that other puzzle hunts don’t get to do because of their scale, and it is very high up there compared to other non-MIT Mystery Hunt puzzle hunts.
I hyperfocused really hard on this hunt. Part of the reason is the best round ever - Sociology. This is one of the most amazing rounds I have ever seen. Matching up the halves of the puzzles was so much fun, and it was something that I could bash away on while most of the people in the voice chat were solving the Classics Round. The meta was also a really cool and fitting capstone to the round.
- Puzzles to Check Out:
- PH8: Poker Table - a nice small logic puzzle made significantly better by the interactivity.
- Pyramid Schemes - I cannot believe that this puzzle even exists. It’s soooooo cool.
- Key Changes - I felt like this was another puzzle that fell at just the right rate. There are a couple really cool break-ins.
- How the Other Half Lives - pretty much the best puzzle in this hunt. The idea behind it is really simple but it led to some very funny situations.
- Learning from Our Old Mistakes - very funny, and caused me to submit the deranged guess
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ to a random first round puzzle.
- History Meta - the connection that all the answers have is really great, and this is a reasonable shell to use that aha.
- The entire Computer Science round - honestly, this is an absolutely brilliant construction.
- The Lerneaean Hydra - this is a completely normal puzzle that I did not use to troll my teammates at all.
- Ozymandias - another puzzle that I cannot believe actually works.
- Sociology of Education - okay, the entire sociology round is great, but this is by and far my favorite one of them.
- Puzzles to Skip:
- Web of Lies/The Metameta - people really like funny farms. I don’t. It kinda just feels like typing random tangentially related things until it shows up on the screen. I’m not puzzle solving, I’m just guessing.
- Math Round - okay, the round itself isn’t the problem. I just don’t like it when Harry Potter references are just shoved in my face as soon as I open the round. Because there was no “all puzzles” page, any time I would open the round, I would just see Lupin there. It… was not great. Look, I’m not saying avoid Harry Potter references in puzzle hunts completely, but let me avoid having to see it to get at puzzles or solve metas.
Wrapping it Up
Well, that’s it. I think that’s everything.
(๑✪ᆺ✪๑) - aren’t u forgetting some1? i think that there’s 1 more hunt u need to say
NO. You’re a summer hunt, and you’ve already messed up one of my posts and are going to need another one to follow it up. You don’t get a third post.
Sorry for yelling. Look, I’m still solving you, and I really don’t want to write that post until I finish the third round meta + whatever comes next. You’re really cool and I’m glad that there are further galaxies, but this post is long enough and I need to stop stalling it coming out. You’ll get another post later.
– Cute Mage