The MIT Mystery Hunt is an annual puzzle hunt competition at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is one of the oldest and most complex puzzle hunts in the world and attracts over 200 teams and 5,000 contestants (with more than half on campus) annually in teams of 5 to 150 people. It has inspired similar competitions at Microsoft, Stanford University, Melbourne University, University of South Carolina, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and University of Aveiro (Portugal) as well as in the Seattle, San Francisco, Miami, Washington, D.C., Indianapolis and Columbus, Ohio metropolitan areas. Because the puzzle solutions often require knowledge of esoteric and eclectic topics, the hunt is sometimes used to exemplify popular stereotypes of MIT students.
The hunt begins at noon on the Friday before Martin Luther King Jr. Day, when the teams assemble to receive the first puzzles. It concludes with a puzzle-guided journey (a "runaround") to find a "coin" hidden on MIT's campus. Each puzzle hunt is created and organized by the winning team of the previous year, which can lead to substantial differences in the rules and structure. While early hunts involved a few dozen linear puzzles, recent hunts have increased in complexity, some involving as many as 250 distinct puzzles arranged in rounds, hidden rounds, and metapuzzles. Recent hunts have also revolved around themes introduced as a skit by organizers at the opening ceremony.
Structure
thumb|Many teams hunt in rooms with chalkboards, projectors, computers, and food.
thumb|The 2007 hunt concluded with a wrap-up session in this large [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology|MIT lecture hall.]]
thumb|A coin used by the creators of the 2011 hunt
thumb|This coin was found by the winning team in 2013, after the longest hunt on record.
thumb|The coin received by the winning team in 2021
The objective of the hunt is to solve a set of puzzles in order to locate a coin hidden on the MIT campus. Participants can organize into teams of any size and are not required to be physically present. In recent years, team sizes have grown to around 200 solvers for the largest teams. The proportion of hunters who participate remotely has grown over time, as well.
The hunt and its puzzles are organized and created by the team that won the event the previous year, ensuring that no hunt will be won (or run) consecutively by the same people; each year's writers are free to change any aspects of the internal structure of the Hunt. stereoisomers, ancient Greek, Klingon, coinage of Africa, and Barbie dolls. Puzzles might also employ pictures, audio files, video games, physical objects, and/or locations within MIT or the Boston area.
History
The Mystery Hunt was started in 1981 by then-graduate student Bradley 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 cent 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 for the next two years by Schaefer and after he graduated, the winners were given the honor of writing the hunt the next year.
Though metapuzzles have existed in some form for many Mystery Hunts, the structure regarding how the puzzles combine into metapuzzles and how puzzles are released varies. For example, in the 2006 Hunt, "antepuzzles" provided access to new rounds, whose answers were 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); in the 2009 Hunt, apart from the shorter introductory rounds, each main round had a unique structure and way of releasing new puzzles. In some Hunts, such as 1999's and 2008's, solvers are not told which sets of puzzles must be combined to create metapuzzles; figuring out the correct groupings is part of the puzzle.
While the hunt is hosted on MIT's campus, puzzles are generally delivered through a website that tracks team progress on puzzles that updates when puzzles are solved. Puzzles may also involve physical components to be solved on campus. In 2021 and 2022, the Mystery Hunt was held entirely remotely, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
List of Hunts
{| class="wikitable sortable" style="text-align:left;"
!Year
!Author
!Winner
!Theme description
|-
| 1981
| Brad Schaefer
|
|
|-
| 1982
| Brad Schaefer
|
|
|-
| 1983
| Brad Schaefer
| Holman Reactionary Army (Jean-Joseph Coté)
|
|
|-
| 1985
| JIM and DKS
|
|
|-
| 1986
|
|
|
|-
| 1987
|
|
|
|-
| 1988
| Eric Albert
|
|
|-
| 1990
|
|
|
|-
| 1991
| Jan Maessen and Stephen Rinehart
|
|
|-
| 1992
|
|
| "Captain Red Herring's Mystery Island"
|-
| 1993
|
|
| A search for the Holy Grail
|-
| 1994
| Eric Albert, Julian West, and others
|
| The cyberpunk genre
|-
| 1995
| Mark Gottlieb
| The Spanish Inquisition
| The game Clue
|-
| 1996
| Richard Garfield, Skaff Elias, et al.
| Chaos (Mark Gottlieb)
| Palindrome (Ainamania)
| Elvis Presley
|-
| 1998
| Palindrome (Ainamania)
| Iliaphay
| Getting a college degree in Enigmatology
|-
| 1999
| Acme (formerly Iliaphay)
| Setec Astronomy
| Carmen Sandiego
|-
| 2000
| Setec Astronomy
| Palindrome (PAINTTTNIAP)
| The movie The Wizard of Oz
|-
| 2001
| Palindrome (PAINTTTNIAP)
| Setec Astronomy
| The horror genre
|-
| 2002
| Setec Astronomy
| Acme
| The game Monopoly
|-
| 2003
| Acme
| Kappa Sig
| The movie The Matrix
|-
| 2004
| The French Armada (formerly Kappa Sig)
| Setec Astronomy
| The movie Time Bandits
|-
| 2005
| Setec Astronomy
| Physical Plant
| Superhero powers
|-
| 2006
| Physical Plant
| The Evil Midnight Bombers What Bomb At Midnight
| The espionage genre
|-
| 2007
| The Evil Midnight Bombers What Bomb At Midnight
| Palindrome (Dr. Awkward)
| Hell and the Seven Deadly Sins
|-
| 2008
| Palindrome (Dr. Awkward)
| The Evil Midnight Bombers What Bomb At Midnight
| A whodunit murder mystery
|-
| 2009
| The Evil Midnight Bombers What Bomb At Midnight
| Beginner's Luck
| A sci-fi themed hunt based around Escape from Zyzzlvaria, an invented science fiction board game
|-
| 2010
| Beginner's Luck
| Metaphysical Plant
| Alternate history and the (mostly fictional) history of the Mystery Hunt itself
|-
| 2011
| Metaphysical Plant
| Codex
| Video games, especially Super Mario Bros. and Portal
|-
| 2012
| Codex
| Manic Sages
| The movie and musical The Producers, and musical theatre in general
|-
| 2013
| Manic Sages
| The entire text of Atlas Shrugged
| A bank heist
|-
| 2014
| Alice Shrugged (formerly the entire text of Atlas Shrugged)
| One Fish Two Fish Random Fish Blue Fish
| Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland
|-
| 2015
| One Fish Two Fish Random Fish Blue Fish
| Luck, I Am Your Father
| The exploration of the ocean
|-
| 2016
| Luck, I Am Your Father
| Setec Astronomy
| The movie Inception, and sleep in general
|-
| 2017
| Setec Astronomy
| Death and Mayhem
| A role-playing game similar to Dungeons & Dragons
|-
| 2018
| Life and Order (formerly Death and Mayhem)
| Setec Astronomy
| The 2015 movie Inside Out
|-
| 2019
| Setec Astronomy
| Left Out
| Holidays, the Great Molasses Flood of 1919, and the movie The Nightmare Before Christmas
|-
| 2020
| Left Out
| ✈✈✈ Galactic Trendsetters ✈✈✈
| “Penny Park”, a fictional amusement park
|-
| 2021
| style="width: 25%;"| ✈✈✈ Galactic Trendsetters ✈✈✈
| style="width: 25%;"| Palindrome (Not So Boston)
| Exploring an alternate-universe version of MIT through a massively multiplayer online game
|-
| 2022
| style="width: 25%;"| Palindrome
| style="width: 25%;"| teammate
| Literary genres, and books in general
|-
| 2023
| style="width: 25%;"| teammate
| style="width: 25%;"| The Team Formerly Known as the Team Formerly Known as the Team Formerly Known as the Team Formerly Known as the Team Formerly Known as the Team to Be Named Later
| Exploring the "Puzzle Factory" and reactivating AIs created to write the Mystery Hunt
|-
| 2024
| style="width: 25%;"| The Team Formerly Known as the Team Formerly Known as the Team Formerly Known as the Team Formerly Known as the Team Formerly Known as the Team to Be Named Later
| style="width: 25%;"| Death and Mayhem
| Greek mythology
|-
| 2025
| style="width: 25%;"| Death and Mayhem
| style="width: 25%;"| Cardinality
| A film noir-style mystery
|-
| 2026
| style="width: 25%;"| Cardinality
| style="width: 25%;"| The Providence Bureau of Invest-Egg-Ations
| A Pokémon-style game
|}
See also
- University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt
- The Game
References
External links
- Official Mystery Hunt website
- Available online.
- Short Radio Piece About the Hunt on Weekend America
- Short video piece about the 2009 Hunt on G4's Attack of the Show!