THE HUNT
The home page for the MIT Mystery Hunt is:
http://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/
The place to find some prior Hunts and their puzzles (some with complete
solutions) is:
http://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/hunthistory.html
A copy of a 1991 article I wrote about the Hunt for Games magazine is
available at:
http://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/gamesarticle.html
You should understand that my article is a *romanticization* of the hunt.
Any activity in which a couple of hundred lunatics do bizarre things for
several days straight is bound to have some striking moments, and I
colorfully chronicled those. Such an activity is also bound to have many
moments of tedium and frustration. Sometimes those moments stretch into
hours. I carefully skipped over those parts, but do not fool yourself:
every hunt has them.
(These tough stretches are where the personalities of team members can
really influence the pleasure of the situation -- for better or for worse.
See below for more on this.)
My Games article was written long ago, and fashions in hunts ebb and flow
over the years. Hunts back then had much more running around the campus
semi-mindlessly (for example, trying to find a plaque with a specified set
of words on it) and more borderline-to-outright illegal stuff (breaking
into rooms, say, or going out on the roofs). Recent hunts have been
*much* more puzzle-oriented, with the MIT campus more of a backdrop than a
main stage.
To get a feel for recent hunts, check out the hunthistory URL above and
look at the puzzles for the last couple of years.
* * *
THE TEAM
New team members often mention their fear that they are "out of their
league" and that they will be of little or no help during the hunt.
Nothing could be farther from the truth.
While I always enjoy having superbright ultraknowledgeable folks on the
team, I remind you that our primary mandate is To Have a Good Time. The
correlation between megabraininess and fun-ness is unclear at best, and
may even be negative (though I doubt it).
But even if our only goal were to solve all of the puzzles quicker than
any other team (which is, I agree, one brand of Fun), pure analytic power
would not be sufficient to get the job done. Not by a long shot!
To choose just a few examples from previous hunts:
1) We were given a set of plastic baggies, each baggie containing a spice.
We had to identify each spice.
2) There was a scavenger hunt in which we had to track down many odd
objects. One was a rubber-band ball at least 2" in diameter. No one on
the team had one, so my then three-year-old son made us one. He also lent
us a blue stuffed animal. Those were real, important contributions that
materially helped the team effort.
3) We were given a videotape which contained, among other things, short
cartoon clips. We had to identify the (sometimes obscure) Disney
character in each clip.
Other Hunts have required knowledge of breakfast cereals, rock and
classical music, the ingredient lists of various brands of soda, the
physiognomies of teen heartthrobs, the names of Pokemon characters, plus
other trivia of all shapes and sizes. Not to mention the large number of
"aha!" puzzles in each hunt, where analytic thought seems to only make
things worse, and you have to wait for inspiration to strike. ("Say...
how about if we wrap that dotted piece of string around a Coke can?")
Every team member on every team I've run has contributed usefully.
Remember, we have to solve the bulk of the puzzles --
solving 50% of them really, really fast and then getting stuck doesn't
help much. So, if you're willing to hand over a nude photograph of
yourself, or you happen to have an unopened snack food in your pantry with
an expiration date that's long past, your contribution is just as crucial
as the person who conquers the Vignierre cipher in their head, or who can
read Indo-European like a native.
Most important of all: NO ONE can solve the hunt alone. I doubt that any
*ten* people would have a competitive chance, nowadays. There are too
many puzzles, and they are too hard. Winning is not a sprint, it's a
marathon.
Sprinting is easy: just put your head down and go. Marathons require a
whole different level of maturity and understanding: when to press, when
to regroup, how to pace yourself. A marathon team needs a dozen
non-analytic qualities to succeed. Perhaps most crucial is that
hard-to-define but you-know-it-when-it's-there thing called "team spirit"
or "morale."
Hunts are long. Things get stuck. Puzzles have bugs, making them
unsolvable. People start to fray around the edges. Pure brain-power
teams lose their advantage, squabbling acrimoniously or breaking into
smaller teams which will be swept away. Better constructed teams trade
some weary jokes, then go out for pizza (or even go to bed), coming back
refreshed and alert, ready to kick puzzle butt.
I've yet to meet *my* perfect Mystery Hunt team member but, when I do,
I'll recognize them by the following key phrases: "The tireder I get, the
cheerfuller I get", "When I'm under stress, I relax by giving back rubs to
everyone around me", and, of course, "I think the best part of
team-solving hypercomplex puzzles is checking other people's work."
All team members can (and will!) help this team. Smart folks are welcome,
and should remember to bring their brains. But everyone else better show
up, too.
-- Eric