[Palindrome] Mystery Hunt Demystification

[Scott Purdy <smpurdy btinternet com>]

THE MIT MYSTERY HUNT
by Eric Albert

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