l33tminion | Entries tagged with puzzles

Mystery Hunt was this weekend, run by my team this time. I helped a minimal amount, but I did work hard through the actual run, mostly answering a run of hint requests. The hunt had a noir mystery theme, and the team did a phenomenal job and wrote some great puzzles.

In other news, the Biden administration wrapped up with an bizarre, implausible declaration that the ERA had actually been ratified years ago. (I mean props to Virginia, but that was in January of 2020, so why didn't Biden say anything about that before now. And it would require courts to decide that Congress can't place a deadline on ratification and states can't rescind their decision to ratify before an amendment is approved, it's doubtful they'd agree with either.) And also blanket preemptive pardons for his siblings and siblings-in-law, Mark Milley, and the Jan 6th Committee. I can see the perspective that the people in question have a patriotic duty to defend in court against any baseless, vindictive prosecutions Trump decides to bring. But also can see the perspective that you shouldn't just stand by and let people be put through that, when Trump has given some very strong indication that he intends to bring vindictive prosecutions for nonexistent crimes, without regard to whether he has anything that could reasonably prove a case to a jury. Gruesome stuff.

Trump spent the days before his inauguration launching two separate cryptocurrency scams. He kicked off his administration by withdrawing from the WTO and Paris Climate agreements, pardoning the rioters who attacked police officers as a small component of his plan to illegally toss entire states' 2020 elections, setting up legal efforts to trash the Constitutional guarantees of citizenship, and preparing for mass deportations. Elon Musk gave the Nazi salute twice in a row at his inauguration speeches. He's such a damned edgelord, the "how could you think I would do something like [thing I just obviously did]" gaslighting is the whole point to these people. Well, half the point. (To clarify, there are lots of gestures where you end up with a straight arm and hand angled down at some point in the gesture which don't look like that, this is video. And that is not how a my heart goes out gesture is generally done.)

The speech that most comes to my mind today is this one.

Current Mood: stressed

Julie is very busy with work-things this weekend, so I am very busy with Eris-tending and all the household chores. We did take an excursion to the park in the snow today, and we ran into Provo who was traversing the neighborhood sans jacket mid-snowstorm. True New England spirit.

I usually write a bit about the Mystery Hunt puzzles each year, this year's are up here. This one was themed after all sorts of books, as teams raced to save (and subsequently escape from) Book Space. Some fun puzzles I encountered during hunt:

Teach Us, Amelia Bedilia - A puzzle about suspicious tasks.

Kiki's Delivery Service - A classic identify/sort/index/solve.

The Thin Pan - A puzzle of monkeys and murders.

A Night Out With Your Buds - A weird word search, I helped my team figure this one out by identifying what was being searched for.

The Mlystery Hunt, as Told by a Thief of the Bases - A puzzle about the Mystery Hunt and everyone's favorite absurdist fantasy sport.

My Son, the Science Fiction Fan - This puzzle made me more nostalgic than it probably should have.

Current Mood: awake

I need to write more regularly. I'm so scattered.

I got myself an eye doctor appointment earlier this week. It's amazing how fast it goes from "hmm, maybe I should get a new pair of glasses" to "I really need new glasses now". So really looking forward to getting a new pair.

Mystery Hunt was this weekend. My team did pretty well (came in third), and I was able to help with a few puzzles. Definitely a well-written hunt, another one run all online. Maybe in person again next year?

I watched a bit of AGDQ as well. Didn't realize it was on this week, I'll have to catch some of the replays.

Current Mood: tired

Other stuff a bit farther in the past:

Last weekend was the 2021 MIT Mystery Hunt, written by [whoosh!] ✈✈✈ Galactic Trendsetters ✈✈✈ [neowwww!], and it was incredible puzzling fun. This year's hunt took place at the MYST 2021 physics conference, having hunters explore an alternate universe and MIT's alternate-universe counterpart, the Perpendicular Institute of the World (aka ⊥IW, "The Perp"), and solve the anomalous effects caused by the introduction of some misplaced objects.

Somewhat surprisingly, Galactic actually came up with the alternate-universe concept and the MMO-esque "projection device" game that was a central part of the Hunt's structure well before it became clear, late last March, that an in-person gathering at this-universe MIT would probably not be happening after all. And they manged to run a remarkable Hunt, with great puzzles and so much of the usual MIT flavor, despite the logistical hurdles of doing everything remote.

My team, Death & Mayhem, came in second this year, and we were within ten minutes of the first place team, Palindrome. So a good showing, and we don't have to write the next hunt! (As much as I like winning, this is not a great year for me to help write Hunt.)

Puzzles and solutions can now be found on the Hunt site. Some of my favorites from this year:

Hockfield Court - From this year's intro round. If you've never solved a Mystery Hunt puzzle, try this one, it's extremely bite sized. Five crossword clues and a title, that's all there is to it! (As always, the answer to Mystery Hunt puzzles is a word or phrase.)

Hey, Can You Give Me A Hand With This Puzzle? - A great example of an intro round puzzle that teaches solvers some useful things!

Infinite Corridor - The Mystery Hunt round where the madlads did it, they achieved infinite puzzles! Well, actually 100,000 puzzles. Or, to look at it another way, five. One of the puzzle types, Infinite Corridor Simulator, is the core of the round's extremely clever self-referential metapuzzle.

⊥IW.giga - A round with a nested upside-down meta structure where you work your way down to eventually backsolve ⊥IW.nano. Helping (okay, mostly watching) people figure out the mechanic behind Level One and get that perfect leap of a backsolve answer was amazing.

🤔 - An unusual crossword puzzle with animated clues.

Title of the Puzzle - Straightforward but funny.

Successively More Abundant in Verbiage - I enjoyed helping solve this puzzle.

A Bit of Light - A fun decoding puzzle, which I also helped solve.

Complexity Evaluation - A very complicated math puzzle.

Befuddled - I helped solve this esoteric programming puzzle. It's a fun one, though it was super frustrating until I noticed an important detail we'd overlooked.

Current Mood: impressed

Mystery Hunt was this weekend, this time themed after a theme park. Team Left Out (like any regrets after participating in this Hunt) ran an excellent and meaty hunt with really great puzzles and really interesting structure, won by Galactic Trendsetters well into Sunday afternoon. My team managed to be fifth and last to finish, just in under the wire, and it was pretty cool to see an endgame again, this year's was funny and heartwarming and cool. We weren't that far behind the winning team, they found the Coin just as we started on the runaround, but per Mystery Hunt usual, not winning is its own reward.

Some stand-out puzzles I worked on this year:

King's Ransom (rebuses and cutout clues)
Hackin' the Beanstalk (program fragments)
Horse (M:tG graph logic puzzle)
Crocodile (animals paired by clues)
Magic Railway (a "duck puzzle", except the ducks are wizards and it's more of a duck LARP)
Checkerboard (really creative source material for this puzzle)
Domino Maze (literally an expansion set of Domino Maze puzzles that's also a Mystery Hunt puzzle)
Zip Line (a zip file of zip codes)
The Trebuchet (boggle word searches with a twist)
Snack Bar (crossword construction from piles of snacks)
The Excelerator (giant spreadsheet of trigrams)
Breakfast Menu (menu items as heraldic descriptions)

(I wish I'd been early enough to figure out the mechanic for that last one, since it relates to something I learned about only recently. Was a fun puzzle.)

Edited to add: Also, two members of the writing team literally got married at Hunt kickoff. Which I suppose is one way to handle it if you have to write Hunt and plan a wedding in the same year.

Current Mood: cheerful

The puzzles from this year's Mystery Hunt are up. That was themed after the movie The Nightmare Before Christmas, holidays in general, and the Great Molasses Flood (a Boston disaster that occurred 100 years ago this year). The hunt had an unusual structure, where instead of each metapuzzle drawing from a round's answer, each took some unique subset of answers from each of a pair or rounds.

Since then, I barely remember what I've been up to for the past two weeks.

Xave has been running Unknown Armies at our tabletop gaming group, and that's going well. I went out for a very nice dinner at Juliet with Julie last weekend. I took Eris to the aquarium again last Sunday, and to the bakery yesterday morning. Julie got Eris a new watch which she is excited about.

Eristic Improvements: Reading the hour from a clock with hands

Current Mood: tired

Work: It's the end of the quarter. This one has been good in some ways and very rough in others.

Friends: Xavid and Sarah got married this past weekend. Was a wonderful occasion, full of love and puzzles (Zan organized an Escape Room outing for the pre-wedding "bachelorx party", and there was a very cool ice-breaker puzzle tied up in the theme and party favors at the reception). Eris had a marvelous time, too. (I asked if she enjoyed the wedding, and her response was a very enthusiastic "princess tea party!")

Family: Julie's grandmother died on Sunday. I'm glad she had the chance to meet some of her great-grandchildren, though I wish her health had allowed her to get more out of it. Julie braved a last-minute trip home with the kid to spend some extra time with family. There's nothing that can make this sort of thing less sad. It's a real reminder that time together is a precious thing in life.

Leisure: This week, my parents are in town, and we'll be heading up to Sandy Island next week. Hopefully will be a good chance for reading and relaxation. I expect Eris will get a lot out of it this year. (She's still too young for the children's program, though. Little Red School House next year!)

Eristic improvements: Singing whole songs from memory, running longer, more imaginative narrative play (favorite subjects: waiting for the bus, buying ice cream, cooking, taking care of babies), more interest in construction/building toys.

Current Mood: awake

The MIT Mystery Hunt was this past weekend. Unusually, the Hunt was won a little past four on Saturday morning (usually it goes into the wee hours of Sunday). More unusually, it was my team (Death & Mayhem) that won it! (Which means we won the indubitable honor and dubious prize of writing the Hunt for next year. Exciting!)

Despite the misestimated length, this year's Dungeons-and-Dragons-themed Hunt was really excellent—fun, entertaining, and full of lots of really well-constructed puzzles.

Puzzles and solutions are up, so here are some of my favorites (link goes to puzzle, spoilers are behind the "solution" link there):
The Sacred and the Mundane (we backsolved this one from a meta-puzzle, then went back and solved it the right way for fun)
Pic of the Litter (note that the text not in italics is instructions)
Epic Raft Battles of History (great title)
Hexed Adventure (great puzzle form)
How I Spent My Pre/Postapocalyptic Vacation (I really enjoyed working this one out)
Above Your Pay Grade (I helped mostly with the extraction)
Boston Burgers (I helped solve this by pushing for a more straightforward approach to extracting an answer)
Listicle (Julie was the one on our team who figured out the form of this puzzle)

On Saturday we had a lazy day, wandering around town, and then going to a celebratory dinner with the Hunt team. Sunday, we went to dim sum with Ingress-playing friends, then took the kid to the aquarium (Julie's brother and sister-in-law got us an aquarium membership as a Christmas gift). Monday, we went to wrapup for Hunt, then Julie went to lab while I took the long route home with Eris.

The kid has been much more interested in upright mobility lately, traversing the room while holding onto a hand. She's not taking unsupported steps yet, but it won't be long. She seems to be working on some teeth again, judging from the degree of chewing on everything and how uncomfortable she's been getting in the evenings.

Eristic improvements: Walking (unsteadily) with dynamic support, walking (reasonably well) with static support, standing unsupported (including standing up with no support at hand; moderate duration, with effort to balance).

Current Mood: cheerful

The MIT Mystery Hunt was last weekend, this time themed after 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It was an unusually good year for my team, we came in second (only 50 minutes after the winning team), so I finally got to go on the runaround at the end of hunt (which this year involved a sequence of challenges that took us from half-past-midnight Sunday until nearly 6AM, including a puzzle involving a giant word-search of previous puzzle answers and an awesome game of human pictionary in Lobby 7). I also helped solve some very clever meta-puzzles, a text adventure time travel puzzle, and a puzzle consisting entirely of anagrams of the word "random".

Spent the rest of the weekend severely hunt-lagged.

Still playing a lot of Ingress. Just reached level 8 (the end of the base level progression in the game). I never got into playing World of Warcraft because I figured any MMO would become a terrible time-sink, so should have seen that coming. At least a game that involves wandering around outside won't be as bad for my health.

I've recovered from last week's winter cold, but Julie still has a persistent cough.

Current Mood: tired

I continue to fail to write.

Last weekend was the MIT Mystery Hunt. This year was Alice in Wonderland themed, surprisingly a Hunt theme that hadn't been done before. I wasn't able to focus on hunt as much as in past years, but I participated some. My team had their best performance yet, actually finishing all of hunt this time and coming in fifth place. Puzzles and solutions are here, my favorite puzzles included:

A round played in reverse
A fitting sequel to last year's Etsy puzzle
A straightforward physical object puzzle that was nonetheless really cool
This brilliant crossword puzzle
A good duck puzzle, as usual
One cool logic puzzle

My work continues to be busy, but I'm finally seeing some positive results on my project of the last few weeks. The reading group at work is now reading Joel on Software.

Watched The Wolf Children Ame and Yuki, which was everything I expected from Mamoru Hosoda (the director). A good, moving story, and some really well-done animation.

Went out to a concert on Wednesday, saw Elizabeth and the Catapault at Brighton Music Hall. Good stuff. Opening band was Neulore.

This weekend, Melissa (my sister) is in town and we're taking some time to visit extended family.

It continues to be super-cold in Boston, but this week's snowstorm wasn't nearly as bad as anticipated.

This all seems pretty fragmentary, which is yet another reminder to write things I want to write when they're fresh in my head.

Current Mood: optimistic

This year's Mystery Hunt (themed after financial shenanigans and heist movies) was amazing and crazy, lasting slightly over 73 hours despite hunt organizers' (Manic Sages') attempt to speed things along (increasing the rate of free puzzle solutions, adding hints, a late-game decision to require only that five of the six rounds be solved instead of all six, and a foreshortened runaround at the end). The longest MIT Mystery Hunt yet, and probably the hardest. Certainly one of the most complex. I wasn't of much help to my team this time except very early in the game. On one puzzle the solution was staring me in the face for hours and I didn't realize until shortly after hunt was completed.

Only two teams completed five rounds: The winner, the team whose team name was the entire text of Atlas Shrugged (evidently the sign-up website had no limit on the length of team names), and Palindrome. My team, Death from Above (going by the name "Death & Mayhem" after merging with the team named Mayhem) was among six more teams approximately tied for both places, and might have done even better if not for technical glitches (everywhere, including MIT's email system being flaky) and late-game slip-ups on the part of the organizers.

Solutions aren't up until hunt organizers have recovered from their ordeal, so I'll try to point to a few of the more interesting puzzles then.

Current Mood: impressed

The MIT Mystery Hunt was this weekend. It was fun. This year's Hunt was themed after "The Producers"; Max and Leo are up to their usual schemes and require the teams' help to make their new scam plays into sure-fire box-office flops (included rounds of puzzles like "A Circus Line" (meta-puzzle solution: ELEPHANT IN A TUTU), "Okla-Holmes-a" (CORNY CLUES), and "Into the Woodstock" (RAPUNZEL HAS AFRO)).

Puzzles and solutions are here. Cool puzzles I helped on:
Pure and Simple (figured out the form when the Muse struck, helped solve the rest)
Zugzwaang (someone pointed out the misspelling, I figured out the form from that plus Wikipedia and helped solve)
Tax... In... Space... (this is a straightforward(ish) puzzle)
Winning Condtions (someone else figure out the form, I wrote a program to help solve it)
Sounds Good to Me (Xave figured out the form, I helped solve)

The above are all pretty decent puzzles to try if you like puzzles (the answer to Hunt puzzles is always a word or short phrase), or just to look at the solutions if you're curious how such things are designed.

In unrelated Boston news, it is now COLD.

Current Mood: cheerful

I should have mentioned in that last post my favorite puzzles of this year's Hunt:
Parts of Speech
Unlikely Situations
Mario Clash

A lot of Hunt puzzles have the following form: Figure out the structure, solve the puzzle, extract an answer. Personally, I prefer puzzles that concentrate difficulty in the middle step and have a little cleverness in the first. Incredibly frustrating to solve a puzzle and be unable to solve the solution.

Parts of Speech is hard (but straightforward) once you figure out the structure (not hard, but creative). Unlikely Situations is relatively easy once you figure out the structure, which may be easy or difficult (but is probably easy for most Hunters). Mario Clash is easy once you figure out the structure (which there are many, many clues for; this one should have been easy but no one on my team got it). Extracting the answer is easy for all of those.

Current Mood: amused

Mystery Hunt was fun. The full hunt is here, and the answers are all up (clicking "call in answer" will now take you to the page with the solution). My team didn't do very well this year, we solved a few meta-puzzles from each round but only completed one super-meta. I wish we'd gotten Cut and Paste (got off on the wrong track and never figured it out) and the Megaman meta-puzzle (we never got on the right track on this one, though that shouldn't have been so hard) and the third solution for Making the Possible Impossible (all the puzzles that round had three solutions and we got the first two). Wasn't the best year for hunt, since I was sick (among other people). But still was fun.

The rest of the weekend was good, too. Had a Monday brunch date with someone I met off of OKC.

My shirts arrived from Daswani. And my worries about the color of the shirts have been largely dispelled, they all look good. If the fit isn't perfect, I'll just get some alterations on those as well.

The weather today was crazy. Hopefully I won't slip and fall on my way to work tomorrow.

Current Mood: awake

Hunt is on, with a Mario (or video games in general) theme this year. Unfortunately, I can't brain today, due to a cold. Hopefully once some helpful medicine kicks in, I'll be up and running.

Xave's Dresden Files tabletop game is starting, which looks like it should be fun. I'm still not a big fan of Fate, though, it requires more fiction-writing-type creativity than I actually have.

There's other stuff I should comment on, but I've been behind on everything this week.

Current Mood: awake

Restaurant Week Boston is coming up again! This is most exciting.
Some of the best from Mystery Hunt:
- The ultimate knights and knaves puzzle
- A Futurama-themed fox/goose/grain puzzle
- Two other nifty ones that I worked on.
An essay on the WPA: Why it was necessary, why it worked, and why it could work again.
The Missing Memos: An ACLU-compiled list of Bush-administration memos on detention, interrogation, surveillance, and executive power, most of which remain classified. On a related note, I wonder if anything interesting will show up here in the next few months.
The RNC elected a new chair, who started the job by firing everyone.
One bonus bit of randomness.

Current Mood: bouncy

Started the long weekend today, alternating time between Arisia and Mystery Hunt.

Mystery Hunt: Kickoff was great, great bunch of puzzles this year, I solved one with a small team of hunters and was a minor help on a few others.

Arisia: The panels didn't really draw me in, although there are some more interesting ones later in the weekend. It was great to see Anna again, and I also ran into a bunch of other people I haven't seen in a while. Really a great crowd. Looking forward to some of the parties tomorrow night.

Decided to walk home in the freezing wind rather than trying to crash on a couch, since I sleep miserably in suboptimal conditions. I wish I could just skip it, but I know from experience that a proper night's sleep is the way to go if I want to maximize my fun overall.

Current Mood: cold

Got this from an add on the subway. Interesting if you're a programmer, or just a person who likes puzzles.

Current Mood: awake

Well, I'm working full time this week, which is good. I'm very tired, though, and my spring allergies are acting up, which doesn't help.

I watched some random anime. I-My-Me Strawberry-Eggs is strange... Record of Lodoss War isn't bad, but it's rather cheesy and clichéd.

Enigma is really cool.

Also, my travel plans are set up for Confluence.

Current Mood: tired

An article and an essay on peak oil.
An article on how environmentalism should reverse some of its opinions.
An entry on John Bolton (quotes), Bush's appointee for UN Ambassador. Either this is a very stupid move or Bush is trying to destroy US relations with the UN. Either way, I'm against it.
A game. Don't give away the solution, give other people a chance to ~~flail around~~ figure it out on their own.
An article on The DaVinci Code.
The Day of Silence was today. Tomorrow, the Fundamentalists plan a Day of ~~Truth~~ Bigotry in response.

Current Mood: calm

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Sam

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Sam's L33t Journal

(Secret Master Plan Draft v0.2)

Entries tagged with puzzles

The Heist

MH Epilogue

Awesome Puzzles Done Quick

Mirror MIT Mysteries

Left Out, Like Objections at a Wedding

Puzzle Commemoration Day

Occasions, Happy and Sad

Monsters and Mayhem

Undersea Adventure

More Consciousness

In Which the Entire Text of Atlas Shrugged Defeats EVIL

Showtime for Hunters at MIT

Favorite Puzzles

Hunting Done

Puzzles and a Cold

A Few Links of Interest

Arisia and Mystery Hunt

Solve This

Rushing In

Links of DOOM! (Or Not...)