Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
If you have an email ending in @hotmail.com, @live.com or @outlook.com (or any other Microsoft-related domain), please consider changing it to another email provider; Microsoft decided to instantly block the server's IP, so emails can't be sent to these addresses.
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
2012 Mystery Hunt!
The 2012 MIT Mystery Hunt is coming up very soon, and you are all invited to join our team!
What is the MIT Mystery Hunt? It's an annual puzzle-hunt held in January, where teams of unlimited size come together to solve lots of puzzles and metapuzzles in order to recover a special coin. In recent years, Hunts have generally been themed on a certain topic (such as time travel, space sci-fi, or videogames), giving it a bit of an alternate reality game feel; these themes are typically relevant in metapuzzles.
The Hunt these days consists of over 100 puzzles, typically organized into rounds of 5 to 15 puzzles each; each round also has a metapuzzle that uses the solutions to its component puzzles. For one January weekend, conveniently the one before Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the U.S. (so people can sleep in afterwards), participants work on puzzles upon puzzles round the clock, until a team recovers the coin, and wins the Hunt. Typically, Hunts last around 48~60 hours.
The winners get to write next year's Hunt. Don't worry, we're nowhere near that good.
Want a TV Tropes style introduction? Here you go.
The 2012 Hunt will begin at noon eastern time on Friday the 13th of January, 2012, and ends...well, whenever.
the Mystery Hunt homepage: http://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/ (includes old Hunts you can look through)
the TV Tropes subforum that we used last year: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/conversations.php?topic=ducksoup
Oh by the way: If you live around the Boston/Cambridge area, we would LOVE to have an on-campus delegation from our team. Every Hunt has some events that take place on-campus, and while they're rarely needed to solve individual puzzles, they are sometimes needed for a few metas. And the intro usually draws this immense crowd in the entrance lobby of MIT, while the wrap-up at the end where the writers talk about the Hunt and some of the solutions also takes place on campus. Plus, huddling getting together in an MIT classroom and working through the night and day and night and day solving puzzles is actually a surprisingly fun experience. Just make sure to bring lots of scratch paper, writing utensils, and extension cords. You can also locate your base off-campus if you wish, though for on-campus bases team leaders have to go and request one.
Oh yeah, our team is named Duck Soup, but it seems that a lot of the old guard are not going to be participating, so if you wanna change the name, I'm open to that.
If you want to join us, go here and make an account: http://ducksoup.vbprog.zonexus.net/ . As a bonus for joining, you get to work on puzzles that I and arks (from TV Tropes) have written. They're MH-style puzzles, so if you haven't ever seen MH puzzles before, here's a good intro. The puzzles (at least mine) are a tad easier than standard MH puzzles but that's so that you can reasonably solve them on your own.
What is the MIT Mystery Hunt? It's an annual puzzle-hunt held in January, where teams of unlimited size come together to solve lots of puzzles and metapuzzles in order to recover a special coin. In recent years, Hunts have generally been themed on a certain topic (such as time travel, space sci-fi, or videogames), giving it a bit of an alternate reality game feel; these themes are typically relevant in metapuzzles.
The Hunt these days consists of over 100 puzzles, typically organized into rounds of 5 to 15 puzzles each; each round also has a metapuzzle that uses the solutions to its component puzzles. For one January weekend, conveniently the one before Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the U.S. (so people can sleep in afterwards), participants work on puzzles upon puzzles round the clock, until a team recovers the coin, and wins the Hunt. Typically, Hunts last around 48~60 hours.
The winners get to write next year's Hunt. Don't worry, we're nowhere near that good.
Want a TV Tropes style introduction? Here you go.
The 2012 Hunt will begin at noon eastern time on Friday the 13th of January, 2012, and ends...well, whenever.
the Mystery Hunt homepage: http://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/ (includes old Hunts you can look through)
the TV Tropes subforum that we used last year: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/conversations.php?topic=ducksoup
Oh by the way: If you live around the Boston/Cambridge area, we would LOVE to have an on-campus delegation from our team. Every Hunt has some events that take place on-campus, and while they're rarely needed to solve individual puzzles, they are sometimes needed for a few metas. And the intro usually draws this immense crowd in the entrance lobby of MIT, while the wrap-up at the end where the writers talk about the Hunt and some of the solutions also takes place on campus. Plus, huddling getting together in an MIT classroom and working through the night and day and night and day solving puzzles is actually a surprisingly fun experience. Just make sure to bring lots of scratch paper, writing utensils, and extension cords. You can also locate your base off-campus if you wish, though for on-campus bases team leaders have to go and request one.
Oh yeah, our team is named Duck Soup, but it seems that a lot of the old guard are not going to be participating, so if you wanna change the name, I'm open to that.
If you want to join us, go here and make an account: http://ducksoup.vbprog.zonexus.net/ . As a bonus for joining, you get to work on puzzles that I and arks (from TV Tropes) have written. They're MH-style puzzles, so if you haven't ever seen MH puzzles before, here's a good intro. The puzzles (at least mine) are a tad easier than standard MH puzzles but that's so that you can reasonably solve them on your own.
Comments
Because I live in Alberta =/
So yes, welcome!
We will eventually have an IRC channel, once I get that set up. It'll be on Espernet, so we might also find some #yackfest and #tropers people there.
Now to cheat!
!You should go join and solve arks's puzzle! "Helpful Hints" is the name of the puzzle
And mine! my puzzles
The 2012 Mystery Hunt begins this coming Friday, and you should all join! No, really, you should. You can participate anytime you want.
Join our team forums to see announcements from the Hunt organizers.
If you want to join the pool party, please let me know by tomorrow (Wednesday) 5 PM eastern standard time.
If you are in the Boston area, there's a workshop tonight for introducing newbies to the Hunt.
Here is a link to the event details: http://math.columbia.edu/~nsnyder/workshop
This will take place tonight, 7 to 8 PM eastern standard time, on the MIT campus in room 6-120.
You can join this even if you can't be around for the actual Hunt.
Mystery Hunt is on!
Well, not quite. It begins in about 6 minutes.
If you are interested in joining our team, visit our IRC channel (#ducksoup on irc.esper.net) and/or join our forum ( http://ducksoup.vbprog.zonexus.net/ ).
The puzzle server is http://borbonicusandbodley.com/ ; our username is DuckSoup, and our password is tropers.
The first ten puzzles have been revealed!
(They were at 1 PM; I was at lunch.)
And we've solved our first puzzle!