MIT Mystery Hunt 2023

MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 was the 43rd iteration of the MIT Mystery Hunt, with kickoff occurring at noon on Friday, January 13th, 2023 and wrap-up at noon the following Monday, January 16th. The coin was found at 7:23AM EST on Monday by Team to Be Named Later. Run by teammate, the hunt extended much longer than intended, prompting the release of several 'free answer' rewards, likely in an attempt to make sure that teams would be capable of finishing the hunt prior to wrap-up.

While a museum theme was presented during signups and lasted through the opening kickoff skit into the hunt itself, other themes were also presented, resulting in the hunt being able to be divided into several 'stages' based on particular overarching visual and story themes.

Admiral Boötes’ Cosmic Discovery Expedition: Further Galaxies, a followup puzzle hunt featuring a more complete version of the Admiral Boötes’ Cosmic Discovery Expedition round, will be held on June 2, 2023.

Plot
Prior to the hunt, teams were invited to participate in the grand opening of 'The Museum of Interesting Things', which happened to take place during the kickoff for the hunt. When teams did arrive, they were introduced to the museum by its staff. However, due to apparent understaffing, they then announced that they would have to postpone the grand opening until they could find more curators to vet the interesting things contained within. Turning to the teams in attendance, the current staff offered to give the teams a 'test' to see if they were capable of joining the museum team, by having them investigate some of the interesting things already on display, leading them into their first few rounds.

In addition to the museum, teams were also introduced to MATE, an AI helper developed by Teammate in order to help them write the hunt. They specified that MATE had 'written every puzzle in the hunt' and that he would 'write every puzzle for every future hunt' as well. These statements were reinforced by MATE appearing on every puzzle page, providing both a loading screen and chatbot function to solvers.

Eventually, however, MATE gradually slowed down when loading puzzles, until they were no longer loading anything properly. If interrupted properly, solvers could use this glitch to 'break out' of the museum and make their way to the Puzzle Factory, an industrial building where, presumably, every Mystery Hunt was created.

Mentions in Other Media

 * Caltech Magazine - Caltech Students and Alumni Take on the World’s Hardest Puzzle Hunt at MIT—and Win.

Write Ups
This is a list of write ups about Mystery Hunt 2023.

From teammate

 * Alex Irpan - A Prelude to the Inevitable Long Post About MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 - Writing Mystery Hunt 2023
 * Evan Chen - Power Overwhelming
 * Lumia - mystery hunt write-up
 * Nicholai Dimov - Building the 2023 MIT Mystery Hunt
 * Rahul Sridhar - Mystery Hunt 2023
 * Reddit AMA with teammate

From Others

 * Adalbert - (SPOILERS) 2023 MIT Mystery Hunt Write-up
 * Ben Smith - Mystery Hunt 2023
 * betaveros - 2023 MIT Mystery Hunt
 * chaotic_iak - MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 recap
 * CJ Q. - Two hundred puzzles, fifty years later
 * Dan Katz - 2023 Mystery Hunt, Part 1: Less is More 2023 Mystery Hunt, Part 2: More is Less
 * David Hill - MIT Mystery Hunt Sends Scott Seiver Searching for a Solution
 * /dev/joe - /dev/joe's Experience at MIT Mystery Hunt 2023
 * Eric Berlin - How Hard Is Your Hunt?
 * ermsta - Mystery Hunt 2023 Team Statistics
 * fauxklore - MIT Mystery Hunt 2023
 * inexactpuzzles - MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Recap
 * Level 51 - There’s No AI in Teammate: a MIT Mystery Hunt 2023 Warstory
 * Michael Andersen - Puzzles Designed for a Crowd at the MIT Mystery Hunt
 * pichusuperlover - Pichu’s 2023 mystery hunt adventures
 * Procyon - Procyon Near the MIT Mystery Hunt
 * seekingferret - (no subject)
 * Tim - An arbitrary MH23 write-up
 * Um_nik - MIT Mystery Hunt

Trivia

 * This hunt is the first hunt to have a team size soft cap of 60 people, with all previous team size soft caps (between 2018-2022) being stated as 75.
 * This hunt was the first edition of the MIT Mystery Hunt to take place on-campus since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, after two hunts (MH21 and MH22) taking place entirely online.
 * As a result, this is also the first edition of the MITMH to utilize the TIM Ticket system of accessing campus.
 * This is the first edition of the MITMH to disallow the presence of any team members in classrooms/on campus outside of dorms from the hours of 1AM to 6AM.