MIT Mystery Hunt 2019

MIT Mystery Hunt 2019 was the 39th iteration of the MIT Mystery Hunt, with kickoff occurring on January 15, 2021. Run by Setec Astronomy, the hunt was themed after holidays with a plot inspired by The Nightmare Before Christmas.

In this iteration of the Mystery Hunt, metapuzzles were consistently placed between two rounds and took some feeder answers from both rounds adjacent to them. Matching feeder answers to metapuzzles was left to the solvers and was a major component of the hunt's structure.

This was the most recent Mystery Hunt to use phone calls from HQ instead of an automated answer checker. This was also the most recent Mystery Hunt to not have an explicit upper limit on guess frequency (though the rate-limiting formula in 2020 was not revealed to teams until wrapup.)

The live hunt also ended with both of the leading teams (Left Out and Palindrome) having only First You Visit Burkina Faso and its associated meta as solves that could potentially give them progress. This is the only instance to date where an individual feeder puzzle that was completed by several other teams ultimately determined the winner of the Mystery Hunt. The incident inspired direct follow-ups to First You Visit Burkina Faso to appear in the Mystery Hunt in both 2020 (written by Left Out) and 2022 (written by Palindrome.)

Archive solve warning: It is not safe to look at the solution pages to completed feeder puzzles for this hunt unless your team has already solved that puzzle's associated meta because every feeder's solution page spoils which meta it feeds.

List of Rounds
* The metapuzzles for this round were also fed by puzzles in another round.

† Includes Your Birthday Town, April Fools' Day Town, and Molasses Awareness Day Town.