Star Rats

Star Rats is the optional prologue round of the 2022 MIT Mystery Hunt. It was released on December 13th, 2021, approximately one month before the Mystery Hunt. It is the first instance of a recent Mystery Hunt having puzzles released prior to the Hunt's official start. The puzzles, being optional, were not used again later in the 2022 Hunt, and provided teams that solved with no advantage, though the puzzles could be used to help teams familiarize themselves with writing team Palindrome's puzzle writing style as well as the website interface.

Description
The round is themed around finding the "Star Rats," a group of escaped "mutant rodents with unimaginable powers," depicted on the front cover of the round's PDF. The round centers around asking various "rodent buddies" for their assistance in finding the Star Rats. Each puzzle is named after a famous fictional rodent, hinting at the main hunt's theme of books and literature.

List of Puzzles
This round, being fully optional, is also available as a PDF booklet.

Metapuzzle (Star Rats)
The Star Rats meta is a mostly-pure meta, though it comes with a shell:

[insert solve path]