Microsoft Puzzlehunt

The Microsoft Puzzlehunt is a roughly annual puzzle hunt usually held on the Microsoft campus at Redmond, WA, and typically spanning over two days. Teams are composed of up to 12 members. Formerly, there was a requirement that some number of members in the team must be Microsoft employees (usually a number between two and three), but this requirement was waived starting in 2022. Unlike most hunts, the Microsoft Puzzlehunt is written by a collaboration of several different teams, since Puzzlehunt 15. Each round is authored by a different team without any coordination or constraints on the answers or structure. Due to this, finishing the hunt involves solving a final puzzle instead of a typical metameta, and is constructed such that solving puzzles in any round gradually gives more information to solve it. The modular structure allows puzzle authors to also participate in the hunt.

History
The first Microsoft Puzzlehunt was held in 1999 by team TLA. Thereafter, a tradition where the winner of the previous hunt would host the next hunt. Exceptions were made if that team had hosted too recently, and instead another high-placing team would host instead. In 2009, the writing teams for Puzzlehunt 12 and Puzzlehunt 13 merged to form Puzzlehunt 123. This hunt, as well as Puzzlehunt 14, was simulcast in a location in the San Francisco Bay Area as well. Starting in Puzzlehunt 15, the responsibility of writing hunt was broken down into smaller pieces, and multiple groups were tasked with separate modules of the hunt. This modular puzzlehunt form would become the new standard format for Microsoft Puzzlehunt, although a single team wrote Puzzlehunts 18 and 23.

Puzzlehunt 21, originally scheduled to run in 2020, was delayed to 2021 and was hosted virtually off the Microsoft campus, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Puzzlehunt 22 was also held online, and for the first time in Microsoft Puzzlehunt history, the employee requirement was entirely removed (although teams wanting to hunt on campus still needed to have employees), with Puzzlehunt 23 following this tradition. Additionally, Puzzlehunt 23 was the first Microsoft hunt to be run on gph-site.