MIT Mystery Hunt 2020

MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 was the 40th iteration of the MIT Mystery Hunt, with kickoff occurring on January 17th, 2020. Run by Left Out, the hunt began with a live wedding ceremony of two of the team's members, before proceeding into the customary opening skit. The hunt revolved around a fictional theme venue known as Penny Park, and the efforts of the park's owner to draw in new guests by fixing problems and introducing experimental new attractions.

Plot
After getting married, two members of Left Out decided to have their honeymoon at Penny Park, a theme park from their youth. However, upon arrival, they were informed by Penny Miller, the owner of the park and granddaughter of the park's founder, that the park would be closing forever after that weekend, due to continued low attendance. Upon hearing this the mascots of the park, the Loonie Toonies, came up with a plan to save the park; with a large group of people attending the final weekend along with the newlyweds, the mascots encourages everyone to group together into teams and experience the park to its fullest.

By experiencing all of the park's attractions and fixing any problems they encounter, teams were able to generate Buzz, a metric of how popular they were making the park. As the park gained popularity, areas of the park that were originally closed to the public opened up to the new visitors. Eventually, when a significant amount of Buzz had been generated, teams were able to talk with Penny directly.

Penny explained to teams that, while the original park was founded by her grandmother, Judy, she had also attempted to expand the park since taking over. However, none of her ideas panned out due to various oversights in design. Acknowledging the situation, she recruited the teams to help fix these experimental regions and get them ready for public release. By working on these areas, teams helped to generate something new to help the park get back on its feet: Wonder.

As teams finished their job of fixing the park, they eventually came across a secret tunnel underneath the main square, leading deep underground to a mysterious machine. After some investigation, Penny and the teams discovered that the machine was capable of generating Buzz indefinitely, something that could save the park and guarantee its success for years to come. While it took quite a bit of work, teams were able to power the machine up and as thanks for saving the park, Penny presented them with a keepsake of their time there:.

In the News

 * Popular Mechanics - Pancakes, Euphoria, and a Robot Parade: Inside MIT's Grueling Puzzle Competition

From Team Left Out

 * Wei-Hwa Huang - What I Did For Mystery Hunt 2020 : Part 1 -- Theme and Metas - Digression: How the Safari Adventure Unlocking System Worked - Part 2 -- stuff that isn't puzzle-writing - Part 3 -- non-meta puzzles - Part 4 -- more non-meta puzzles, and one metapuzzle
 * Reddit AMA

Others

 * Alex Irpan - MIT Mystery Hunt 2020, Part 1 - MIT Mystery Hunt 2020, Part 2
 * Anthony Twarog - This Is Not a Puzzle: The MIT Mystery Hunt
 * betaveros - 2020 MIT Mystery Hunt
 * CJ Quines - Two hundred puzzles, fifty hours later
 * Dan Katz - Part 1: Coping With Anticlimax - Part 2: Some Puzzles I Remember - Part 3: Points of Contention
 * devjoe - Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4
 * dr_whom - The Mystery Hunt is amusing
 * Eric Berlin - A Really Absurdly Long Post about the MIT Mystery Hunt
 * Eric Neyman - My favorite puzzles from the 2020 Mystery Hunt
 * fortenforge - Mystery Hunt 2020
 * jasonl - MIT Mystery Hunt 2020 Recap
 * seekingferret - (no subject)
 * sniffnoy - Mystery Hunt Roundup 2020
 * Tanya Khovanova - 2020 MIT Mystery Hunt