Manic Sages

Manic Sages was a team that participated in the MIT Mystery Hunt. The team was formed in 2004, and disbanded after writing the 2013 MIT Mystery Hunt. During its ten years of existence, they had consistently been in the top 10, and were in the top 4 teams in every year from 2006 to 2012, when they finally won. The team was composed of Mathcamp students, staff, and alumni (who have organized their own annual puzzle hunt since 2002) as well as MIT's ESG program (Experimental Study Group), which gives the letters to the team name, approximately. After the Manic Sages disbanded, Rage was reformed, which no longer recruits from Mathcamp students directly.

History
The team was formed as a merger of two teams, one originating from Mathcamp (competing under the name "No Fkernel" in 2003 and based around the ESP office, an undergraduate group involved in several educational programs for teaching middle and high schoolers), and a group from ESG under the name "Wizard Lizards", which formed in 2002. As a team, it grew via friends and friends of friends, and compared to other teams at the time became a large team with a relatively relaxed approach to puzzle hunting.